Continuing with my annual series of “What I Did On My Christmas Vacation” posts. Here’s the third. A leafy one from eastern Pennsylvania. I guess I should do Mom a favor and remove those beech leaves from the screen door. But they’re so photogenic…
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Photo Essay: Back to School
Continuing with my annual series of “What I Did On My Christmas Vacation” posts. Here’s the second. I spent the latter half of my grade school years at Penn Wood Elementary. Which had a nice woodsy setting that was full of distractions for a budding artist. Like textures and colors – the building blocks of…
Photo Essay: Post-Christmas Trees
It’s time for my annual series of “What I Did On My Christmas Vacation” posts. Here’s the first. Day after Christmas was a great one for planting the Retallick family’s tabletop Alberta spruce. Off with the pine cone decorations… And into the ground… Mom takes the one-gallon pot away before I tamp soil around the…
Website Redesign: Tucson Event Photography
Like its bicycling counterpart, my Tucson Event Photography website just got a redesign. It’s now responsive, so feel free to point your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer at it.
Website Redesign: Bicycle Stock Images
Four years ago, I launched my first photography website. At first, Bicycle Stock Images was sort of a grab-bag for all kinds of photography. Last year, I brought it back to its original focus. This year, the all-bicycling-all-the-time site makes its first foray into the world of responsive design. Which means that Bicycle Stock Images…
Nature Photography: Ripening Lettuce
Here’s what’s growing in my side yard. And it’s almost salad time! In honor of this milestone, it’s time to make some salad dressing. Here’s my recipe for Salad Dressing Picante: One part vinegar to three parts oil Grown-and-dried-on-the-premises rosemary Grown-and-dried-on-the-premises red chili peppers (coarsely ground with mortar and pestle) Salt I don’t have hard-and-fast…
Photo Essay: Winter Gardening
Winters in Tucson are interesting, to say the least. For example, consider what we’re dealing with right now: A week-long cold snap. Daytime temperatures have barely reached the fifties and the nighttime lows have hovered around the freezing mark. Today’s forecast high is 61. I doubt we’ll get there. Time to check on how my…
Photo Essay: Mesquite Bean Math
Here’s the finished project, the end result of many weeks of harvesting and drying the mesquite beans from my front-yard tree… Thank you, Desert Harvesters, for doing the milling, and to Patty Goble for transporting me and beans to this event. This is what we came back to my place with… The raw materials? Three…
Event Photography: Fall 2013 Bicycle Swap Meet
To think that, when I first attended the Swap Meet 25 years ago, it was a monthly bicycle club meeting held in a University of Arizona auditorium. I doubt that more than 100 club members attended. And now look. It attracts thousands of people, who fill several city blocks. There also is a still life…
Event Photography: Home-Scape Tour 2013
So, here’s my back porch, all ready to receive hordes of Watershed Management Group Home-Scape Tourists… For the first hour of the tour, things were slow. Then I got slammed with visitors. About 50 in two and a half hours. No time for photos once I got busy, but here’s the set from last year.
Website Update: Metabolic Profiling
September 2015 update: The website has been redesigned since this post was published. A year ago, the principals of this startup company came to me for a website redesign. That project is summarized here. Since then, the MetProf people have gotten feedback from their customers, which has led them to focus the business on proteomic…
The Bike-tography Show: Combining bicycling with photography
A solo exhibition of images by Martha Retallick Borderlands Brewing Company 119 East Toole Avenue Tucson, Arizona 85701 October 12 through November 9, 2013 Tucson, AZ – September 19, 2013 – Meet Martha Retallick. She’s short of stature, slight of build, and doesn’t have an athletic bone in her body. But this tiny Tucsonan has…
Event Photography: Breakfast Meeting with U.S. Rep. Ron Barber
On Wednesday, September 4, the University of Arizona, Tech Launch Arizona, and Startup Tucson hosted a breakfast meeting with U.S. Rep. Ron Barber. The meeting covered a wide range of topics, including capital availability for undergraduate entrepreneurs, UA-community cooperation on technology transfer that creates high-paying jobs, and pending federal legislation to aid innovative small businesses…
Photo Essay: Sunshine and Water
The brief story of sunshine and water in Tucson goes like this: Sunshine: Way too much! Water: Not enough! Ultra-bright midday sun is turning my cabeza temporal squash plants into a bunch of swooning drama queens… Save those plants! Must have emergency infusion of greywater! To the kitchen we must go! It’s garden-bucket-water time! The…
Photo Essay: Sudden Downpour
So far, August’s monsoon storms have been quite impressive. A total of .55″ to date. More than half of the rain came during last Friday’s sudden downpour. Here are the results from my neighborhood, starting with the street flooding at 3rd Avenue and Flores Drive… The downpour was preceded by a windstorm, which pushed this…
Photo Essay: End of the Harvest
Okay, so I finally found a great way to wash and dry large quantities of mesquite pods: Put them in that used produce crate that’s been sitting in my shed. Set them atop one of my gardens. That feral cat-deterring thorny branch lattice makes a perfect “table.” Watering can rinses the pods and waters the…
Website Redesign: American Journal of Medicine Blog
February 2022 update: The website has been redesigned since this post was published. This blog exists to drive traffic to the Tucson-based American Journal of Medicine. It’s managed by a longtime friend and mentor, Pamela Powers Hannley. The AJM blog started out on Blogger, but Pamela and the journal’s editorial board decided that it needed…
Photo Essay: Pod Farming Adventures
A month ago, I blogged about the start of the mesquite bean harvest at my place. Around Tucson, you’ll also hear those beans referred to as pods. This post is about my adventures as a pod farmer. The harvest started slowly, but let me tell you, my front yard is now under full bombardment. That…
Nature Photography: Monsoons Arrive
Well, look what’s back in town! Looks like big drops of water, falling from the sky! Alas, this was one of those five-minute wonderstorms. We’ve had more convincing ones, but no gullywashers. Yet. This is the time of year with the night-blooming cereus present their annual flower show. They’re supposed to do this for just…
Photo Essay: Awaiting Monsoon Rains
News Flash: It’s hot and dry here in Tucson, Arizona. We’re eagerly anticipating the start of the monsoon rains. In the meantime, my container garden appears to be holding up… I give the container garden at least one watering a day. The cactii? Well, they could use a drink… What happens to sagging cactus branches?…
Nature Photography: Mesquite Harvest Underway
Nature has a funny way of demanding your attention. It can send huge storms. Or it can do more subtle things, like dropping mesquite beans in the front yard. Okay, big front yard mesquite tree, you have my attention. It’s time for the annual mesquite bean harvest. Which starts with picking up the fallen beans,…