Friday Photo

Sierra Nevada range, outside of Lee Vining and Mono Lake. Cool clouds.

Friday Photo

California Poppies. I probably took this in the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, which is busy during springtime. Just beautiful.

New CD

I placed a library hold on this CD when I saw that it was coming out, "Maria" by Cecilia Bartoli. Kind of forgot about it until I got the email that my hold was ready for pickup.

I go into the library and this book is in the place of the CD that I expected. When I picked up the book, it has the CD in it, see the link: Maria

So the packaging is VERY COOL. Its a small book, nicely illustrated on good bond paper(hey, you can feel the qaulity!). The CD is in the back flap, and a little hard to get out of the book.

The music itself is great, with different moods throughout. I have several Cecilia Bartoli CD's , and I may have to buy this one. Or not take it back to the library! :)

Supposedly there is a DVD that goes along with the music, but I haven't seen it yet..

Friday Photo

Funny story behind this picture...

Landscape photograghers spend alot of their time "scouting" an area before shooting that area. So I am driving in Malibu for the first time one weekend day, and pulled to the side of the road(PCH), along an area called Leo Carillo State Beach. Lots of other cars are there, so it must be OK right? Walking around the beach I found this tree and previsiualized the picture at sunrise, and I knew it would work - but I would have to get out there before sunrise to get the shot. After walking around for about 2 hours I get back to the car to find not one, but two parking tickets! They were from different jurisdictions, but one was from Malibu and I had to appear in court one particular morning, during the week. This looks like a good reason to take a day off of work, get up early and drive out to Malibu again!

So that's just what I did: got up EARLY and got out there to get this shot - which is actually a double exposure with the moon, but done "in camera". (You advance the film while holding the film release button on the bottom of the camera, thereby causing the camera to think that you advanced the film, when in reality you have the already exposed film ready to now lay your next shot on top of, in this case the moon. IMO - this technique is the truest to a non-darkroom double exposure).

After shooting that morning, I went to court. My dad had told me that getting two tickets for the same offense was not legal, so when the judge called my name, I asked him about getting the two tickets. He confirmed that the other ticket should not have been gibven and wrote it off. I tehn had to pay the fine, and I think go to traffic school for the other one, but at least I only had to pay for one ticket and I got a few good shots that morning.

This trek also started me on the "early morning Malibu drives" that I began to do - once I realized it wasn't that hard to get up to get these kinds of shots!

Friday Photo

Icicle in the Merced River - Yosemite.

This was just one of those photos that I didn't plan initially, just happened to be there and saw the icicle in the river. Once I saw the icicle, I knew that I had to try to get a shot with the water moving around it, using I used a slow shutter speed to get that effect. The camera was on a tripod, and I had tho scrunch the tripod down as low as it would go to get the angle right.

With these water shots, you have no idea what it's going to look like until you get your film back. This one seems to work the best.

I took the stick and icicle with me when I left, it just looked so cool!

Creeping Phlox

Can you believe that I bought three 1 gallon containers of Creeping Phlox about 3 years ago, and this is how big they are now? Two of them grew together, but you can see how big the one by itself got.

The flowers look nice when it stays cool, but when it gets warm, the they go away. Another reason to wish for a mild summer!