Favorite photo of the week

One of the things I'm thinking about doing, starting with this post is to put up, what I think, is the best photo that I posted to Dogz on Walkz this past week.  There are quite a few that I have really liked, but I just like the look of this beagle called Obi.

Changing equipment

For the past 30 years or so, I've been using either Minolta or Sony cameras.  My wife bought me a Minolta Maxxum SLR just about the time we got married and I used that camera for the longest time.  I liked the zoom lens on it and it focused quickly, which was very important to me. So when it started slowing down and showing wear and tear, I felt it was time to move into the digital age and get a DSLR.

I went back and forth between different brands, but what ended up swaying me to Sony at the time was the mounts for the lenses were the same as with Minolta.  It made sense since Sony had bought Minolta.  I figured if I bought a Sony camera, I'd end up being able to use the lenses from my Minolta with that.

I ended up at a camera store in Pasadena where I looked at the Sony Alpha 100 and ended up purchasing that with a nice zoom lens.  The guy who sold it to me said, I'd probably never use the Minolta lens, because the lens that came with my Sony was better and covered more ground, and he was absolutely right.  

I used that camera a lot over the years, but I've noticed, especially recently, that the lens and camera were moving much slower.  Auto focusing was becoming much slower to achieve and with me recently taking a lot more shots of moving subjects (Dogz on Walkz), I felt it was time to start exploring the possibility of getting a new camera.

So this week, I went out and went an entirely different way this way, opting to walk away from the Sony brand and look at other models.  Eventually, I settled on a Canon Eos 80D and I must say, I'm very pleased with it so far.  The auto focus on the camera is incredibly responsive and so far, the only problem I actually had focusing on my subject was the photo of the pyracantha berries I posted to this entry.  With so many berries in the shot, the camera had problems staying sharply in focus on any one particular berry, but eventually I was able to see what it was showing me in the viewfinder and I got the shot I wanted.

I'm hoping to have a long and happy relationship with this camera.  I expect this one will go with me on many travel adventures and family outings.  So far, I've only used the wide angle lens with the camera, so I'm looking forward to getting out to use the telephoto lens.  In the meantime, enjoy these two shots that were taken with the new camera.

Side effects

Whenever you take a new medicine, you usually have to worry about possible side effects.  This is also pretty much true when you try something new.  Running?  You're feet and legs are going to ache for awhile until you build up some stamina.  Ice skating?  You're going to fall until you become decent and then you'll still fall.  Yoga?  Yeah, I'm just not flexible enough to even attempt that one, but I'm sure others can tell you about some of the side effects there.

So why am I writing about side effects?  Well, I've encountered my own side effect from going out and deliberately talking to dogs and taking their photos.  Dog slobber.  Who knew that many different kinds of dogs could slobber so much?  I knew some dogs slobber, case in point, this bulldog I captured a couple of years ago.  

Today, I ended up walking along the Thompson Creek Trail, mainly because the foothill trails had been closed down by the city due to the winds and possible fire danger.  So I walked the bike trail and got lots of dog photos. And I also got lots of dog slobber too.  But it's the best kind of slobber, so I guess this is just a inconvenient side effect.

Explore

Every now and then, I'll post an image and not really think anything of it, that is until I get home the next day and I've seen all the faves the photo generates.  I regularly post to Flickr and they have a category called Explore.  Basically, it's the best photos that people post over there and it's by invitation only.  

The invitations are sent out to photographers after a photograph has reached either a certain threshold of faves, or comments or some such, as there seems to be no way of really knowing how many you really need, as I suspect they probably think that you might "stuff" the ballot boxes if you knew.  They also block you from getting back into Explore for a certain period of time afterward so that others can be seen without you becoming a dominant factor.

Up until today, I've two other photos in Explore.  My Death Valley photo, that I took in the spring of 2015 was the first.  I even blogged about that experience here.  That photo has almost 8000 views and 98 faves.  Interestingly, it used to have 99, but I guess someone decided they didn't like it quite as much as they previously thought.  The second photo that made it to Explore was a photo I took this summer in Yellowstone National Park of the Grand Prismatic Spring.

And now I have a third.  Jaxson, the Weimaraner is now in Explore.  If you click this link and hurry, you might see Jaxson near the top, but as new photos get added, he'll move further down and out of site, but even if you don't find him, check out some of the spectacular photos there.  You won't be disappointed.

Dogz on Walkz

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't posted much on here.  In fact, I haven't posted anything since late June of last year.  Life has happened, repeatedly in a variety of ways.  But I've had many adventures since June and I could have written a lot, but I just haven't.

And so I'm starting fresh again.  My daughter suggested something to me last week that grabbed ahold of me and sort of kindled a spark in me.  We talked and laughed about it, but then I started thinking and realized that I could really get into this.  And so, Dogz on Walkz was born.

I decided that if I was going to do this up right I wanted to get a good Instagram feed going, so I went through all of my past photos and found as many Dogz on Walkz photos that I could find.  Then I created the Facebook page and the Instagram page and now I'm trying to post a new photo every day of a dog I encounter on my hikes and walks.  After all, the title of this blog is a Photo a day, so why not get back into it.  I even decided to re-join 365 Project as Dogz on Walkz.  And so it goes.

I also practiced first.  I decided that on my walk/hike on Saturday of last weekend, I'd just greet every dog that walked by just to get a feel for it.  I didn't bring my camera, although I had my phone with me, so I could have taken shots with that if need be, but I just wanted to practice that day.  Sunday would be different.

On Sunday, I literally picked up my camera for the first time this year.  I can't even remember the last time I used it, maybe this summer when I was on vacation?  It's become so easy just to pull the phone out and take a photo on that, that I'd forgotten how I used to enjoy taking photos.  One of the first things I noticed was how heavy the camera is.  That will take some getting used to again, but it didn't take long for me to get back into photographer mode.

The first dog I met on the trail that day was Annie, pictured her.  She's only 7 months old and according to her people friend, she's a Pit Bull/Boxer mix and was a rescue dog.  Annie was so thrilled for pets from me that when I sat down to take photos, she jumped into my lap and schmooosed the front of my camera, a fact that I didn't even noticed until after I left her and her people friend.  Then I noticed all the dog drool on the front of my lens.  Nothing like dog slobber to really get a lens nice and clean right?

So this is my attempt at really doing a photo a day for this blog.  Sometimes, it might just be the daily dog photo, but I'm going to try this again.  Wish me luck.

As always, any comments, words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated.  Please like our page on Facebook.  Also, please follow us in Instagram.  Tell all of your dog loving friends to follow us in Instagram as well.

Goals for the year

This post, as are most things in my life it seems, is just a little bit late.  I got caught up in the 20 days of Chill challenge and really didn't think about posting something along this line for the month of January and here's now almost halfway through February.  But as one of my students said last year, "Better late than never."

Goals that I have for myself are as follows and they fall into two main categories:  Hobbies and Personal.  Interestingly, the main personal goal is tied up with my hobbies.  If I work on that one, the others will fall into place.

First off, let me talk about hobbies.  I went out geocaching today.  Big deal most of you will say, but what you don't realize is I've only  gone out geocaching four days in the entire month of February.  In other words, I've taken a step back, slightly.  Many of you might not know is I just completed a 601 consecutive day streak where I either found a cache or attended an event.  It stretched from June 1st, 2015 until January 21st of this year.  Sunday, the 22nd felt weird not to go caching, but it rained hard all day and I was able to use the rain as justification for me not going out and finding a cache that day.

I have other geocaching goals in mind, many of them most of you will probably find quite silly, but those particular goals keep me interested in the game.  My current goal is to get every date on the calendar filled in with 11 finds each.  Since I've been geocaching since 2001, you would think that I'd found at least 11 caches on every day of the year.  Not so.  There are certain time periods, notably the months of September and December, where I am busy doing other things and geocaching takes a back seat.  Since the consecutive day streak has ended however, I can now concentrate on filling in those dates.  This won't happen by the end of the year, since I already have a couple of dates in January and February that still need to be filled in 2018.  But, at least I can put a dent in that particular goal.

Since taking a step back, I've decided that I want to find more quality caches.  If I have to walk or hike to a cache, then I rate that higher quality-wise than if I just walk up to something and find it there.  That doesn't mean I'll change my entire caching habit, but I would like to work on that aspect.  Today was a perfect example of both aspects.  I went over to Whittier today to cache along a trail in the Arroyo Pescadero.  No such luck since the trails were closed due to the weather we've been having.  So I found some nearby caches in parks and along some streets and ended up over near another large park where the trails were open and I was able to find some good quality hiking caches.  It was like the best of both worlds.  The only thing that would have made it better would have been if I'd had a caching partner, but that doesn't always work out and I'd rather do a solo hike then sit at home because I don't have someone to go caching with.

Today also made me realize why I need to step back slightly from geocaching.  On the trail today, I saw two swallowtail butterflies flitting around each other, most likely in some kind of mating or territorial ritual.  And I didn't have my camera with me.  Two years ago, I always took my camera with me.  Now, it very rarely comes out of the camera bag.  I take photos with my iPhone, but those don't compare to the ones I post here.  That's also probably one of the reasons that I don't post as often here on my blog.  The blog's title is "A Photo a Day."  I really need to get out more and take photos again.  I discovered today, that I have missed taking photos. I think the consecutive day streak had something to do with that as well.  I was pretty much consumed with making sure I found at least one geocache, that I wasn't concerned about other things that I enjoyed doing and so photography fell by the wayside.  That's going to change this year.  I just need to strike a better balance between the two.  And a better balance between the two means, more photos and thus more posts here as well.  It's a win/win all the way around.

And lastly, but probably most importantly, is my personal goal:  Lose another 15 pounds by the end of the year.  I have been diagnosed as pre-diabetic.  This is not a good thing and I don't want to slide down that slippery slope and so losing weight is a very good option for me to help me avoid becoming diabetic.  In the past two years, I've lost 30 pounds.  Another 15 to 20 pounds will put me back at my college weight, which will be much healthier for me in the long run.  Hiking, and thus geocaching will help with this.  But if I can't find a geocache, then I can always walk the Thompson Creek Trail or the Claremont Wilderness loop.  A five mile hike is always good for the body and good for the soul.

Thanks for reading this. As always, I look forward to your comments.  

Stress (Day 12) - 20 Days of Chill

Stress.  We all have it and it affects our lives, mostly adversely.  So I guess the point of this post, is to not so much talk about stress, or what kinds of stress there are, but how I deal with it.  And you will probably deal with it in a variety of ways, most of which are probably different than mine.  And if it works for you, that's great.

I've always used this blog as a way to advertise my photos. I'm not into making money, but I do like to show off my work.  As I was looking through some photos today for one that I thought would work with what I thought I was going to write about, it hit me.  Most of the shots that I had in that particular album are stress relievers for me, because they pretty much capture what it is that I do to relieve my stress.

These are the things that I love to do, in no particular order.  Geocaching. Travel.  Photography.  They get me to start thinking about other things, they get me to reorder my priorities and they pretty much de-stress me.  

This particular photo is pretty much emblematic of all three of those things.  This was taken while finding either a virtual geocache or an earth cache in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. I've been geocaching for almost 16 years.  If I didn't like it, I would have stopped a long time ago.  I enjoy the hunt for those hidden treasures and I especially like the hunt when I'm in different areas than my own.  I get to experience hides by different people.  It gives me a new perspective on the hobby.  

Travel is something that I've always done, starting at age 4 when my parents took us on a week long camping trip to Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.  We tent camped then, but sometime shortly after that, my parents bought a 14 foot trailer to haul all of our gear and family around the country.  Whenever I can get on a road trip, I'll take it.  It's a great stress reliever for me.

I've been a photographer for as long as I can remember.  I used to beg my parents to let me take the Kodak Instamatic when we'd go camping.  Many of the photos that were taken on those trips were taken by me.  My parents bought me my first camera when I was in third grade.  I don't know whatever happened to that camera and it would be nice to have it again, just for old time's sake, but I took many photos with that cheap little thing.

When you're doing something you really love to do, it's pretty much impossible to be stressed.  I think stress just melts away.  As one of my friends said to me one time, "You're not going to be bored when you retire.  You have too many things that you're going to want to do."  Yep.  The less stress, the better it will be.

For more stories on Stress, click here.

I found a ball … (Day 4) - 20 Days of Chill

Since this blog is entitled A photo a day, I went looking through my flickr feed for a ball.  I was looking for a shot of a baseball I'd taken a photo of last year.  I didn't find that one, but I found a ball anyway.  Actually, I found lots of balls.

This is a temporary artwork that was set up in MacArthur Park in 2015 entitles the Spheres of MacArthur Park.  The artist who set up this artwork is Ed Massey. 

The artwork, 4 to 6 feet tall painted spheres, was part of Portraits of Hope, an organization devoted to creating public art installations that serve as creative therapy for children with disabilities and those in hospitals coping with cancer, burn trauma, and head injuries.  Most of the spheres were painted by people with disabilities. 

So today, I found several balls.  See other stories about this theme here.

Photograph (Day 3) - 20 Days of Chill

One of the things I love about photography is the freedom to explore different areas where I wouldn't have gone 5 years ago.  In 2011, I joined the 365 Project which challenges photographers to shoot at least one shot every day for 365 consecutive days.

Now, for those of you who know me well, when I dive into something, I dive into it full cannonball mode.  Not only did I do an entire year, I did a second year, not missing a single day of picking up my DSLR camera and taking at least one shot.

Looking back on some of those early shots, I think I would be embarrassed to even show those shots the light of day today.  I can distinctly remember a shot of three different kinds of hotdogs.  Who posts photos of hotdogs anyway?  Yeah, well I did.

One aspect of photography that has intrigued me over the years has been street photography.  When I first started doing the project, I rarely took candid shots just walking down the street.  Over the course of the first year I became bolder and now I find myself enjoying taking street photography.  This particular shot is one of my better street shots I've taken. Because I feel street photography works better in monotones, that's how I usually process them.  Every now and then, I'll post a street photograph in color, but most of the time, I find the black and white aspect of the shot gives it more detail and dramatic effect.

Please check out others interpretations of the theme Photograph here.

Little red wagon (Day 2) - 20 Days of Chill

Since the photo is dated December 1994, I'm going to say the wagon was a Christmas present that year.  I liked to take family photos around this time as well, so it made sense that the wagon make an appearance in the kids' photos for this year.  

It was bright red, with wooden sides, although we didn't put the wood side on the front, as it made it easier to get in and out of the wagon.  Ages five and three were the perfect age for this wagon.  They filled it with toys and hauled things around in the front yard as well as the back yard.  Sometimes the older one would pull the younger one around, but not often.

By the time the third kid came along the following year, the wagon had already seen better days.  It was used hard and often, a sign of love for most kids.  I've not known a toy of my own that didn't have scratches, dents and dings in it, usually from the first week of use.  If it didn't have those dings, it wasn't used much and was probably not a good buy.  This wagon was a good buy.

When I first saw the theme for today, I knew this was the photo I was going to use.  It's one of my favorites of the two older ones as they were growing up.  Hard to believe they're 27 and 25 now.  I wonder where that wagon is now.

Check out other stories of red wagons here.

The day after last night

I tried to think about what I might be able to use to write about this prompt.  I thought to myself that I wonder what kind of photo I could use with this, so I decided to let the fates decide.  I went to my Flickr account and thought it might be interesting to just post a photo of the last shot that got faved there and write a story around it.

I actually got very lucky since it could have been one of my more recent shots, but someone apparently found the shot of downtown Los Angeles in the archives and faved it today.

I enjoy going to LA, mainly because there's a lot to take photos of there.  I can take the train in from where I live and it drops me off at Union Station, right next to Olivera Street.  A couple of blocks over and I'm in Chinatown.  Three blocks the other way, I'm in Little Tokyo.  Up a couple of blocks a third way and I can then walk all the way around Walt Disney Concert Hall.  It's like you're in a time warp, where the day after last night keeps happening over and over again, you get to see different cultures and yet never really do any kind of traveling.

The other thing I enjoy about this area is it affords me to practice my street photography.  I know not everyone is comfortable taking photos of random people on the street and at times it can feel very intimidating.  But I've found that I can document life on the street in a variety of ways, not all of it nice, but all of it real.  Sometimes I post those shots in color, but most of the time, I'll post them in monotone.  For whatever reason, I feel that the monotone gives the shot a more authentic look to it, almost like something out of the past.

Street photography has its own rewards and it can present problems.  Most people don't like other people taking photos of them.  I understand that, but if no one took any photos how could we document what's happening out there?  I've tried a technique with a varying degree of success.  I'll see a shot, compose it in my mind, then walk by it with my camera in my hand upside down and fire off shots as I walk away.  With the zoom lens and the auto focus, I can sometimes get some very interesting shots that way.

Other times, I'll just take a shot, because it looks interesting.  Many people don't really notice when you're taking your shot, especially if you don't get in somebody's face about it.  That's another reason to carry a zoom lens along.  It makes for a less intimidation factor when you're in a crowd taking shots.

No matter what day I go, whether it's yesterday, tomorrow or the day after last night, I find the subject matter in the downtown area has always changed, so there's always new shots.  But at the same time, the subject matter is also constant and doesn't change.  I hope that makes sense.

Dreaming

Dreams are an interesting phenomena.  They can happen at any time, they can be controlled, and yet can also not be controlled.  I'm at the point in my life where I dream a lot more than I used to for a variety of reasons, both literally and figuratively.  

About a year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea.  I snore.  Go figure.  However, I'm a shallow breather, that is to say, I take such shallow breaths that my body constantly wakes me up to take a deeper breath while I'm sleeping.  When I did the sleep study, I was waking up to take a deeper breath 59 times per hours.  Needless to say, I wasn't getting much restful sleep and not much dreaming.

Now, I don't wake up much at all.  I sleep like the proverbial log.  Dreams are a nice side effect of this as well.  It's like having a movie in your head and you're part of the picture, but you never know how it's going to turn out.  

Other dreams however, I control.  For example, because of my age and how many years I've been employed, I find myself dreaming of retirement. It sometimes gets very tough when you see co-workers leaving, because their situation makes it easier for them to retire or they're slightly older than you and it's their turn to leave.  Eventually, that will happen for me too.

I'm looking forward to retirement so I can concentrate full time on my photography.  Five years ago, I started a 365 project, taking a photo every day for a year.  It went so well, that I completed a second year.  720 straight days where I took a photo.  Then I took some time off.

This year, I decided I wanted to try it again.  So far, that has fallen flat.  I don't pick my camera up nearly enough right now.  I know what I want to take photos of, but I can't, because work is getting in the way.  That happens, so I dream about when I can go out and just take photos for a day, just to see what I can get.

It's fun to dream.  P.J. even wrote about dreaming what he would do if he won the lottery.  That's three quarters of the fun, because we all know we're not going to win, but it's fun to dream about what could have been, or what will be should we ever get lucky.  My retirement dreams are a little bit different than that, because somewhere down that road, those dreams will come true.

My favorite place.

When I saw this prompt for the 20 days of Chill Challenge, I knew my answer would be Yosemite.  There's something about this place that just speaks to me.  My first visit was when I was four years old.  I don't remember much of that trip, but I do know that I've been back numerous times in the course of the last 50 years.  I know I will go again in the near future.  I don't think I could ever get enough of this grand spectacle.

I've been to Yosemite in all sorts of weather and all the seasons.  Most of the time I've gone in the summertime, as that's when I have the most time off in which to travel to this scenic spot, but I've done a one day weekend trip to the park in the fall with my daughter.  I've also visited in the spring time with my dad when we were scouting out colleges for me.  I walked on the valley floor during one of the heaviest snowfalls on record on a late December day back in 1988.  

Each season changes this park, but you just can't beat the scenery at this place.  And there's the constant that attracts me, the scenery.  I know there will be detractors out there who will say that it's too crowded.  And they would be right.  But that's not going to stop me from going.  Each time I visit, I go to my favorite spots, take in the view, compose photo shots and just enjoy myself. Many of my favorite shots are along trails, which don't have as many people.  The people that venture out on a trail away from the valley have a different sense of purpose and a different respect for the park.  We know the masses are there for a day or two, to take in the sights and to move on.  We have a different feel for the park.

Every time I camp there, it's for at least a week and there's still so many things to see there that I never get it all done.  Just another reason to get me to come back later on I guess.

I took this shot from the valley viewpoint as you exit the Wawona tunnel on a June day in 2014.  I have to say I've been fairly fortunate in that most of the times I've been to Yosemite, there's been weather.  The clouds just help the shot, no matter where your taking a photo, but here, it just makes the spectacular shot even better.

Who am I?

I have to say, I'm a man who has strong convictions, but not a whole lot of follow through.  I've made resolutions in the past, especially with regard to blogging, but usually have fallen through.

Just last year, I participated in P.J.'s 20 days of Chill Writing blog challenge and swore I was going to do better with my blogging.  I posted 23 blog posts in January of last year, but only 34 overall.  Needless to say, January was the high water mark of my blogging last year.  So I'm not going to make any promises this year.  All I know is I had a lot of fun with this writing challenge last year, so I'm going to participate in it again this year.  

Today's prompt is "Who am I?"  

I'm a teacher.  I've taught in the same school for 32 years, plus one additional year at another school.  Interestingly, I've taught at my school longer than four other teachers at the school have been alive.

I'm a husband.  I've been married for 27 and a half years.  As in every marriage, it's not perfect, but I know for sure I got the better end of that deal.  Why my wife would want to put up with some of my antics and shenanigans for the past 27+ years is beyond me, but I'm glad that she has.

I'm a father.  I have three children, all beyond their teenage years.  My daughter, my oldest, is a teacher up north.  She is a fifth generation teacher in my family.  My son, my middle child, is in between jobs right now, but just moved back down here to Southern California.  I hope that means I'll bee able to see more of him in the coming year.  My younger son is still at home with us.  He's attending community college and looks like he's going to major in Psychology once he gets to a four year institution.  We will be making the rounds to different colleges this spring.

I'm an outdoorsman.  I enjoy being in the outdoors.  If it's hiking, or camping, or geocaching, I'm probably doing it and doing it for much of my off time when I'm not working.

I'm a photographer.  Believe it or not, my parents bought me my first real camera when I was in 3rd grade.  I wish I still had that old camera that took roll film, but somewhere when I graduated to better cameras, that one went by the wayside.  I still enjoy taking photos and you'll see many of them in this blog and on other sites as well.

Day one done.  I'm looking forward to the next day of this challenge.

Photo Blogging Challenge (May 2015): Spring

Here is is, the end of the month already and P.J.'s monthly challenge is upon us.  This month, the theme is spring.  I will be the first to admit that I didn't use my camera very much this month, nor did I even use the cell phone camera, but I did take enough shots that I think I can come up with five shots that pretty much epitomize springtime.  That being said, here are my entries into this month's challenge.

1.  Fiesta

Every Mother's Day weekend, our church has its annual fiesta.  This fiesta is likely the second or third largest event in the city of Claremont every year, so a lot of people attend and there were good crowds even though there was a large threat of rain in the air most of Friday night when this shot was taken.  For the past couple of years, I've usually set up my camera on a tripod somewhere around here and get some light streak shots.  This year, I walked down to the fiesta, only to turn my camera on and find out I had a dead battery.  I knew it was low, but wasn't aware it was that low and so I was totally unprepared for this circumstance.

However, this year, because I'm now part of the 21st century and I have my own smartphone now, I used the camera in the phone for some shots.  Not quite the same thing, but since I have several shots for the past couple of years with light streaks, this is a little different from my normal shots at this time.  It worked out well, mainly because the sight angles this year for the various rides weren't the greatest in the world and the best angles were right in the middle of high pedestrian traffic, which is not good for a long exposure with a camera on a tripod, so it probably worked out better that I did have a dead battery.  Still, that's just a rookie mistake, one that will not be repeated again.

2.  New hobbies?

For whatever reason, it seems like springtime is the time when new hobbies can be explored, that is unless you have a hobby that involves winter gear.  Most hobbies tend to be warm weather hobbies however and so I've got anew interest, one that might not come to fruition for a couple of years, but there's a large spark of interest here.  

One of many photo projects that I've participated in over the last couple of years is the 100 Strangers project.  I haven't taken a stranger photo in over a year, but when I saw Stephen here piloting a drone over the fiesta, I figured I wanted to know more about the drone, how it worked, etc.  Push came to shove and I walked over and starting talking with him about the drone.  Eventually, Stephen said the magic words, "Would you like to fly it?"

Oh man, that was very cool.  I got to hover, I got it to go straight up over the fiesta and just about the time I was ready to really start watching what the drone was seeing, the app lost contact with it.  Oops.  Fortunately, it didn't just plummet to the ground and Stephen was able to guide it in to a safe landing, but at least I can say that I've now piloted a drone.  Oh, yeah.  I plan on doing that again, sometime I hope in the near future.  Perhaps my children can pool their money together and get their old man a drone for Christmas.  That would be pretty cool.  At least here in California, I wouldn't necessarily have to wait until springtime to try it out.

3.  Walt Disney Family Museum

Springtime usually means the beginning of the traveling season, at least for me.  Early in the season, during my spring break, I went camping in Death Valley, the first time I'd been there in about 20 years.  But I digress, since these photos for this challenge have to be taken in the month of May.

Usually in May, I go visit my older two children over Memorial Day weekend.  This year I traveled up to the Bay Area to visit with my daughter and her fiancé.  My older son drove over from Merced for the weekend and we had a very enjoyable time.  Most of Saturday was spent dealing with little wedding details, mostly finding the right suit for the two dads.  I remember several years ago, when one of my good geocaching friend's daughter got married and he bought a suit for the occasion. If I remember correctly, he hadn't worn a suit in a very long time and probably won't ever after.  My daughter commented that she couldn't really remember ever seeing me in a suit either.  Well, I now own a suit, but once again, I'm digressing a little bit since that story doesn't deal with the photo.

Sunday, we drove up to San Francisco into the Presidio.  Our goal was to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum.  If you are a Disney aficionado, or have next to no knowledge of Walt Disney, you will enjoy yourself at this place.  The entire museum is obviously dedicated to Walt Disney, set up by his daughters and it contains all sorts of memorabilia of the man.  The museum is very interactive and pays attention to all sorts of small details.

At one point we were walking down a hall that had a grand vista view of the Golden Gate Bridge and my daughter commented that she felt that all of a sudden she was in a ride at Disneyland.  Not coincidentally, we turned the corner of the hallway and were in a room that featured everything Disneyland, including a scale model replica of the park.  Having worked at the park for five years in the 80s, this was just fabulous and I could have stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, but there were other things to see.

The photo that I've decided to show here doesn't have anything to do with Disneyland, but with the early pioneering that Disney did with sound cartoons.  This shot shows 348 frame enlargements form the film Steamboat Willie, the first talking cartoon, and the first that featured Mickey Mouse.  The 348 shots represents less than 15 seconds of animation time of the film.  And these were all hand drawn at the time as well, no computers to help them out.  Talk about labor intensive work.  It's no wonder that a feature length film, such as Peter Pan, was only released once every three years or so.

4. Street photography

As most of you know, I enjoy taking street shots of total strangers.  Outside of the Disney Museum, the green between some of the buildings was hosting a massive street fair.  Food booths surrounded all sides of the green and all of us took advantage of the massive amounts of good food.  If any of us went hungry, that was our own fault. 

Springtime in San Francisco is dicey at best.  There's always a good chance that Carl can show up at anytime.  Who's Carl?  Believe it or not, Carl is the fog that shows up in San Francisco.  He even has his own Twitter account.  The day we were at the Presidio, Carl was still off shore, but was threatening to come in at any time.  Still, people came to the street fair prepared for the weather and most everyone was enjoying each other's company, which is why I find this shot so amusing.  All sorts of things are happening all around and this guy was totally absorbed in his phone, probably checking his email or something similar.  Maybe he was checking out the latest tweet from Carl.

5.  Kanka

While we were eating lunch on the green, my daughter told me to turn around and look at this massive Great Dane that was walking around with his owner on the other side of the green.  This dog was the size of a small pony.  After we'd finished eating and they had found a place to park themselves, I walked over and asked if I could take some photos of the dog.  After getting permission, I took several shots before the dog got bored and didn't want to have anything more to do with me.  This shot turned out the best of the bunch. He has a better expression in another shot, but I cut off his ear with some poor composition, so I'm going with this one.

His owner said the dog's name was Kanka, which apparently means best friend in Turkish.  Nothing better than going for a walk with your best friend on a beautiful spring weekend up in the Presidio.

Well, there you have it.  Five shots of spring.  Please stop by P.J.'s post to see his offerings on the theme.  There's also links at the bottom of that page where you can view other blogger's springtime offerings as well.

An Affair to Remember

28 years ago today I made the smartest decision I've ever made in my life.  I asked my girlfriend to marry me, and amazingly, with all she knew about me, she said yes.

For whatever reason, I am amazingly blessed to have a wife who puts up with all my foibles.  She said to me this morning that she wondered why I put up with her, but I actually think it's the other way around.  I know myself all too well, and I don't think I'd like to live with me for very long, yet she's done it now for 27+ years.  That's pretty remarkable.

During that time, we've lived in an apartment, and purchased three different houses, always upsizing to go along with our expanding family.  Interestingly, our first house was a brand new house and the other two houses we've owned since then have been increasingly older.  

Our three children have gone to school here in town, graduated.  Two of them have graduated from college and have full time jobs in Northern California.  Our youngest is still in college taking some very interesting classes, some of which I would have avoided when I was in college, but would love to take today.

Early last year, I took a series of photos entitled "Grow Old with Me."  All of the photos feature my wife's left hand, for obvious reasons.  This particular shot was taken on Valentine's Day last year.  Grow Old with Me my Love.

Race the Clock

I saw this prompt today and thought, "That's what my life feels like right now."  I feel like I'm in a race and I'm getting close to the finish line.  The good thing is, I know why I feel that way and it's just something that's going to happen.

Our second yearbook deadline comes next Monday.  Because we have next Monday off, it literally is a race the clock, because that means everything is due this Friday.  Are we there yet?  Nope.  Will we be there by Friday?  God, I hope so.

If everything comes off according to plan, this should be a well received yearbook.  Being it's my first yearbook as an advisor, I have nothing to compare it to, but I'm hoping the staff can pull it all together in the next 48 hours or so, so we'll be able to say we raced the clock and won.

The photo is one that I took 3 and a half years ago at a cross country meet where my youngest was competing.  It was very overcast that day, so I was able to experiment with some long shutter speeds in the low light conditions.  This shot was one of the better ones.

Imagine that - Day 18 of the Chill

Back in December, when I first looked over the list of prompts for this challenge, I thought to myself, "Self, imagine that you can actually get to the end of this challenge."  I laughed a little too at that notion.  I'm not there yet as I still have two more posts to get to the end of this challenge, but the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer a train bearing down on me, threatening to derail my thought process and stop me in some crazy way.  Imagine that.

You see, I'm a casual blogger.  I have high hopes and visions of grandeur.  Even the title of my blog has visions of grandeur, otherwise, it wouldn't be entitled A Photo a Day.  When I first set this blog up in 2012, I was in the midst of my second full year at the 365 Project, a website that challenges you to take a photo every day for a year.  I did it for two entire years.  I figured I'd just go on and on and so I'd just blog about the photo I took that day and the blog would write itself.  Imagine that?

But at the same time I was having visions of grandeur, I also had realistic expectations.  At the top, there's a short description of what this blog is about and I state that I might not post every day.  It goes on to say, in fact, I'm positive I won't post every day, but I would like to post twice a week.  Last year I posted a grand total of 25 times.  I only posted about once every other week.  And yet, I think I had the best year photographically of any since I started doing a 365 project.  Imagine that.

This year has been a different story, due exclusively to this  20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge.  This will be my 20th post this year.  Imagine that.  I have to be honest, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it or not, but I'm pretty sure my OCD kicked in and got me through some of the rougher spots in the road, especially on prompts that I really didn't like.  And no, I don't really have OCD.  Ask anyone at work, or just come look at my desk and you'll probably understand that I don't have OCD.

So, I'm blogging more this year, which means that something has to give.  Ironically, what seems to have fallen by the wayside a little bit this year is my photography.  The photo for this post is only my 10th photo I've decided to publish on-line this year.  We're almost done with the first month and I only have a third of what I should have if I were doing a 365 project.  Imagine that.

But the real thing that counts is I'm OK with that, because I know I'll pick up my camera and take more photos.  I take my camera to school every day and make sure I have it each week for the photo club that I run as an after school club on campus here.  I don't publish those photos here, because I told my students that I wouldn't.  In return, they also know that they're not allowed to post photos of me on their Facebook, or Instagram account, etc.  There's enough images of me out there without having something show up somewhere else that I don't know about.  Imagine that.

And so it goes.  Only two more to go.  Oh, and by the way.  I mentioned above that I don't have OCD.  That's true.  What I really have is CDO, because that's in alphabetical order the way it should be.

Ten years ago, I was probably..... - Day 16 of the Chill

Today's prompt is Ten years ago, I was probably.... 

And the answer is obviously, Geocaching!  I've actually been geocaching for almost 14 years, but my interest in it really took off about ten years ago.

A lot of people always wonder why I go out and geocache.  One of my sons just calls it "the weird thing Dad does."  He has geocached with me in the past and will tolerate his old man finding a cache or two when we're out and about, but it's not really his thing, and that's OK.  It's not for everyone.

I first learned about geocaching from a Where's George? chat room.  Where's George? is something else I could say I've been doing for the last 10 years or more, but that's an entirely different story which I'll probably save for another time.  Anyway, a friend of mine was talking about finding this hidden treasure on a hike he'd been on in Maryland and I asked him about it.  He said it was Geocaching.  

He led me to the site and I checked it out.  At the time, the closest geocache to my house was 7 miles away and a half mile hike.  I told my wife I'd discovered something cool and I knew what I wanted to spend my birthday money on.  Two days later, I purchased my first GPS unit and two or three days after that, I took my two sons with me and we drove over to the Claremont Wilderness Park, and hiked the half mile in on the trail there and found the geocache.

To be honest, as we were hiking up the trail, I kept thinking to myself, that this just couldn't be real.  It has to be a joke.  Who's going to hide something out in the wilderness and then who else is going to be crazy enough to go out and find that thing that has been hidden out in the wilderness?  I fully expected to see Allen Funt from Candid Camera come out of the bushes and say I'd been hoodwinked and that this was all a Candid Camera stunt.

But no, it was for real.  We found a large plastic bucket full of all sorts of things in it.  I know one of the things we brought home was a happy meals whistle that my youngest really wanted to have.  Let's just say we made that an outdoor toy and it kind of conveniently disappeared after a week or so.

But once we'd gotten back home, I was hooked.  I love the outdoors aspect of geocaching.  Back then, the caches were few and far between and you drove to a trailhead and hiked two, three, possibly five miles to find one cache.  I discovered all sorts of new trails in the foothills just north of where we lived.  Before that day, I'd never even knew the Claremont Wilderness Park even existed and there were all these trails to explore and caches to find.

Every so often, not nearly as often as today, I'd gather up the boy, or the boys and just go by myself and hike a trail to find a cache.  I'd get some good exercise along the way.  It has probably kept me a little bit thinner than I might be if I'd never learned about geocaching.

The hobby has changed over time.  Where there used to be one cache on a trail, now there might be half a dozen or more.  That first hike, we found one.  In fact, had we hiked the entire loop of that trail, we'd only have found that one cache.  Now that loop has 12 caches hidden on it, four of them by me.

No one really thought about hiding caches in urban areas.  Now that's mostly what you see is a lot of urban caching.  Not as much exercise involved there, but you can still get quite the workout if you pick and choose where you go.  It's something that you can do where ever you go.  I found that it was another nice diversion whenever we were camping.  Instead of just a hike, now it was a hike with a purpose.

I have over 160 photos in my Flickr album dedicated to photos taken while geocaching.  And yes, every one of these on this page was taken while geocaching.  The first photo is a shot I took in Waterman Canyon which leads up to my in-law's house in Lake Arrowhead, California.  I'm standing on a slight rise above the road, with the geocache directly behind me.

There's a geocache out on that island with the lighthouse in Crescent City, California.  The trick is you have to wait for the tide to go out so it's only available during certain periods of the day.  We got very lucky with that one as we had been hiking in the Redwoods and got back into Crescent City and discovered the tide was out, so we walked out over the rocks to get to the island.  Most of the time, you can't do that.

We spotted the snake at a rest area along Interstate 80 in Montana.  We'd been visiting my Dad up at my parent's summer house on Lake Couer d' Alene and decided to find some caches in the panhandle of Idaho.  Not one to miss out on a chance, since we were so close, we decided we might as well find at least one over the border in Montana.  We drove into Montana, pulled off at the first exit which was the rest area and found the cache and the snake.  Since we had to go down to the next exit to turn around on the freeway, we found the cache hidden at the next exit and for good measure we also found the cache hidden on the westbound rest area on the other side of the freeway.

The last shot was taken in July when I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge to find the geocache on the northern side of the bridge.  As you can see, geocaching has taken me to a lot of place, many of which, I don't think I would have visited were it not for geocaching.  I've actually found caches in every county in California (for those of you keeping count, there's 58 counties).  It has allowed me to explore various parts of the state I might have missed and it has also allowed me to explore my own back yard, those trails in the foothills.  Unless something drastic happens, I can see myself 10 years from now still writing about geocaching.

Organizing - Day 13 of the Chill

I really need to do a better job of organizing my photos.  Although I enjoy taking photos, keeping them organized in a systematic way has proven way too time consuming for me and so they're just on my computer by date.  It's not necessarily the most practical way of organizing things, but so far it works.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the way my photos are organized on my computer.  I looked in the photo album and the folders inside that album are not in chronological order.  2001 might be next to 2007.  You get the picture. 

This could prove problematic down the road as my next major photo purchase, which I have alluded to earlier is going to be a slide scanner.  Most of my parent's family photos during the 50s and 60s were taken with a Kodak Instamatic, using slide film.  I'd like to scan all of those before they deteriorate too much more as there's a lot of family history that needs to be preserved.

I've got to come up with a better way of organizing my photos.  Any suggestions would be welcome.

The photo that I chose for this particular writing prompt really doesn't have anything to do with organization other than it's the third time in the last three years that we've gone up to the mountains to visit my father-in-law over Christmas break and then gone down to the lakeside to feed the ducks and geese.  That tends to suggest that there's some kind of organizational work going on in our family lives.  Certain traditions are hard to break.