It's hard to believe it's the end of another month and so it's once again time for P.J.'s Photo Blogging challenge. This month's theme was "Where the streets have no name." I thought about this for a long time... well, not really that long since I live less than an hour away from an area that is huge, desolate and most of the streets have no names - the Mojave desert.
So, without further ado, here's my thoughts and photos on the theme, "Where the streets have no name."
1. Sandy, dirt road
The weekends in November are usually dedicated to geocaching for me, mainly because the weather is perfect, not to hot, not really cold yet and there's an endless supply of geocaches to be found, especially out in the desert.
This particular road was one of many I've traveled on this month that has no name associated with it, although it might have a number designated. I took this shot right after we'd parked my van at the side of the road. The road was getting more and more sandy and the conditions were such that if we'd taken the van much farther in, we probably would have gotten stuck in this sand. Eventually, this road petered out entirely and turned into a river wash, so it was a very good decision on our part to hike to the last 6 caches that were out here on this "road."
2. Coyote skull
Part of the allure of the desert is that critters of any kind are rather hard to come by. However, this month while geocaching, I've seen coyote skulls and tortoise shells sans tortoises unfortunately. I've seen numerous tortoise burrows, startled jackrabbits out of their burrows while hiking through the desert and have stumbled across snakes and spiders of various sizes.
This particular skull was nicely intact and cleaned of anything that other animals might find of interest, so it was just bleaching out in the sunshine as we walked by. It's not uncommon to come across bones - the desert is a fairly harsh place - but this is probably the first time I've seen a coyote skull out there. I know they exist out in the desert as I've seen live ones from time to time.
3. Tarantula
The day before Thanksgiving, my friend Craig and I decided to hike a series of geocaches out in the desert east of HWY 385, north of Victorville called the Peace Symbol. The caches are laid out to look like the cartoon hand in a V symbol for peace. If you click on the link, you'll see what I mean.
While out there, we passed several dirt roads, but had decided from the beginning that we were going to hike the entire way. We'd gotten the upper portion about 10 days before that, so it wasn't like we were going to be doing the entire thing all in one day. It took us from 8:24 in the morning, until 4:30 in the afternoon, but we hiked 14.25 miles and found 79 geocaches on the day, definitely a highlight for me hiking as I've never hiked that far or for that many geocaches all in one day.
On the way, we spotted a small gopher snake sunning itself. We took several photos of that little guy and then moved on and then as we were nearing another cache on the eastern side of the Peace symbol, I spotted this tarantula just walking along. Interestingly, it halted once we got about five feet away it and it seemed perfectly content just to stay there motionless while we took photos. Because of the length of the hike that day, I didn't bring my regular camera along. This particular shot was taken with my iPhone 5s. I'm impressed with the quality.
4. Desert storm
This particular shot was taken on November 1st well before I'd even seen the theme for this month, but I feel it tells the story of the theme nicely. I was hiking, solo this time, north of Palm Springs, California near the town of Desert Hot Springs. It was very windy, as it is most of the time in the area. The mountain passes are liberally sprinkled with windmills that generate electricity.
In Southern California, we have two deserts, the high desert and the low desert. This area is in the low desert. Sparser vegetation is usually the key, but it also has to do with elevation. Once you start seeing Joshua Trees (see the first shot above), you're probably in the high desert.
Palm Springs is in the low desert and gets less rainfall than the high desert does, which is one of the reasons there is less vegetation. Not on this day however as that storm more quickly through the area and dropped rain hard and fast. Out hiking, the best I could do was put my camera under my sweatshirt and move as quickly as I could from cache to cache. I couldn't stay dry, because the wind was blowing hard enough that the raindrops were pretty much moving horizontally. Once I got back to my car, which was parked alongside a nameless dirt road, the westward side was totally wet and clean, while the east facing side of the van was dry as a bone.
5. A circular road
Most people recognize the circular nature of the seasons. I look at it as a road we travel through life. Each one's road is slightly different depending upon their perspective. Here in Southern California, one of the hottest months of the year is September and that heat, sometimes triple digits, can persist into October. We've been having 80 degree weather this entire Thanksgiving week.
No, I'm not trying to rub it in, just pointing out the differences in our roads. Back east, fall starts the leaves turning sometimes as early as late August. Out here, our leaves have started to turn, but will continue to turn throughout much of December and January. I have a deciduous tree in my back yard that for the last couple of years has not shed its leaves. Go figure that one out.
I actually thought about using this shot while I was on my morning bike ride and heard a song entitled "Roads" by Chris Mann.
There are roads in this life that we all travel
There are scars and there are battles where we roam
When we are lost or wherever we may go
They will always lead you home
There are roads that have led me to another
To a friend or to a lover I have known
For every turn is a year that I have grown
As I walk along these roads
And so ends another entry in the photo blogging theme, "Where the streets have no name." I hope you have enjoyed these shots. Please stop by P.J.s blog and scroll down to the bottom to see a list of other bloggers who have taken on this theme as well.
An aside to P.J. You asked whether you'd like me to guest blog on your site and the answer is yes if you'd like to use that piece I wrote, I'd be happy guest post. For some reason, the reply function is working over here, so I figure I'd let you know this way.
So the hope was that I'd be able to write more than once every other week, but that doesn't seem to be happening, so bear with me as I continue to take you through last summer. Kind of funny actually that we're almost in winter and I'm still writing about summer, but that's how it goes sometimes.
Anyway, the first weekend in June I had volunteered to help my friend Craig in his quest to hike the John Muir Trail, from Yosemite Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney and then down to Whitney Portal. Craig had everything planned out, so it was just a matter of me going along for the ride and enjoying everything. We took his truck and my van up to Lone Pine, California, where we were going to leave his truck at Whitney Portal. Whitney Portal is the major trailhead leading up to the summit of Mt. Whitney and where Craig would be coming down from after his 211 mile hike over two weeks.
So the first day was mostly driving in caravan style as we worked out way up to Lone Pine. Since Craig is also a geocacher, we caches along the way, mainly because we didn't have any set itinerary outside of making sure we ended up in Yosemite on Sunday, June 8th so he could get his permit to hike the trail, which would begin on the 9th.
We couldn't have asked for better weather, for camping and photography. There were just enough clouds that I was able to get some pretty spectacular shots. The shot of Mt. Whitney was taken from the road leading up to Whitney Portal. No threat of thunderstorms, just puffy clouds that helps enhance the shots I took that day and on subsequent days. The second shot was taken from an overlook just west of the Mammoth ski area looking over the Ansel Adams Wilderness. The jagged peaks in the middle of the shot are called the Minarets, which was the original name for the Wilderness back before Ansel Adams, the famous photographer passed away.
After dropping off his truck at Whitney Portal, we headed up to Mammoth. Sometime during the day, we'd made the decision to camp at Devils Postpone National Monument. By the time we got to Mammoth, it was close to 8 o'clock in the evening and starting to get dark. We got down to the Postpone and the campground was closed. I think it actually opened a couple of days later. We found out that many of the campgrounds were closed, or were opening up the weekend that we were there. Fortunately, Reds Meadow campground, just a couple more miles down the road, had just opened up the day we got there, so we had a place to stay that night. We pulled into the campground, pretty much in complete darkness, pitched the tent, ate dinner and then hit the sack. We had a big day planned for the next day.
To be continued.....
Dear friends,
I posted this back in May 2012. I still think it's appropriate today and so I'm repeating it for today. I doubt it will make a difference, but I'll feel better after posting it, so that's what counts right now.
I have many friends, due to the social media giant Facebook, plus other sites.
In fact, any site where there's a discussion board, you can learn about people that share similar interests. I've also been able to connect with a lot of long lost friends because of these social networks.
One thing I've found through the years is that people like to spout off on discussion boards about their political leanings. This, in my opinion, is a bad thing. Mainly because most of the time, all those political discussions do is cause arguments to start. And although a good flame war can be very entertaining from time to time, it's not something that I relish, nor something that I seek out.
I like you as a friend. I liked you when we were in school together. We talked about a lot of different things, but we really didn't talk about religion or politics. Those were the things we were told as kids that we shouldn't talk about. Hmmmm. Maybe our parents were right.
I would prefer to maintain these friendships in the coming years. Talking politics makes that more difficult. Social media has brought many of us closer together and helped us reconnect with our past friendships that we let drift apart over the years. I would really love it if I didn't know the political affiliations of my friends. I just want to be friends with them. Now, that might make me appear to be like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. At the moment, that's OK with me.
So here's my plea to all of my friends and I fully expect to be flamed for this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Please keep your politics to yourself. Think about what you're posting. There's too much vitriol out there to add to it. Your position on almost any political or religious subject is not going to convince anyone on the other side to change their position on the given subject. All it's going to do is cause an argument where everyone will believe they're right and the other person is wrong.
So this month, PJ, in his infinite wisdom decided to have the challenge be a photographer's choice. Now he's gone and done it. I can post anything I want this month and don't have to worry about whether it's following the them or not. Or at least I don't have to try and justify whether it's following the theme or not. Yeah, like I do that anyway.
Usually what happens is I take photos with little regard for the theme (sorry PJ). Well, I take that back. I'll usually have the theme in the back of my mind and if something comes to mind, I'll take a photo in that direction, but I've found in the past that when I force myself a certain way into photography, I tend to get stuck. So in the long run, it's easier to just take photos and see if any fit the theme. Very rarely do I not get five that fit the theme.
With this month being photographer's choice, I just decided to pick, what I consider, my five best shots. And so, without a whole lot of extra fanfare, I give you my five shots for this month's theme.
1. 76 trombones
Nope, there weren't 76 trombones in this parade, nor were there 110 cornets either, but this is our town's intermediate school marching band walking down our city streets the last weekend of October during the annual Village Venture Arts and Crafts Faire. The band usually leads the Halloween parade that opens up the day-long event. I was standing on the curb and saw the trombones coming and took several shots, hoping to get a good one. Because of the angle, I actually got a bonus selfie out of the deal as well.
2. The Skeleton family
At the Village Venture, there are always a lot of people dressed up for Halloween and it's a great spot for people watching. Anyone who's followed this blog for any length of time knows that I enjoy street photography and an event like this is right up my alley. I spotted this entire family of skeletons hanging out after the parade and just couldn't resist taking a shot. I have several other street shots that aren't quite as good as this one, but I may post a couple more on my Flickerstream sometime later on. This one just worked really well.
3. Black and White Sunflower
I took this shot in the middle of the month down near the downtown area of Anaheim, just north of Disneyland. I had met a very good friend for lunch and before and afterwards, we'd walked around the area geocaching.
While walking toward where we were going to eat lunch, we ended up in this city garden. The entire area is undergoing some urban renewal and this particular garden was nearing peak fall harvest. My sunflowers tend to blossom out in July, but this one was in full bloom in the middle of October, suggesting that it had been planted later in the year.
It was about a day after I took this shot that I had been challenged on Facebook by another geocaching friend of mine to a five day B&W challenge where I was supposed to post five B&W photos over five successive days. The nice part of that kind of challenge is I didn't have to take them five days in a row. This particular shot ended up being day four or five of my challenge.
Although I like color, especially when I'm taking flower shots I decided to process this one in black and white. There was such a riot of color in the shot, the yellow sunflower, the green of the rest of the plant and the plant behind it, the purple flowers on the left hand side and the deep blue of the sky accentuated by the white clouds that I felt the color would actually district from the beauty of the flower.
4. Butterfly
Another one of my favorite subjects to photograph are butterflies. I haven't seen a whole lot of butterflies this season, so I haven't been able to post many butterfly shots, so I was rather fortunate when this one started sipping nectar on flowers that I happened to be walking by on my way home from somewhere.
It was also fortunate, because I had my zoom lens on at the time, so it was easier to get this guy in the shot without having to tromp through someone's plants, something that I wouldn't do anyway. I ended up with a couple dozen shots or so, of which this one ended up being the best of the bunch.
This is a gulf fritilary. We have plants on which they thrive growing in planter boxes next to a parking structure in the downtown area. Last summer I'd go down there quite often to get shots, but this year, I never made it down for various reasons. I don't know whether this one is from that area and was straying a little far from its home base or whether it was just out enjoying the nectar that its neighborhood had to offer, but whatever the reason, it gave me a pretty good shot.
5. The owl
Last, but certainly not least, is this photo of an owl that I took at the Village Venture. I posted a couple of shots of this owl and this one was by far and away the best one I took. Something about the shot just screamed that I needed to process it in black and white.
This particular owl was being displayed as part of an educational program. The birds are rehabilitated after being found injured by Wild Wings of California, a local organization based in nearby San Dimas. The particular owl couldn't be released back into the wild because of the damage that had been done.
It had been found lying on the ground. I didn't hear what caused the initial injury, but while it had been lying on the ground, several ground crawling insects had crawled into its ears and laid eggs. The hatched larva caused significant damage to its ears that its hearing was very much impaired. An owl relies on its hearing almost as much as its eyesight and with almost 50% of its hunting prowess impaired, it wouldn't have fared well in the wild, so it has become one of Wild Wings educational pieces.
And there you have it. My five selections for this month's photographer's choice blogging theme. Please stop by PJ's blog to see what the other bloggers in this challenge posted. I think you'll enjoy the photography.
Now it's already fall and I really haven't written much about what happened this summer, so you're going to get a retrospect view of different things that happened to me this summer.
This summer was really a whirlwind type of vacation for me for the first time in a long time. It seemed like I had things happening all the time and just when I was done with one thing, another thing got planned. Not all the things were pleasant (most medical procedures aren't), but it's safe to say that I passed those with flying colors and am now moving on to rectify the things that were in the grey area, health wise.
Summer, for me, actually started Memorial Day weekend. I went up to visit my daughter and her fiancé. My middle son was up in the Bay Area that weekend as well, so we ended up taking in a Giants game at AT&T Park in San Francisco. We rode the train in, barely making it to the station on time, but the ride worked out well as we had seats. As we made our way closer to the ballpark, the train kept getting filled with more and more black and orange. I felt like alien, this Angel fan that I am.
As you can see from the first shot, I didn't do a very good job of raising my daughter to be a local team supporter and so she's become a Giants fan. Nothing much I can do about that as she's a big girl and can make her own decisions. I blame it on TV. Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.
Now hear me out on this one. I'm not a fan of watching baseball on TV. Whenever my daughter has taken me to games at Angel stadium, we always go early. My daughter says, "It's like a religion to him. He has to see batting practice or the experience isn't complete." And that's right. I like watching batting practice. I like watching the players warm and and play soft toss. I like to watch them stretch and loosen up. It's all part of the game.
TV doesn't offer that. For the most part, not all, but for the most part, TV presents a duel between the pitcher and the batter. With TV, you don't get the pleasure of watching the players adjust with different pitches. You don't get to see the center fielder shade a batter to left center and make subtle adjustments throughout the at bat. TV doesn't cover baseball well in my opinion. And so, because of that, I never watched baseball on TV and my daughter has glommed on to the Giants as her team. Yeah, part of that is her fiancé's fault since he's a die hard Giants fan, but if I'd watched more baseball, she probably would be a better local sports enthusiast.
Now if you're going to talk football with her, she definitely has her passions, or at least she knows which teams to really hate. Her fiancé has learned that if the Cowboys are playing well, it's just better to turn the TV off, because she really hates the Cowboys, just like her dad. I couldn't be more proud.
The baseball game that weekend was a lot of fun. I went to three games this summer, far more than I've gone in the past couple of years combined. I didn't realize how much I missed the game. I suspect that in the upcoming years, I shall be returning to different stadiums to enjoy games more than once every couple of years like it's been in the past.
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.
When I first started this blog, I called it A Photo a day. I even knew that I wouldn't be posting a photo a day, but I had high aspirations. I started out well, then slacked off. Then called myself on it, and wrote some more. Then I slacked off again.
As I wrote in a comment on another blog I read, I thought I'd write more when I had more free time, like on my vacations. That's definitely not the case as I seem to have realized that I'm doing so much on my vacations that I don't have time to sit in front of the computer for a long stretch and write about what I've done.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm going to write about stuff after the fact. I don't do "Stream of Consciousness" very well, as I tend to ramble on and on as my thoughts move her to there. But I think this might work better.
Two or three times per week, I'll sit down and write about something. Tonight I'll write a little bit about the start of summer vacation. It's so hot here that it still feels like summer, although we know that it's summer's last gasp before our fall rolls in sometime next week.
As I posted back in July at the last photo contest on P.J.'s blog that I participated in, I ended up camping with a friend of mine along the east side of the Sierra Nevada and in Yosemite National Park at the beginning of June. He hiked the John Muir trail this summer and I helped get him to his starting spot. We ended up camping near Devils Postpile, on the east edge of Yosemite and then in Tuolumne Meadows for two nights.
He'd originally asked me to go with him, but I knew I wasn't in shape for a trek like that, but I volunteered to take him to his starting destination. We left his truck at Whitney Portal where he would be hiking out and then drove north through Owens Valley. After I dropped him off, I ended up spending a very lovely day walking around in Yosemite Valley, something I've never done before, at least by myself.
I ended up taking some very nice photos, some of which haven't seen the light of day yet, but the intention is to post some of them over the course of the next couple of weeks. On the trip, I also decided that I would grow my beard back. I had a beard in my early forties, but haven't had one for about 15 years or so. I just decided to see what it would look like. I've received some nice compliments and I'm probably going to keep it for awhile, mainly because I hate to shave. Trimming a beard, I don't mind, but I just hate shaving in general.
The top photo was taken on the top of Sentinel Dome in Yosemite. The beard was about four days worth of growth, so it's basically a before shot and the bottom shot was taken about a month ago, with the beard fully in. One of my students asked me whether I was going to go all "Duck Dynasty" with my beard and I definitely don't want to do that. But I like this change, so trimming it occasionally won't bother me.
