Goodyear, Arizona.

It’s an early spring in the Sonoran Desert. With lots of rain in the Phoenix area, the desert is relatively lush and green. On our twice-weekly trail hike, we opted for one of our favorite hikes in Estrella Mountain Regional Park. The Butterfield Trail is easily accessed from a large parking area via a short walk on an intersecting trail. Butterfield Trail is only a bit over two miles, rated easy for the front section and moderate for the remainder. Along the way and at trail’s end there are intersecting trails that can be taken to lead you further back into the park, eventually creating a longer loop. Our choice for this hike was to simply return to our car along the same trail for a total distance of a bit over four miles. On the two-hour hike, we discovered all manner of desert wildflowers in bloom. The cactus aren’t yet ready, but fiddlenecks, orange mallow, lupine and Mexican poppies are abundant in the park which is only about 20 minutes east of our home in Buckeye.

The small stand of Mexican poppies and lupine was captured with my Samsung S6. I used the cellphone’s selective focus mode to capture the foreground in sharp focus while providing an out of focus background. Lately, rather than edit on the small screen of the S6, I’ve been uploading cellpics to my iPad for editing to take advantage of the larger screen. The image was processed using the iPad version of Snapseed. The rule for the cellpic sunday photo challenge is simple. The image must be captured and edited using a mobile device.

John Steiner