Photo Blogging Challenge (Sept. 2014): Black and White

This month's challenge by P.J. was to post 5 photographs in black and white.  Originally, I was going to post something to the effect that I didn't have five B&W shots, but then I started looking through some of the shots I took this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised that I have enough to cover this month's challenge with ease.  And so, without further ado, I submit my shots for the B&W photo challenge.

1.  Grow Old with Me
I've done several of these shots in the past, but this one was actually a re-do of one of the originals I posted for this series earlier in the year.  In each shot, I wanted to emphasize my wife's wedding ring and I didn't do that very well in the first shot, so when she sat down at the piano a couple of nights ago, I had my opportunity to get the shot right.  It's still not quite perfect as I would have liked to have seen the ring straight up on her finger, but I'll take this for now.

2.  Man's Best Friend

This is Jack, our dog.  He's been featured on this blog before and will probably be featured again from time to time.  I started to Instagram earlier this year, but it's really so much easier to do with an iPhone as opposed to an iPad.  Watching football, with your dog at your side or in your lap is a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  I just love the contented look on his face as I scratched him under his neck.  I'm sure your dog is probably similar in that if you stop, you'll immediately know that you're not supposed to stop yet, because the paw will come out and scratch the closest body part to you and you know the dog is thinking, "Oh c'mon now.  That wasn't enough scratches.  Keep going there food guy."

3.  The Windmill
For those of you who are long term readers, you'll know that I enjoy going out geocaching.  The best way I've been able to describe geocaching is it's an Easter Egg hunt for adults.  People will go out and hide something, get the geographic coordinates for what they hid using their GPS unit and then return and posted them on the geocaching website.  Once they coordinates and cache get posted, then anyone with a GPS unit or smartphone can go out and look for the cache.  Trust me, it's way more difficult using a smartphone.

This windmill is located in San Dimas, one city to the west of where I live.  It's located behind a small little residential park and there's some fruit trees tucked back in there with a couple of trails.  I noticed on a sign there was going to be a pumpkin patch back there starting next month as well.

This photo represents why I got into geocaching in the first place.  I like to hike, but I've never been very familiar with the hiking trails in the local foothills.  When I first stumbled upon geocaching, the nearest geocache was approximately 7 miles away from our house and a half mile hike from the parking lot.  It was located in the Claremont Wilderness Park.  I had no idea that park even existed.  Now, many of my hides are in the Claremont Wilderness Park.

For me, at least, geocaching has allowed me to discover my own back yard.  I've found so many trails that I never would have known were there, were it not for geocaching.  The hobby has kept me reasonably fit, but I still need work in that area.  The last couple of times I've really been up in the foothills was on the mountain bike, so I'm starting to incorporate biking into my geocaching outings as well.  If you haven't already tried it, I would suggest checking it out.  It's a lot better than sitting on your butt all weekend watching sports.  Well, sometimes it is.

4.  The bicyclist
I live in a college town.  The Claremont Colleges (five separate universities, plus a graduate school) are located about a half mile away from where I live and provide ample opportunities for photography, whether it be architecture, statuary, people shots, or combinations of them.

This particular day, I was shooting a variety of things, walking around the campuses.  I started out at the Harvey Mudd campus at a spot that I've photographed many times before.  There is an old fountain tucked away down in a small plaza.  It has some rather large koi swimming around in it and the area always provides some great color shots.

It's rather obvious that I was looking for some kind of angle to get an interesting view of the architecture of these two buildings.  I love the building to the right totally surrounded by a reflecting pool that is only inches deep.  I'd taken several shots and I could hear a bicyclist coming up so I waited until he came into the frame.  I think that little added piece of the guy in the shot made all the difference with this one.

5.  Three college guys
After getting the shot of the bicyclist, I ended up almost in the middle of a conversation involving these three guys.  They were talking to a fourth one about a paper that was due at the end of the week.  When the one guy left, the other three started walking to the east, presumably back to their dorm rooms to either work on their papers, or to watch some football on TV.  My bet is actually on the latter, based upon the laughter I heard from them as they trailed away from me.

I only had a couple of seconds to compose the shot before they'd be too far away.  As it was, this one had to be cropped because I didn't have my telephoto lens on my camera and was relying on my 50mm fixed lens when I took the shot.  I still think it's an interesting shot.  Were I to do it over again, I think I would have approached them to see if I could have gotten a 100 Strangers shot. I haven't taken one of those since early January of this year.

Well, there you have it.  My installment of P.J.'s monthly photo challenge.  Stop by and see some other blogger's interpretations of the same B&W theme.

Weather Part 2

I comment from time to time on the weather in Southern California, but I normally refrain from saying too much about it during this time of the year.  Why?  Mainly because I believe it's the Rose Parade's fault that we have so many people living here in California today.

I'm a perfect example of it I guess.  Although I consider myself a Californian, I wasn't born here, rather was transported here by my parents in the early 60s much like many of the kids I went to school with at the time.

My 5th grade teacher Mrs. Packard, on the first day of school, brought out a map of the United States, then proceeded to name every state and ask us to raise our hands when she came to the state where we were born.  She started in Maine where she was born, and went across to California.  Allen Schoff and I raised our hands when Indiana was called.  Of the 27 or so children in the class, I believe there was one person who raised his or her hand when the last state, California was called.  California was a state of immigrants from other states at the time.

I believe that every January 1st, the weather gods smile down upon Pasadena, California.  It has to be since we've only had two years in the last 60+ years where it's rained on the Rose Parade.  Every year, people back in the midwest and east coast huddle inside their houses while it's snowing outside and it's 20 degrees and they watch the Rose Parade, live from Pasadena.  The conversation goes something like this.

"Henry!"

"What Martha?"

"Come and watch the parade with me."

"Look Martha.  They're wearing shorts again on January 1st.  That's it, we're moving to California!"

And the population of California inches up again.  So why do I tell this story?  Because I'm posting something that might encourage people to move out here.  My last post dealt with the Yahoo Weather App where I'd submitted photos to be included in the weather app.  The screen shot shows one of my photos on the main page of the weather app for Pasadena, a shot that I took just before Thanksgiving this year of Pasadena's city hall.  For all of you back east, please don't look at the temperature.

Camping trip

Those of you who know me fairly well, know that I enjoy camping and usually end up taking at least one camping trip every summer.  Last year, we went to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.  This year, we plan to revisit San Simeon State Beach and Hearst Castle and then later on in the week, we'll travel up to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  We've been to both, but the kids were fairly young when they visited Hearst Castle, so it'll be neat to visit it again.  My youngest and I were at Lassen three years ago, but the older two have never been there so it's new to them.

For those of you who have never been to Hearst Castle, I have two words for you.  It's amazing.  William Randolph Hearst made his fortune in newspaper, yellow journalism and then used his fortune to amass massive amounts of statuary and pieces of art.  He then housed them all in his "La Cuesta Encantada."  Two pools, one outdoor larger than an Olympic swimming venue and the other indoors, under a tennis court and inlaid with 20 ct. gold are just part of the things that you'll see at the castle.  There are rooms at this place that are larger than your entire house.

We plan on camping just south of the castle at San Simeon State Beach, then taking the main tour the next day.  After then, we'll pull up camp the next day and head to Lassen where we'll camp for the rest of the week.  Lassen is the last volcano in the contiguous United States to have erupted before Mt. St. Helens.  Lassen was very active between 1914 and 1919.  

Our original plan was to spend one of our days hiking to the top of Lassen Peak.  There is an earthcache (geology related) located at the top of the peak.  Three years ago when we were there, we were blocked by tons and tons of snow.  I've noticed several people have logged the cache last month so the trail was open.  Yep.  The key word in that was sentence is the word was.

We'll be getting to the park on Tuesday.  The park is closing the trail down for about 6 weeks for needed trail work beginning Monday.  We missed it by a matter of days.  Fortunately, there's plenty of other things to do there, so I doubt we'll have a lot of free time on our hands, but it was a little disappointing to have worked toward getting to the top only to miss out by a matter of days.  We'll have to satisfy ourselves with other hikes in the park.  Either way, it should be a lot of fun.

We will eat s'mores, take photos of ourselves in front of the entrance signs to the park and document our campsites like we have done every year with just a couple of exceptions.  The campsite shot here is our campsite in Mill Creek Campground in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park.  It was a very secluded spot, one of the best campsites I've camped in over the course of my many years.  There was actually a small staircase leading up to the site itself.  If we get campsites as nice as this in this upcoming week, we'll be doing well.

I shall be offline for the better part of the week, but I'll be posting photos of our trip in the upcoming weeks.

Photo Blogging Challenge (June 2013): Bridges

As the title says, P. J.'s blog challenge for the month of June was Bridges.  One of the bloggers who participates in this monthly challenge suggested that any of us who live in California hunt down one of the Bridges actors, Beau, or Jeff, or find Lloyd's grave and take a photo of that.  Well, Lloyd was cremated and the resting place of his ashes are unknown according to Find a Grave.com, so I decided to go a different route.

1.  The traditional bridge

About a week into my summer vacation I had planned to go geocaching with a couple of my friends.  We ended up taking two cars mainly because one of the guys thought he might have to leave early, so we ended up meeting at a geocache entitled Bridging the Gap, where the Union Pacific Railroad tracks run under Highway 18 out in the Mojave desert. 

This day was to be mostly car caching, driving from cache to cache with very little hiking involved, which ended up being a good things as the heat was getting to the point that we decided that even in the car, getting out all the time was strength sapping and we called it a day at around 1:00 in the afternoon.  My friend's car, fortunately, stayed relatively cool in the shade of this bridge.

The clouds really make the scene although I'm a little perplexed to what caused the streaks in the sky, but overall, I'm very pleased with how this image turned out.  And in reality, I had visions of grandeur that I would end up near San Francisco sometime this month so I could go on a bridge shooting spree, but it was not to be.  This would be my only traffic bridge that I would shoot during the month.

2.  The musical bridge

I've shot this particular bridge many times over the years including one other time from a different perspective for P. J.'s weekly challenge on Flicker.  Our family is very musical with all of us playing or singing at one time or another during our educational years.  My daughter received her college degree in violin performance.  My son played the piano and my other son played the viola and sang all four years of high school in his school's top choir.  My wife plays the piano, flute, guitar and clarinet, although the latter two she hasn't picked up in several decades.  I sing in our church choir on Sundays.

This is my son's old viola that he obviously doesn't play anymore since he discovered he enjoyed singing so much so it sits in its case, only coming out when I want to take another photo of it. The purpose of a bridge on stringed instruments is to keep the strings off of the finger board and to transmit the vibrations of the strings to the sound board.

3.  Lucy

Named after Lucille Ball, Lucy has been our pet for about 10 years now.  Lucy is a California Desert Tortoise, an endangered species.  I have a permit which allows me to keep her in our back yard, the only legal way to do so with endangered species.  

California Desert Tortoises have been losing their habitat mostly to development.  As more and more people move to California, the encroachment on their territory becomes more severe and their range continues to shrink because of it.  While out geocaching, I've run across empty tortoise shells but have never seen a live one in the "wild" so I count myself fortunate, that I get to see one almost every day in the summertime as she cruises around the yard in the early morning or late afternoon when it's not too hot out.

With more and more areas in the desert being turned over to wind farming or solar gathering, not to mention housing, development by humans continues to put more pressure on the native species of tortoises.  Unfortunately, domesticated species, which is what Lucy falls into, cannot be reintroduced into the wild, because the domesticated ones tend to have respiratory problems they could pass on to the wild species.

As a caretaker of Lucy, I view myself as a bridge keeping the species alive.  Should desert tortoises become extinct in the wild, I may be asked to give up Lucy so that she could become involved in a breeding program to help perpetuate the species.  I would gladly do that. 

4.  The Claremont Colleges

I live in a college town.  Actually, there are five colleges, a graduate school and a school of Theology within the city limits of Claremont, California.  There are two buildings on the Pomona College campus named Bridges - Big Bridges and Little Bridges.  Originally, I wanted a shot of Little Bridges, a converted chapel on campus because it's where my daughter performed in her orchestra when she was in junior high and high school, but the area was cordoned off due to construction, so I wandered over to Big Bridges.

Bridges Auditorium is a memorial donated by the parents of Mabel Shaw Bridges, a student  at Pomona College who died at the age of 22 in 1907.  Construction of the building cost $600,000 and was completed in 1932 with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Arthur Rodzinski.  I found this billboard window outside the entrance to the auditorium and the reflection of the grounds beyond the front entrance I thought was very inspiring.  

Every time I walk by this area, I am reminded of my own college and how similar these two areas look, most likely because there are many coast redwood trees around the outside of this plaza.  The coast redwood tree was the dominant tree on my college campus, Humboldt State University, located in northern California.

5.  The bridge to adulthood

On June 13th, my youngest son graduated from high school.  It was a gloriously warm afternoon and there was a slight breeze blowing as evidenced by his tassel flowing in the wind.  This is actually one of the few shots I have of him with his tassel as he ended up losing it sometime after receiving his diploma and reuniting with us after the ceremony.  He didn't seem to be too concerned about it, so I'm not concerned.

This fall he'll be moving out of our house and into the dorms at UC Riverside where he'll begin his college days as a physics major.  Both of his older siblings chose schools in northern California and his stated preference was far away from mom and dad too, but in the end he chose a school that was close enough that he'll be able to come home on weekends if he so chooses, although I would expect him not to do so very often.  With his older siblings both graduated from college, we'll soon be crossing over that bridge to the empty nest come September.

If you click on the link to P. J.'s page at the top you'll see how other bloggers interpreted the theme of bridges for this month.  I'm looking forward to next month's challenge.  Hopefully it will be something where I'll be able to use some of the shots I take while we're on our camping trip. 

Downtown Los Angeles

Monday, I rode Metrolink into Union Station near downtown Los Angeles.   The purpose was to meet up with some friends of mine I'd met earlier through the 365 project. The plan was to take a couple of hours or so and go photo crazy.  We weren't even sure what we were going to shoot that day.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated immensely.  The day before and most of the previous night, it rained.  Monday was cloudy, but there were patches of blue sky, which made for some very photographic skylines.  My friends picked me up at Union Station and we went to lunch at a great Mexican restaurant on the edge of Olvera St., which is the oldest part of downtown Los Angeles and part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument.  

About a block or two north of there is Chinatown and to the north were a multitude of different buildings. So we had two different cultural area we could explore or architecture.  Either way, it would be fun and we could always come back and explore another area at a different time.  Monday, we chose buildings and architecture.

We walked south over the 101 freeway which cuts through the middle of downtown L.A.  There are proposals on the table to create a large central park on top of the 101 freeway.  This would create a large green area and allow more freedom of movement of pedestrians around the existing downtown area.  Whether the idea comes to fruition or not is a different story and I don't expect it to happen for awhile, given the current economic climate.

Once across the freeway, we saw the Los Angeles City Hall.  Across the street from the city hall is the State Dept. of Transportation building, otherwise known as Cal-Trans. It had a very upscale modern look to it and I spent some time there taking some shots.

Eventually we ended up heading west toward the Frank Gehry designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  The best way I can describe this building is a structure that was built out of stainless steel panels, then left out in the sun to melt and warp.  Wall panels seem to fall away from the structure or bend toward it.  A walkway has been designed so the public can walk all the way around the building, some times at a low vantage point, while at other times, up high to get different perspectives of the structure.  

The building panels had to be altered after the finished construction due to excessive reflective light from the sun off of the panels into nearby condominiums.  Light and temperature was excessive, so many of the panels have been sanded to reduce their reflective capabilities.  At one point, we walked by one section that reflected a blast of heat toward the street.  There was quite a temperature gradient at that point near the front of the building.

Eventually, we ended up at a small coffee house across the street from the hall.  After coffee, we walked back down toward Union Station, passing, among other things, Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Cathedral.  The cathedral sits right on the edge of the 101 freeway and would be right on the edge of the new park if it gets created.

I will be the first to admit, I'm not much of an architecture person, preferring instead the great outdoor cathedrals to the human built ones.  However, I had a great time photographing the buildings and would love to come back again, but if I do, it will be with a new lens, one with a wider field of vision than my current 28mm lens.