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Sedona Water Wheel, Crescent Moon Ranch.  One criticism that is sometimes leveled at landscape photographers is that their images can “look like postcards”.  This is deemed undesirable, I guess, because postcard images are considered to be frivolously (or artificially) “pretty” and excessively colorful.  The intent of a postcard, presumably, is (among other things) to make the folks back home feel jealous because they couldn’t be there in person.<br />
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That’s all well and good, I suppose.  But the “problem” we have in Sedona is that pretty much everything around here actually does look like a postcard, at least on a sunny day.  Now, among all of the problems that one might encounter in this world, I think most folks would agree that ours is one of the better ones to have.  But if a photographer is trying to create a reasonable approximation of how someone would experience a local scene…  well, what are ya gonna do?<br />
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In my view, there’s a simple solution to that quandary: just tell it like it is.  If someone doesn’t like photos that look like they belong on a postcard, nobody is forcing them to look.  Such folks might not like what they would see in person around Sedona either.<br />
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In that spirit, here’s what the water wheel at Crescent Moon Ranch looked like yesterday (Nov. 7).  It was a glorious autumn afternoon with a deep blue and mostly cloudless sky, and the cottonwoods were showing off their peak fall color.  It just doesn’t get much better around here.<br />
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Image ©2019 James D. Peterson