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Cellpic Sunday – Exploring Ayer Lake

Ayer Lake.

Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park, Arizona.

In a few weeks, I will feature a journey to Boyce Thompson Arboretum, a place on my “to visit” list for over a decade. It was well worth the trip, and I hope to return again. For today’s Cellpic Sunday, here’s a teaser photo from my day at the arboretum. The Boyce Thompson Arboretum is Arizona’s oldest and largest botanical garden and one of the oldest such institutions west of the Mississippi River. Founded in 1924 as a desert plant research facility and “living museum,” the arboretum is located in the Sonoran Desert on 392 acres along Queen Creek and beneath the towering volcanic remnant, Picketpost Mountain. The arboretum is about 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Superior, Arizona.

The lake in the Boyce Thompson Arboretum is called Ayer Lake. It’s not a natural lake but a man-made reservoir built in 1925 during the arboretum’s construction. Its purpose is to supply the arboretum with irrigation water for the diverse plant life it cultivates.

About the photo: As we walked on a trail near the lake, I found a vantage point designed to relax and enjoy the view of the lake and any waterfowl that happened to be there at the moment. On the day of our visit, there were a few ducks in the water, but they were too far away to get decent photos with my Samsung S23U. I opted for a view of the reservoir and the high bank surrounding it.

I’ve already processed the photo once for my original post about the arboretum. Still, today, I decided to use the image to experiment with one of the newer tools in Luminar Neo. After correcting for level and cropping it slightly to remove a sliver of the viewing platform on the right edge of the image, I used the brush tool to mask just the reflection of the bank in the water. After experimenting with each blur tool’s option, I used the motion blur tool to add a bit of motion blur to the reflection. I added just a bit of Accent AI and sky enhancement to finish the image. The edit took less than five minutes.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

43 comments

  14. Beautiful photo! I finally made it to the arboretum this past March and loved it… took me almost ten years before I finally prioritized a visit there. Hope you are doing well. 🙏

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