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My new lens balls arrived last week from Amazon and I am learning what I can do with them.  These are shots from early in my lens ball experience, taken with my iPhone 14 Pro Max.  I'll post more when I get better at the lens ball photography.  

This is what you get when you put a light bulb on an iPad displaying a background inside a darkened light box. Taken yesterday evening with handheld iPhone 14 Pro Max.

  Ok, not really a bird on a stick but rather a Hummingbird resting atop the branch of an Ocotillo.  I was playing with the Prisma app on my iPad and some interesting recolouring resulted.

   The term Global Warming may be misstated.   It's certainly been Tucson Cooling this winter, the coolest and dampest we and our Arizona friends can recall.  There was plenty of snow up Mount Lemmon last week and the most southerly ski resort in the United States was busy! 

This is the face of a man who has some stories to tell.  Original photo was taken by iPhone in colour but I switched to B&W to better accent the features in the face.  

Yesterday, I challenged my iPhone photo group to photograph things around the house.  I gave them this example of a cheese grater held up in front of my iMac screen.   I can't wait to see what wonderful photos they will submit in time for next month's meeting!  

The clouds at the time of yesterday's sunset were quite interesting - shapes, colours, textures.  Here is a sample.

This rather large fellow was enjoying an afternoon in the sun, willingly posing for passersby.  Photo was taken at Cost Maya, Mexico.

The white fluff on these bulrush reeds is lit up by a bright backlit sun.  Photo was taken at Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson.

Costa Maya, Mexico is a small village turned cruise port that allows tourists to visit local Mayan Ruins.  A pier was built to attract cruise ships, providing business and jobs to the area.  The pier was destroyed in 2007 by Hurricane Dean and it also wiped out the local jobs.  A new pier was built and all was well until the Covid pandemic wiped out the cruise line industry.  Again jobs were lost.  Now that that threat has subsided the pier has been expanded to accommodate three cruise ships.  It is a short walk off a long pier for cruisers to enter Mexico. And there are lively bars, restaurants, shops, and tours waiting at the other end of the pier.

This is an unedited photo of an interesting sun spot at the Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson.  The photo itself is nothing special, but I was intrigued at how the sun rays played with the lens on my iPhone 14 pro max.

This is taken from the stern of a cruise ship looking toward the Port of Miami at another cruise ship. I love the colours in the lights reflecting off the water.  

Here is singer Norman Greenbaum.  He was born in 1942 and had his biggest hit, Spirit in the Sky, in 1969.   He was on stage recently as a surprise guest of the Vermont band Mellow Yellow.   How did that come about? Mellow Yellow was doing a version of Spirit in the Sky on a cruise ship in February 2019.  They didn't know that Norman Greenbaum was also on the ship until he asked to meet with them to tell them how much he enjoyed the cover that they had performed.  That meeting led to a friendship with Norman and his wife, Vicky, and a 'surprise guest' performance on last month's "On The Blue" cruise.   

The recent "On The Blue" rock music cruise featured some Canadian artists including the Pat Travers Band.  Pat Travers is a rock guitarist, keyboardist and singer from Toronto.  I took many photos while on the five day tour; this is one of my early favourites, showing Pat Travers in full flight!

With the first human settlements dating back to 1000 B.C., the area of Chacchoben was a large community with many houses, plazas  and temples.  It is located 90 km west of Costa Maya in Mexico and is a popular tourist destination being so close to the cruise ship port there.  

Last night we enjoyed a beautiful warm Arizona evening with some wonderful neighbours.  The fire pit was lit.  The full moon shone brightly.  I noticed that we had an empty chair and it made me think of people who couldn't be physically there with us.  They were there in spirit and in our memories of them.  

  This is the first blog post in a while as I took a break and went on a rock music cruise to Belize and Mexico.  Over the coming days I'll post more shots from that trip, but here is the morning sunrise view from the stern of the Norwegian Pearl as she sails off the Mexican coast.