One of my favorite times of the year is the ‘California spring’ – that time of year that the rest of the country calls winter.  This is when we get our rain.  This is when the earth comes alive again after the dust and heat of August and September.  The rains come and it takes a while but by February & March everything has changed.

Driving to the mountains, across the central valley, one crosses the no-longer-brown-and-dusty hills now covered with lush green grass and new wildflower blooms.  As you continue you hit the orchards.

Each year I try to make a point of pulling over and grabbing a few stills.

Lat year I pulled of in Dixon and wandered down the dirt roads and fields in a light misty rain and that’s when I captured this image.  I have a few shots with narrower or wider aperture settings but this one is my favorite.  There’s quite a few of the tree trunks and limbs in focus but just enough (to my eye) of the near- and far-distance out of focus to render a somewhat other-worldly, lushness to the scene.  I didn’t really do very much else to the photo during post-production.  No cropping, very little tonal adjustments to bring the exposure and color in line.. This was pretty much how the day felt.

well.. aside from the rainy bumper-to-bumper drive home from the mountains..

While in Belize a couple of years ago, we spent some of our trip on the island of Caye Caulker. This was an awesome vacation spot.  We were staying at a hotel located on the Western edge of the tiny island which meant that each evening we were treated to a sunset stretching to the mainland of Belize.

Near our hotel there was a group of pelicans that hung out on a dock and some old posts and often as we sat lazily by the water we would watch their antics.  It was fun to see the dynamics play out as new birds flew in displacing already-settled birds, much posturing, arguing, and eventual disgruntled adjustments ensued until the group re-settled with its new pecking order.

I took this photo one evening, as the sun was descending on the horizon but well before the actual sunset. Shooting towards the harsh sun like this I knew I’d lose a lot of the colors and would end up with mostly silhouetted figures.  I liked the way each bird has its own position and we’re basically peeking through the trees.

A shallow enough depth of field helped blur the foreground trees and structure on the left to better draw attention to the birds.

While framing up the shot, I loved the way the sun shining on the water created an almost overbearing presence in the background.  Ultimately the detail in the sun got washed away but I knew that would be the case and I intentionally allowed that to blow out as another way to keep the birds as the primary focal point of the image.

At the end of the day, there’s just something incredibly tropical feeling about this image, even though it’s not the typical crystal clear water and sky with palm trees and sand.  It makes me want to escape the rain and head back to Belize.

This is the time of year to be in the mountains.

Back in 2006 a few of us took a roadtrip out to Idaho to do some backcountry skiing in the mountains outside of Ketchum.

For a trip like this I brought along my digital SLR for sure, and at that time it was my Nikon D70 – from the humidity of Vietnam to the cold of the Idaho mountains, this camera proved to me that a digital camera was up to the task of capturing the images I was interested in taking.  In this case, this included action shots of friends enjoying the great snow.

This year we reserved some backcountry yurts which are a great way to get into the remote slopes without having to lug in camping gear (but of course we instead lugged in some deluxe food and drink).  One of the really cool features of these yurts are the wood-fired saunas that they also have on site.

This image is of Mandy having a blast cruising down a powdery slope on our 2nd day in the woods.  I skied down before the crowd, stopping halfway down the slope and setting up my shooting position.

Kneeling in the snow I set the camera to f/5 providing a deep enough aperture to allow for a little play in the focal range (so I could be off by a little as I tracked the moving target) while also allowing enough light to completely freeze the action with a shutter speed of 1/6400.

As usual with shots like these, I fired a few while Mandy was above me and a few below, but the really fun shots are right as the subject passes by – when you can get the vistas in the background, the snow spraying away and ideally, a turn as they move to avoid the photographer.

Boy it’s time to get back to the snow!

Living in the Bay area, we are often fortunate enough to have pretty incredible weather in the winter time.  As the rest of the country digs itself out of snow and ice, we get the chance to hike through hills lush green from the winter rains.

It was two years ago this week when Meghan and I went for a New Years hike through the Marin headlands and came upon this scene.  We first saw feathers from a distance and upon closer inspection, saw the remains of an owl.  There was no way to determine what brought the owl its demise.  What made the scene particularly odd was the way that several parts of the owl, scattered around the ground, were relatively intact.  Take for example this wing, which aside from the fact that it is no longer connected to anything, looks to be in good shape.

These disembodied but otherwise fine looking owl parts set a bit of a surreal scene.

For this photo, I wanted to capture the wing and how it was just laying in the grass, but I also wanted to include just a hint of the feathers in the corner, indicating more, just out of frame.

I had my Nikon camera outfitted with the 80-200mm f/2.8 lens hoping to capture some not-too distant wildlife while on this hike but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.  I would have preferred the 105mm macro for this shot, but wasn’t carrying it with me.

This year the weather wasn’t quite as cooperative though we did manage to take a misty walk with the dog.

In 2006 Meghan and I made a long weekend trip to Colorado to see the fall.  As I’ve said before, here in San Francisco we don’t get great fall foliage so October trips can be a good way to experience fall for a quick weekend.

This year though we were a little late.  The colors were mostly gone from the hillsides and during our trip we were treated to a pretty big snow storm.

I took this photo along the Yampa River in Steamboat Springs – one of the towns where we hung out this trip.  I like the rather stark feeling of this shot – which is pretty colorless except for the band of shrubs cutting across the frame.  This was a pretty typical sight for us, as the skies were grey with clouds and weather and the ground was dusted with snow – obliterating most of the colors from the scenes.

For this shot, I left it pretty much as I shot it, though I cropped the bottom just a tad to square up the image just slightly.

In October 2007, Meghan and I went to Michigan for a long weekend.  After cruising around Ann Arbor for a day or two we traveled North around the “mitten” of Michigan.

One of the things I miss most here in San Francisco is the Fall scenery from back East (a common complaint among transplants to California).  While I’ve come to appreciate the California fall, it can’t compare with a proper colorful fall from the East.

As we traveled North we moved against the coming foliage change – by the time we got to where this photo was taken most of the color was already gone from the leaves.

For this trip I brought along only my Canon G7 camera, choosing to travel light.  This is always a tough choice – whether to bring the SLR or not.  There were many opportunities on this trip for the SLR, and the G7 wasn’t fully up to the task all of the time but it held its own relatively well.

To capture this shot, I pulled over to the side of the road and walked a little into the field.  I wanted to get right up to the row of corn stalks and cut out all of the ground beneath – but still leave in a little sky (since it was such a gorgeous day).  This shot was taken just before noon – and while the light is definitely a little flat as a result, I waited for a cloud covering to prevent the light from being too harsh.

I framed up with the top of the corn stalks – so that we’re just peering over the tops and aligned with the trees in the background, looking for a good assortment of shapes, sizes and colors.

I’ll be heading back to the East coast in a couple of weeks – and while I suspect a better part of the foliage will have turned, I may be in luck given the wet summer they had this year to still experience some of the scenery.