Under early morning light, looking west down onto Morro Bay California from the top of Black Hill.
Morro Bay From Black Hill
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Tag Archives: Photography
Caught Without My Camera – Drat!
Following a dinner of Red Snapper at the Sea Shanty in Cayucos California, walking along the beach afterward the sky decided to do this. And of course, catch me without my trusty Nikon. So what can a guy do but grab his smartphone, shoot away, and hope for the best.
These pacific sunsets are in danger of becoming habit forming.
Los Osos Oaks State Natural Reserve
The Los Osos Oaks State Natural Reserve park protects 90 acres of coast live oak trees (Quercus agrifolia), some up to 800 years old. The park was established in 1972, and is located just south of Los Osos California off of Los Osos Valley road. A number of trails traverse the park for your hiking and viewing pleasure.
Morro Rock
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.
Sunlight on the Deck
What is it that makes something that you have seen every day for 10 years suddenly interest you photographically? Is it a different texture of light, or maybe a particular angle of the sunlight striking? Maybe you have some emotional attachment to the sight, and today your emotions get control, making the ordinary seem extraordinary? Or some new brain chemistry just happens, and you see something in a way you’ve never seen it before? Can you capture that? Will others see it as you did?
Sunlight on Side of Deck
On The Curb: New Beginnings?
Is this the picture of a family having been evicted from their home, possibly a casualty of the ‘great recession’? Have the children been forced to uproot their friendships and attend a new school where they know not a single person yet? Will their pets be allowed to live in the new residence, or must they give them up? Can the marriage survive the strains that financial insecurity and change place upon it? What psychological scars will be etched on both the young and the old from this wretching experience? How long will those scars last before they eventually fade away to the effects of time?
Or maybe this is the portrait of a family moving up the ladder as growth and financial security return to a hopeful and waiting United States? Are they leaving this rented residence on the way to a new house of their own that they were finally able to purchase? Maybe there’s a new car in the budget now too, or even a second car? A bigger back yard, better schools, safer neighborhood, quieter surroundings? Perhaps a little less time available for Dad to be around the house, but then there’s always some price to pay.
There’s a story behind this. I wonder what it is?
Supermoon
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nobody Eludes Me for Nine Years!
Easily the most skittish of the animals on the lake, this guy will flee in panic if a human comes outside, even on the far side of the lake. Up until now the only shots I have been able to get of him have been thru window glass from inside the house.
But no more! I got him! I saw him coming and managed to sneak into hiding and wait until he stalked by right in front of me.
He is a Great Blue Heron (Wikipedia) and frequently hunts around the edge of our lake. I have been trying to get an up-close out of doors shot of this guy for like 9 years now. With an average life span of 15 years in the wild, it’s possible that this could be the very same guy who has been frustrating me all of this time.
Redemption.
Capturing a Moment In Time
I have always looked at photography, among other things, as capturing a moment in time. One point of time, frozen forever, viewed as I saw it, and framed for others to see as I would like them to see it.
I recently resuscitated my Imacon Flextight Photo scanner and have been going back over some points of time that I have frozen from years past. This is one of those moments, taken back in the early 1980’s in Piedmont Park, Atlanta Georgia. Obviously triumphant at having finished the Peachtree Road Race, this woman absolutely radiates happiness as she collects her race commemorating t-shirt at the finish line. It’s a point in time 30 years past now, but do you think she remembers this moment in her life?
