Dana Buckley is an award-winning photographer from New York who has always been drawn to the desert. In her new book, Living Desert, Buckley explores the beauty of the desert of the Tucson area and parts of California through her photography. She features photographs of cacti, agaves, aloe and shrubs and much more.

Most of her photos were taken up close with a macro lens or a zoom lens using a Canon 5D Mark III during the fall and winter.

“It was perfect weather,” Buckley said.

When looking at her photos, you wonder where in the desert Buckley was because of how bright, beautiful and in bloom some of the plants and flowers were. She even manages to finds beauty in a dried up California Buckwheat.

What is different about Buckley second book is that she explores a new medium, using a digital camera for the first time instead of using film.

Buckley says that she really worked to embrace digital photography. For her, it was like learning a whole new language from using a chip versus a roll of film.

“I’m always used to looking at prints of my work and even now I see that you definitely use a digital image more than you used to where you would print out everything,” Buckley said.

Buckley finally decided to use digital photography when she was heading to Florida to talk to group of collectors about collecting photography.

“I was in California and I knew that I was going down to Florida to speak to a group of collectors about collecting photography and I had all kinds of pictures to take with me as examples but I realized I didn’t have anything digital, I needed digital prints,” Buckley said. “So, I decided to go out and photograph something digitally and that is how it started.”

Buckley was in Palm Springs when she took a photo of a cactus digitally; she took the print with her to Florida when she spoke to the group collectors. A few months later while at an art fair Buckley was approached by a collector who had attended the talk in Florida that Buckley gave on collecting photography. Out of all her photos, the collector immediately showed interest in the one shot digitally.

“I took it as a message.”

Buckley still photographs with film but not as often as she used to. For more information about her work or her new book, head to her website http://danabuckley.com/