The Tempe Town Lake was created by damming two ends of a dry river bed and filling it with water. The point was to create a public space near Tempe’s downtown district. There are often complaints, some valid, of wasting water on something like this in the Arizona desert. But based on the number of people who use the lake and the surrounding parks the complaints aren’t too loud. That is until the rubber dam that holds the water in the lake burst after baking in the Arizona sun for several years. Millions of gallons of water rushed down the dry Salt River emptying the lake. The dam was fixed, the water filled back up and the fish restocked. And then a bridge was built over the dam to shade it from the brutal sun. Whatever your position is on building a lake like this in the middle of the desert, the bridge is a very cool design (and functional) element crossing over the west end of the lake.
f/18.0 – 1/125 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 50 mm
f/14.0 – 1/200 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 50 mm
f/14.0 – 1/100 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 50 mm
f/14.0 - 1/100 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 50 mm
f/10.0 – 1/60 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 50 mm
I wrote about Photographing a Theme to Beat Photographer’s Block a while back and I have been having fun with approaching my photography with a theme in mind. My latest theme photo shoot was metal. The great thing about doing a shoot like this is you are only limited by your imagination. A theme of metal does not need to limit you to only the obvious metal object. Once you start shooting you may end up going down a different path or interpret your theme in a way you hadn’t thought of originally. But that is the whole point, to get your creativity flowing, so go with wherever it takes you.
In the case of my metal theme, beside obvious metal objects, I looked at things like shadows created by metal objects, the contrast between metal and its surroundings, and pattern in metal.
f/8.0 – 1/50 sec 0 ISO 100 – Focal Length 200 mm
f/10.0 – 1/200 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 35 mm
f/10.0 – 1/80 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 55 mm
f/10.0 – 1/80 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 70 mm
f/7.1 – 1/100 sec – ISO 100 – Focal Length 160 mm
Soaking Up the Sun
f/10.0 – 1/400 sec – ISO 200 – Focal Length 22 mm
Arizona State University has installed solar panels on roof tops and the top decks of their parking garages that generate about 2 megawatts of power. That is enough to run about 4,600 computers. The panels generate about $425,000 worth of energy and reduce ASU’s carbon emissions by 2,825 tons reduction per year. The equivalent of the emissions from about 523 cars. Arizona State has the largest solar installation of any US university.
