Category Archives: Nature

Morro Rock

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Morro Rock (aka “The Gibraltar of the Pacific”) is a landmark feature on the central California coast. Formed around 23 million years ago as the plug of a now extinct volcano, it rises 581 feet from sea level. In 1542 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese explorer, named the rock as ‘El Morro’, which means ‘the crown shaped hill’ in Spanish. The rock was an important navigational aid for mariners for over 300 years, and at least two tribes consider it a sacred site. Today it stands guard over the entrance to the sheltered bay of it’s namesake city, Morro Bay (pop. 14,950). Morro Rock was designated a California Historical Landmark in 1968.

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Montana de Oro Sunset

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Montana de Oro is a park located on the central California coast starting at the southern end of the small city of Los Osos. After walking the paths while watching whales spout and breach, seals swimming south a ways out from the shore, and porpoises gliding thru the water, it was then proven to me that you don’t have to go to Jamaica for a great sunset. At the rate things were going, I would not have been at all surprised to have seen the green flash thrown in as part of the sundown finale.

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Supermoon

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Like 3/4 of the worlds known population, I decided to shoot some photographs of the August 10th SuperMoon.

When a full moon occurs at the same time as the moon being closest to earth in it’s elliptical orbit, that’s a SuperMoon. It can be up to 14% larger in appearance and 30% brighter luminosity, than the full moon at other placements in it’s orbit.

I have been working on my moon shooting skills in the nights leading up to that event. I’m shooting with a 200mm zoom lens which is not known for stellar (HA!) performance at the long end of it’s range. Focusing is very difficult for these old eyes, but critical for the detail I want to show. What I wouldn’t give for a Nikon 300mm fixed length F4 lens right about now.

So everything goes swimmingly, and my results are improving, as I practice every night shooting a fuller and fuller moon leading toward the August 10th peak. Then, on August 8th, clouds and heavy rain move in.

And so it remains, until the night of August 11th, one day after the peak SuperMoon viewing. In the below shot, you can see a slight darkening toward the lower right of the Moon, indicating it is just past peak.

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There is a lessor SuperMoon coming again in a month, on September 9th. I plan to be out there shooting it.

I wonder how the weather will be?

 

Trees Deciding They’ve Had Enough

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So it’s all awesome and wonderful living under the big, shady, green trees on the edge of the lake. Or, it is until they come down. In the lake. And you have to get them out.

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It’s a perfectly clear afternoon (albeit there had been heavy rain on the previous day), blue sky, no wind, quiet and peaceful. Then 2 large pine tree trunks, without any warning, begin falling toward the lake. The tree is what is called a combinant tree. It has two trunks coming out of the same root body.

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At first there was hardly any noise. Then gunshot loud cracking sounds as the falling pines land on and take with them a beautiful 10″ Maple.

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Now I don’t mind too much losing the 2 pine tree trunks, other than the expense involved to get them out of the lake. But the loss of that gorgeous hardwood Maple tree just breaks my heart. The violence and volume of the cracking noises it made as those 2 pine tree trunks took it down is something you can’t un-hear. The poor thing was fighting hard for it’s life all the way down, as it was nevertheless relentlessly broken.

That’s enough drama for a while, Mother Nature.