I really like the lines and the simple structure of this heliconia. The growth pattern of the spoon-like bracts allows for simple scaling and no matter how large they become, they won’t block each other’s growth. When a heliconia blooms, the actual flowers grow out of these bracts.
Happy Mother’s Day!
A Lomo scan from a couple of weeks ago. As I am waiting for my gear to come back from a thorough cleaning session (I have spent too much time in dusty and salty places), I started digging through my archive and one of the first pictures that jumped out at me was this shot from Pomponio State Beach.
We saw this Coast Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma coronatum blainvillii) on a hike at Mount Diablo State Park. His tactics to avoid detection seemed to have been to alternately hold perfectly still for a while, and then to sprint a foot or two towards a better hiding place when he thought we weren’t looking. Between the small stones his camouflage worked really well and we found it very difficult not to loose him after his sprints. After 5 minutes he finally disappeared into the bushes next to our trail.
Another shot from Big Sur. When I took this shot we were sheltering behind a rock from the wind and sand that blasted everything around us. This rock looked as if it got blasted quite frequently. This shot is a long exposure of 30 seconds and you can see the softness that the moving grains of sand add to the foreground, a bit like the spraying waves do in the background. I also took some shots at 1/8000s to see if I could freeze it, but the swirling sand still only left blurry traces on the chip. At these speeds the sand gets everywhere: my eyes still hurt from its grinding force and I’m still finding it in my camera bag and my shoes. And no, those aren’t the real colors.
Below you see two people walking by, trying to protect their faces from being sand blasted.
A Stellar’s Jay (Cyanocitta steller), who adamantly demanded to get some of our peanuts. We met this guy at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park where these jays, but also crows and what sounded like pheasants were on wakeup-call duty. The vocal expressiveness of these jays was quite surprising: sometimes they sounded like annoyed toddlers, sometimes they were clearly rallying their mates, and their wikipedia page states that they can also mimic hawks to drive away other birds from their feeding grounds.
Corona Heights Park is a great place for dogs to play and for their owners to have a nice stroll with a pretty view over San Francisco. I went there to spar with some moving targets and Sidney and Seymour were more than up to the task. Animated and guided by their owner Daniel, Sidney and Seymour were the most excited but best behaved pair of goofballs I have seen so far.
Last week I had the opportunity to shoot an incredibly patient but excitable model: Max. She’s a boxer-shepherd mix and it was just pure joy to work with her.
I saw this pair at Fort Funston yesterday. Quite a few birds played with the hang-glider but this seagull had taken the most interest in the strange red and white bird. Later I heard that hang-glider pilots like this spot at the coast because there are often strong winds coming in from the sea that hit a steep cliff. This cliff deflects the air stream upwards and creates stout updrafts, so that the hang-gliders can stay up for hours at a time. Ravens also seemed to like this spot and were doing wild aerial acrobatics, showing the big, stiff bird how it is done.
I saw this female black-tailed deer in Alum Rock Park in early November. She saw me when she stepped forward from behind a bush, and fortunately paused briefly before she vanished into the bushes in the back, which gave me just enough time to get this shot. Seeing her big eyes made me understand where the expression “doe-eyed beauty” comes from.
I took this picture yesterday on a photo hike in the Oakland Redwood Regional Park. I liked this scene because the tree’s thick branches leaned towards the bench, which made it look like the tree was trying its best to provide a nice, shady roof for tired wanderers.
