Landscape – Wandering Dawgs

Lens Artists Photo Challenge #373 – Looking back to Challenge #31 – Landscape

November 10, 2025November 22, 2025Posted in New Mexico, PhotographyTagged Albuquerque, Landscape, Lens-Artists, Photo Challenge, Sandia Crest, Sandia Mountains39 Comments

Sandia Mountains, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Egidio is looking back to Amy’s Challenge #31 from February 2, 2019: Landscape. I enjoy landscape photography and have many landscape photos in my archives. Usually I would post landscape photos of things like beaches, sunrises and sunsets but for this challenge I decided to focus on one subject that I have returned to more than once.

New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, is on my mind this week. I recently returned from a weekend in Albuquerque to attend my nephew’s wedding and spend time with my family. I also got to enjoy magnificent views of the Sandia Mountains. The featured image is of the Sandia Mountains just before sunset the night before the wedding.

This was not our first visit to Albuquerque. During our RV travels we passed through there a couple of times and in 2023 I attended the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Here are a few views of these mountains from some of our earlier visits.

View of Sandia Mountains from Coronado State Monument

Hot air balloon rising over Sandia Mountains at dawn

On one of our visits we took a scenic drive to the top of Sandia Crest to take in the gorgeous views.

Last week Tina’s challenge was Ephereral. Thank you to everyone who participated in the challenge. Your responses were great and I loved all the creative images of things that last a very short time.

I hope you will join in for this week’s challenge. Be sure to tag your post with Lens-Artists and include a link back to Egidio’s post Lens-Artists #373 – Looking Back to #31 – Landscapes.

Be sure to check back on Saturday, November 15 at noon eastern time when John will be hosting the challenge.

For information on how to join the Len-Artists challenge please click here.

Every Day is a Gift

Lens-Artists Challenge #133: My Photography Journey

February 6, 2021Posted in PhotographyTagged Landscape, Lens-Artists, Photo Challenge, photography journey, Sunday Stills36 Comments

I am not a professional photographer. Photography is something I do for fun and I enjoy sharing my photos here on my blog.

I had so much fun getting out my old cameras and going through old photo albums for this challenge. My husband has an old video camera that’s been in a closet for a long time so while I was working on this post he was going through his videos. I would have had this post done yesterday but I am easily distracted and got side tracked watching some of his videos!

I began my photography journey as a kid in elementary school with a Brownie camera. My pictures were pretty bad but it’s fun to look back on them now. I can still remember taking the film to be developed and impatiently waiting to see how the pictures turned out. The first animal picture I can find is of our pet turtles lined up on the sidewalk in front of our house.

When we started scuba diving in the late 1980’s I became interested in under water photography. I would just aim the camera in the general direction of whatever I was trying to get a picture of. After many epic fails and lots of wasted film I finally gave up and just enjoyed the diving. Occasionally, I actually captured the fish but they were usually out of focus. Here are a few that kind of turned out. These are cropped and edited to bring out the colors.

Back on land I had better luck with landscapes. Two of my favorite landscapes were shot with the two old Sony Cypershots. At the top of the page is a landscape from Oahu in Hawaii and the image below is of the Pitons in St. Lucia.

I got interested in wildlife and bird photography after we began traveling in the RV. I managed to get a few decent shots with the Cybershot if the subject was pretty close to me.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming)

Elk in Yellowstone National Park (Woming)

A few years later I graduated to a Sony DSLR with a zoom lens after I tried in vain to get a close up shot of a pair of eagles on one of our trips. This was as close as I could get with my old Cybershot.

Pair of American Bald Eagles in south Florida

The next year Henry got me a Sony A550 DLSR camera with two lenses. There were times when the 400 mm lens was too much so I added a smaller zoom lens later.

What a difference these zoom lenses made! I could now get the close up shots of wildlife I wanted. This eagle was high up in a tree in Alaska.

Bald Eagle at Chilcoot Lake State Park, Haines, AK

In addition to the landscapes and wildlife I enjoy close up photography of flowers and critters from the garden.

I’ve never been very good photographing people. Other than taking family pictures I think I’ll stick to nature and landscapes.

Many thanks to Patti for this week’s Lens Artists photo challenge #133: My Photography Journey. Also shared with Terri’s Sunday Stills – your favorite landscape

Okefenokee Landscape

April 1, 2016November 7, 2017Posted in Georgia, Nature, PhotographyTagged cypress trees, Landscape, Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Okefenokee Swamp, Weekly Photo Challenge15 Comments

Our last stop of our late winter RV trip to Florida and Georgia was Stephen C. Foster State Park in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Fargo, Georgia.