John Wall's Natural California

Focus Stacking Video

2012-01-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

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Focus Stacking from John W. Wall on Vimeo.

Lying awake in the middle of the night, taking a shower, walking to the bus stop, swimming laps at the pool -- all good times to mull things over and hatch half-baked ideas. Having worked on a focus-stacked Doug fir cone photo the other day, I was inspired during a late-night reverie to create a short video composed of the individual clips that go into making an image like that.

As you'll see, no frame by itself has enough depth of field to show the whole subject. But if you combine all the clips, which is what focus-stacking is all about, you can present the whole subject from front to back. Focus-stacking lends you a little bit of the control of a painter working on canvas. It lets you choose, to a degree not possible in the old days (pre-2008?), where the point of sharp focus in your photo begins and ends.

Funny things happen during a focus stack that you don't notice when you're running one in the field. Little bugs crawl across the subject. You bump the camera more than you thought. You cast an accidental shadow. A tiny twig somehow bounces into the frame. In short, movement happens despite all the care you take. This is field photography, after all -- working by hand. There are affordable, precise machines that are probably invaluable when focus-stacking at very high magnification, but I don't want to get that automated. I like to keep a hand in the process. It's imperfect, but it keeps the magic alive, at least for me.

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Last Jaunt for January

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

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I left the house early in the morning, but not crazy early. Less than an hour before sunrise. Driving down the hill on my way out of town, my coffee tasted even weaker than usual, and that wasn't a good thing, since I'd started the day feeling slightly under the weather even after taking it easy all day yesterday, the base of my spine still sapping strength while it heals from last week's spill. As I took repeated sips of my coffee, the awful truth finally dawned on me. I remembered putting the stevia in the mug, and I remembered pouring in the hot water (the leftovers of which went into my oatmeal), but I did not remember putting any coffee in the mug. Two facts will give away my lack of coffee-fiend status. First, I drink instant. Second, when I realized my mistake I didn't turn back.

I'd thought about doing some early birding out at Las Gallinas, but I wasn't a hundred percent in the mood and decided to just head straight out to Mt. Tam. As I was lining up to take the Sir Francis Drake exit I was enticed to make a quick stop at Corte Madera Marsh to try to photograph the colorful sunrise. The tide was still pretty high, and the pond was full of water. A few geese kept vigil from the little islands in the middle, but there wasn't enough wildlife to keep me from continuing on my way.

I drove non-stop to the base of the Cataract Trail and began the steep hike up the the canyon, gingerly maneuvering up the sections with wooden steps (mostly dry now and not so slippery). The waterfall I wanted to reach is arguably closer to the Laurel Dell trailhead on Bolinas Ridge than it is from the bottom. It's kind of a half-way waterfall. I've often gotten my fill of waterfalls on the way up from the bottom and turned around before getting there. The same thing can happen coming down from the top. In fact, I've only photographed the waterfall once before, in March of last year, and I didn't like what I got. You have to cross the creek to get a good angle on it, and if the water's running high, you can't make a dry crossing. If it's running too low, the waterfall becomes sparse and spindly. It could have been running a little higher for my taste this time, but at least I'm happy with what I got.

I'd planned to spend my morning looking for fungi in the canyon, but the pickings were slim. Only the polypores, like these turkey tails, showed signs of life. Some really cool Peltigera polydactyla lichen was fruiting out nicely too. The specific epithet means "many fingers." Trog say, "Finger lichen good."

I drove up to Bolinas Ridge and hiked a short loop, again finding no fleshy fungi to photograph. I was still in the mood for macro, though, so I scouted around for some willing subjects, including a very old Douglas fir cone with an interesting patina on its scales, and a moss-bound bit of rock that reminded me of Hawaii's Big Island.

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Winter Fog

2012-01-25T18:30:00.000-08:00

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I drove up to Rock Spring on Wednesday, thinking I'd be the only one up there, but all the parking spaces were full! I had to park in a little-used pull-out beneath a Douglas fir -- a place I like to park in the summertime to keep the Jeep out of the sun. There was such a big film crew that I had to wonder if they were filming something more involved than a car commercial. In fact, they were filming a commercial after all, featuring a sporty red Hyundai. I've seen several car commercials being filmed up there over the years, and it's always kind of amazing to see how many people are involved in the production.

Although I'd planned to work today, Jen Joynt's photos of DeNiro got me psyched for a trip to Tennessee Valley. I had a comp day coming, so I took it. I didn't want to arrive too early, so I drove up to Mt. Tam first thing in the morning and went mushroom-hunting down the Cataract Trail to Laurel Dell. Our latest rains got the creeks going nicely, but the fungi wasn't happening at all and probably just needs more time. Porcini-hunters usually like to wait two weeks after the first fall rains, but I was really hoping to find something less water-intensive. Alas, all I found were some very young turkey tails and a few gobs of orange witch's butter. I'd probably have skipped the fetid adder's tongue, but I couldn't resist this little double-flowered specimen.

By about 9 a.m. I figured I wanted to get going, so I hustled back up the trail to Rock Spring. The sun was just breaking through the fog and creating "God beams" in the forest, so I took a short break to make a photograph along the creek. I drove down the hill and spent a few hours roaming around Tennessee Valley to no avail. Not a single bobcat sighting. I might have been better off staying up on Mt. Tam, but if I hadn't headed back, I'd never have seen the fog beams.

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Rainy Day Reading

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

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I just finished reading an excellent natural history book and wanted to recommend it with a little review. The book is called The Last Wild Wolves, Ghosts of the Rain Forest, by Ian McAllister.

I've long been fascinated by the wildlands of the north -- the Yukon, the Tongass, the Great Bear Rainforest. I was doing some random internet-searching on these places recently when I ran across McAllister's book (published in 2007 by the University of California Press) and decided to order a copy.

I bought it because it's a photography book, so I wasn't surprised to see excellent photography. What surprised me was how engaging it was to actually read. As I turned the pages of story after story about these animals -- I'd never heard of coastal wolves before -- I felt like I was reading the best blog ever. McAllister gives us just the right combination of objective information and subjective experience, all beautifully presented.

To reach the wolves in their remote homes, McAllister travelled by boat:

In the lee of one of the islands, after twenty-odd hours of sailing, I dropped anchor in (twenty-five feet) of gin-clear water. Shining a spotlight below, I could see sand lances and bull kelp swirling about in the current. I made sure that the anchor was well set; this spot would be home for as long as the southeast storms held offshore. I could hear the Steller's sea lions just off my port side, and the ambient roar of the surf filled the wheelhouse. The sounds and smells were familiar. I immediately fell into a deep sleep, my clothes stiff from salt spray, tomorrow just hours away.

My eyes were still shut tight when the howls penetrated the boat. I had to think for a moment to remember where I was, but soon, above the sound of the surf, I could hear them. The wolves were still there.

In one of the first wolf encounters he writes about, you could be forgiven for wondering how he knew he could safely have such an encounter. It reminded me of getting close to a bobcat in an off-trail meadow and hearing distant hikers wondering if I was nuts. Many other things make McAllister feel like a kindred spirit, a photographer who's really interested in his subjects, such as when he writes, "I crouched to make a closer inspection of the scat." You can tell he's not just someone looking for "trophy" photos of wolves.

That sense of being with a kindred spirit kept me turning the pages for more stories of his encounters with the wolves:

One of the yearlings broke from his siblings and circledback, poking his nose through the dense salal bushes.... He tiptoed so closethat I could see the insides of his moist nostrils as they opened and closed,smelling everything about me.

Or this:

I frequently have to remind myself not to treat photography as a "pursuit" of the wolves. What I feel while following them is too similar to what a hunter feels if I view it as a pursuit, and wolves easily sense this. They tend to appear only when I have convinced myself that it doesn't matter whether they show up that day or not.

He also observes bears, and occasionally bears and wolves:

The wolves lined up at the fringe of the trees, the pupssafely stashed in the security of the den hole. Maybe the bear did not want toturn his back on the wolves; maybe he did not think he would make it back intodeep water. No longer stiff and cautious, he ran towards the wolves....

No spoiler alerts here. If you want to know what happened, you can read the book. McAllister is a founding director of the Raincoast Conservation Society. I hoped he actually did have a blog so I could read more, and I found something called the Great Bear Blog that includes some of his work. There's a DVD included with the book, but I'm saving that for the next rainy day....

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And Then It Rained

2012-01-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

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The problem with waking up at 4 a.m. is it's too early to get up, but too late to go back to sleep. Crazy, I know, but unless you fall asleep again right away, you'll just lay there till 5 o'clock. Fall asleep then and you'll be out till 8 a.m. and the whole day is shot!

It was still pouring rain when I dragged myself out of bed, but the weather forecaster said there'd be some clearing. I checked the local radar just as hail began to spatter on the windows and thunder boomed. But it was the tail end of the front, and it looked like we were heading for a break in the weather, so I drove out around the north side of Mt. Tam for sunrise.

The rain had let up, but the wind was still kickin' so I stayed hunkered down in the Jeep until it was time to hike up Azalea Hill for sunrise. The ground was soggy and muddy, and the trail ran riffles of runoff. The wind was insane. There was no chance of getting an exposure without all the bushes moving quite a lot, but at least the rocks were staying put.

Maybe I'm spoiled, but I was hoping for an epic sunrise, and all I got were a few orange rays.

I made this last photo after what color there was had pretty much gone, but you can finally make out the top of East Peak.

As I walked back to the trailhead I noticed this madrone getting the morning spotlight and ducked through a small oak woodland to get there before the light faded.

My next stop was Lily Pond, where I made a quick circuit of the woods. I checked out the old Hericium fungus I photographed back in November and was surprised to see it was still there. It didn't look very good, mind you, but there hasn't been enough rain since then to dissolve it. The Fetid Adder's Tongue wildflowers were just getting started. There were many blooms rising from tightly furled leaves. Scarlet waxy caps were still fruiting in the redwood duff nearby.

I just liked this old redwood stump covered with moss, a polypody fern growing out the side, and a young tanoak doing pretty well on top.

If this mushroom had been in the scene above, you probably could not have made it out. There were some slightly larger specimens, but this one's about 1-1/2 inches tall. Maybe it's a little Caulorhiza umbonata.

Cataract Canyon was my next stop. The rain had come back with a vengeance while I was at the Lily Pond and drove me to cover in the Jeep. Showers dogged me on and off the rest of the morning. I was amazed when I spotted this club coral fungus, my first ever. It was on the edge of a steep drop-off, making it tricky to get in position, and with the additional incentive of a light rain falling I decided not to run a focus stack on it and just made a couple of quick shots at f/32. The slender salamander was a bonus, though.

This is the classic vista point for Cataract Falls. It's not the first attractive vantage point, but it's definitely one of the best. Because there is a vista point here, with room to stand off the trail, and a fence to keep you from slipping down the hillside, everybody has taken this picture. So you get no awards for originality here, but it's a tough spot to resist, especially when it's running at full steam.

This is the same set of waterfalls from a different angle. The clouds had moved back in and a light rain was falling. During the heavier squalls I'd spent some time standing in a dry spot under an overhanging tree stump where I actually spooked a hiker who didn't see me until she passed right next to me. That's always fun.

I wanted to find the club coral again on the way down, but as I was looking for it I lost my footing and did a butt-plant on some wooden steps that probably registered on nearby seismometers. The shockwave shot up from the bottom of my spine until it snapped my jaw shut. Ouch! Dang! Last time I did that was a few years ago at Duxbury Reef, and the impact broke the red plastic AF-illuminator cover off my SB-60 flash. Was I younger then? I don't recall it hurt so bad. Anyway, to heck with the club coral.

I headed home via Bolinas Ridge where I spotted two coyotes, one on either side of the ridge. I didn't go after either one. The first was so skittish that it ran off as soon as it saw me. The second was down a steep hillside and did not appear to be in the mood for photo festivities, keeping a wary eye on me and angling farther downhill toward the woods. The wind was howling, and it was cold. They'd endured a lot of rain, and there's more to come. I let 'em be. The coyotes probably needed to hunt in peace anyway.

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Fort Cronkhite

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

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I love the funky old military tunnel between forts Baker and Cronkhite. There's some kind of stalactite goo dripping from the ceiling that makes icy-looking patches on the ground that I try to avoid when I'm on my bike, even though the stuff isn't actually slippery. I drove the Jeep through on MLK Day, packing too much camera gear for a bike ride.

The plan was to look for bobcats in the valley, then walk down to Rodeo Beach to photograph colorful and interesting beach pebbles deposited over the eons through our area's eclectic geological processes. As often happens, I didn't find what I was looking for, but I was stoked by what I did find.

I don't think I'd ever seen a "flock" of killdeer before, but there were about a dozen in what you might call an approximation of a flock. They were feeding, or at least darting around, on the lawns around one of the 70-year-old army buildings (now home to various non-profit organizations) down by the beach.

They were a little more used to people than most of the killdeer I've encountered before, giving me a chance to photograph them at relatively close range.

This great blue heron worked a very small section of Rodeo Lagoon for the two hours or so I was in the area. He was catching minnows. The frogs are probably hibernating. There are signs along the road that warn motorists to watch out for frogs during wet weather. On the beach side of the lagoon was another sign warning people to keep their dogs leashed because endangered red-legged frogs use the area. When you've got great blue herons hunting you day and night, the extra threat of stray dogs and careless motorists is only appealing to the most adventurous of frogs.

I might have stuck around to watch the heron longer, but I spotted something interesting moving on the edge of the lagoon. I got my binoculars out and caught a Wilson's snipe hunting along the margin.

There were actually at least three snipes in the vicinity, but they are small birds and difficult to photograph at a reasonably close range, so I devoted most of my attention to this one. He was very nicely camouflaged, and he knew it. He stayed absolutely still for quite a while. Eventually one of the other snipes on the other side of the lagoon began to call out, and this one couldn't help responding. Shortly afterward, he started to hunt again. I was on the bridge that straddles the lagoon between the parking area and the beach.

Once the snipe went under the bridge, I went looking for the other snipe who'd been calling. I could see him foraging in the shallows. When I got over there I noticed some rustling in the reeds on the other side of the lagoon, and this raccoon soon came right down to the water's edge.

It was soon joined by its sibling. These were two youngsters, with no parent in sight.

Sometimes the muddy bottom must have been softer than other times. Every so often the raccoons would lift both front feet up out of the water, almost in a bound, to make headway.

I heard a lady tell her kids that I was taking pictures of the ducks, so I told her about the raccoons. Pretty soon the little guys had lots of admirers. I finally moved back onto the bridge as they approached to go under it. They passed by and continued in the general direction of the great blue heron. I waited for the inevitable encounter, but it never happened. I think the raccoons found a nice feeding or resting area before they reached the heron.

I returned to my snipe hunt, pausing to fire off a few frames of these Barrow's goldeneyes. As long as I didn't move, they were content to float to and fro in my vicinity, but as soon as I stood up the chocolate-headed females bolted out of there.

It was nice to catch a snipe in the open, but he took off whistling when I moved too far inside his comfort zone.

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Muir Woods

2012-01-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

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This time three years ago, the hazelnuts in Muir Woods were newly leafed out for the season, with flower catkins drooping from the stems. Right now there aren't even any buds. It was the third drought year in a row back in '09, and the creekbed was almost completely dry in places.

There's more water in the creek right now than there was then, but that's not saying much. I wonder if the salmon are still waiting offshore to come up Redwood Creek to spawn. The only year I got the timing right to photograph the little winter-run up there was in mid-December of '06.

As always, I arrived at Muir Woods before the main parking lot had opened. Only one other vehicle was in the overflow lot. A lone ranger was getting things ready around the entrance kiosk. The crowds were sure to come. Not only was it a weekend, but it was an enter-for-free day. But I had the place to myself as I headed out among the redwoods. About the only other person I saw for the first hour or so was the lone ranger, who'd gone out to a hike a loop while it was still quiet.

I photographed this old giant right next to the trail. Although I'm often tempted to step over the fences here in pursuit of a particular vantage point, I actually stayed on the trails the whole way this trip. I was tempted to digress at one point to photograph some new fetid adder's tongue (FAT) blossoms, but working against the temptation was the cold! Shoulda worn the longjohns. The FATs grow very low to the ground, and the thought of hunkering down there to carefully compose a photo with the macro lens, while feeling guilty about stepping off the boardwalk and crushing stuff.... No, thanks. I can get down and dirty with the FAT blossoms elsewhere.

The other temptation was a varied thrush that was kicking in the leaf litter a short distance from the trail. Working against the temptation that time was the strong likelihood of the thrush flying away before I could get close, and the fact that I could only get 1/8th sec. at ISO 200 in those dark woods. I couldn't have reached a semi-respectable 1/125th without cranking it up to ISO 3200, and I wasn't that desperate.

I like to play around with long exposures where I move out of the frame half-way through, so the background landscape shows through and gives me a kind of ethereal look.

About a mile back, at the point where Muir Woods National Monument turns into Mount Tamalpais State Park, I encountered the bottom of the Bootjack Trail which has been closed for several months for repairs and additions such as bridges. The signs said it would be closed through January, but I wouldn't count on it reopening first thing in February judging by the look of things.

As I walked back via the Upper Trail, the usual busloads were arriving, international chatter expelling the solitude, and I picked up the pace to get out of there. The main and overflow parking lots were now full, and people were parking along the road farther south. Might as well be back in San Francisco.

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Sandhill Cranes

2012-01-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

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The Night Owl Express strikes again.

I've been wanting to get over to Woodbridge Ecological Reserve to see the sandhill cranes -- but without the fog I experienced on my last visit. I even set my alarm for 4 a.m., but my brain alarm still won. I woke up at 3:49. I tell ya, that brain alarm works pretty good. I still woke Pam up, but not as bad as if the alarm had gone off.

I really don't like to drive at night, especially on the two-lane highways like 160 and 12 that get you into the Central Valley. Throw in some dense fog, and it's a miracle anyone gets to work alive. The traffic heading into the East Bay was pretty thick even well before sunrise and had a white-knuckle element even without a hint of fog.

It was too dark to do any photography when I arrived at 6 a.m. I hunkered down in the Jeep to keep warm. I was amazed and humbled once again to think of all the wildlife out there in the cold every night. The white on the ground in the photo above is frost.

A kingfisher hunted along an irrigation canal on the north side of Woodbridge Road.

All the dancing action happened in the morning. In fact, some of the best dancing occurred before it was light enough to shoot any still photos. I captured some of it using the camera's video function.

Sandhill cranes are beautiful, but shy. I don't suppose all the shotgun blasts in the background had anything to do with that. Despite being out there for about six hours, I was disappointed at my inability to make more decent photos. One of these years I'll have to spend a few days out there so I can put in a proper amount of time.

I was glad to finally be able to photograph the cranes, not only in morning sunlight, but with a background other than corn stubble.

After shooting at Woodbridge Road awhile, I headed north a short ways to head out Walnut Grove Road to Staten Island where a flooded field was filled with tundra swans.

A couple of roving marsh hawks kept the smaller birds on the look-out.

Corn stubble!

After Staten Island I headed up to the Cosumnes River Preserve but didn't really stop, except to make a snapshot of this banded red-tailed hawk.

I returned to Woodbridge Road, but it was noon by then, and I was tired -- too tired to shoot, and too tired to drive back home. So I tilted the passenger seat back and slept for an hour. I considered whether to hang around for the evening festivities, when the cranes return to their nightly roosting fields, but I felt like calling it a day.

One reason is that I hadn't done any hiking at all. Much of the photography was actually done from inside the Jeep, even. If I want to make a day of it next time, I might grab a burger at the Hwy. 12 and I-5 junction or a sandwich at the Subway at Walnut Grove Road, then go for an afternoon hike at Cosumnes River Preserve to get revitalized for more car-bound photography.

As I prepared this blog post -- and even now that I'm done -- the sounds of all the birds are still chattering in my head. One of the reasons I shot some video was to capture the sounds so I could share that with you too. Crane music. Great stuff.

Sandhill Cranes from John W. Wall on Vimeo.

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Morning at Pt. Reyes

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

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What do you do when you wake up at 2:30 in the morning and can't get back to sleep? Usually I just lay there until I slide back into dreamland. If it's a weekend I might get up and read a book. This time I got up to drive out to Point Reyes National Seashore.

Through the magic of photographic image capture, I have brightened the scene above by making the exposure long enough to show something besides featureless landscape. It was plenty dark out there. I'm not sure what all those lights are. Maybe that's a ranch house down there on the shore near North Beach. Maybe some of the distant lights forming a line along the San Andreas Fault are Nick's Cove and Marshall, Pierce Point Ranch, and the Coast Guard station.

The Pt. Reyes trip wasn't exactly spontaneous. My stuff was packed and ready in the living room so I wouldn't make a ruckus getting out the door. But I went to sleep without setting a mechanical alarm, and if I'd slept through my brain alarm I wouldn't have gone. To set your brain alarm, you tell yourself at bedtime that you want to get up especially early. It works surprisingly often, and when it doesn't work, that's okay too.

I left the house around 3:30. It was still full dark when I arrived, but a full moon gave at least a little form to the landscape. The timing worked out well because I never felt rushed. I even had time for a brief stop at the lighthouse parking lot where I took in basically the same view of Point Reyes Beach I could have gotten at home on the park's web cam.

Hiking out the trail at Chimney Rock, I was glad I brought my headlamp. I needed it. Also, it was fun to look around and see a half-dozen pairs of deer eyes glowing back at me. At one point I turned around and saw the moon setting behind some cypress branches. I knew I couldn't photograph it the way I saw it, and I'm not real happy with the crude Frankenshop version above, but you kinda get the idea.

The Photographer's Ephemeris was my friend once again. I'd already figured out that the moonset and sunrise would unfold along a line transecting the length of Chimney Rock, so that was my main destination.

If you look real close, you can see Pam waving from the living room window.... I was actually a little surprised my cell phone didn't work out there, although I doubt Pam would have appreciated a phone call at that hour anyway.

This is the crack between the worlds; the moon and the sun are both just below the horizon, separated by about 180 degrees of arc.

Curvature of space.

Velvia mode at Chimney Rock. Conditions like this have been known to cause a slight philosophic breeze to spirit over the rocks. Hold on to your hats.

You can just make out the Pt. Reyes Lighthouse from Chimney Rock. I'm not sure I'd ever noticed that before. Unless the light's just right, you can't really see it, but at night its rotating light catches your eye.

I spotted another rotating light on our local islands.

Liquid waves in the jumbled jaggies.

The ocean is cool and blue on the left, warm and pink on the harbor-side right. Elephant seals are barking and belching on the beach below....

Some foraging deer stop to check out the lovely sunrise.

The surface of Chimney Rock is pretty featureless for the most part -- wildflower season is still months away -- but I couldn't let the sunrise go completely unphotographed.

Lifeboat Station at Drake's Bay.

By the time I got back to the parking lot, the light was unbelievable. It was so golden and gorgeous, even the telephone poles looked good enough to photograph. Luckily this Western Bluebird saved me from having to settle for telephone poles.

The blacktails were in fine form, their plush coats aglow in good health and beckoning to be touched.

A couple of ravens also enjoyed the fine morning. Was this a mated pair, the female on the left and male on the right? Bernd Heinrich has said that even experts have a hard time distinguishing the sex of a raven, but these two were definitely a pair, mated or otherwise.

Super-cute deer in the lush early-winter grass.

The rut may be over, but a bull's gotta stay in shape somehow.... I'd left Chimney Rock behind and made a short elk-stop above Drake's Beach. If these were ravens, would you think one was the female? Whatever was going on here didn't last very long.

Not sure I'd ever seen a one-antlered elk before, but it makes sense that the antlers fall off one a time. One of the coolest finds I ever made at Tennessee Valley was a pair of deer antlers stuck in the ground, pointy end first. The buck had dipped his head down, jabbed his antlers in the earth, and snap! Both came off at once.

Having practiced mating with one bull, the randy elk on the left went for a practice antler-tussle with the other bull.

It was nice to hear the clacking of antlers, about the only sound besides surf in that wide-open space. Had the elk been closer I might have stuck around a little longer. Instead I headed out for the next phase of my morning.

My next stop was Pierce Point Ranch, where I hoped to find badgers and weasels. No luck finding either one, so I guess it was a wasted trip...

...except for the exuberant birdlife, the glowing fields of mustard, the sunbathing elk, the rolling green swells and rainbow spindrift, and the generally tonic morning.

I never get tired of seeing elk, especially when the Pacific Ocean is in the background. The main herd of cow elk was down by Pierce Point, also lazing the morning away.

I walked out the Tomales Point Trail for a ways, keeping my eyes peeled for a long-tailed weasel. What kind of habitat do weasels like, I wondered. How do you look for them? I saw a photo of a weasel taken on this very same trail on Flickr last week, so I know they're out there. Badgers, too. Maybe next time.

I sat down to watch the waves coming in and soon broke my camera out of the pack to fire off a few frames. I'd think I was done shooting, but another set would roll in and tempt me to keep clicking. If only badgers and weasels were like waves.

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Tam-Cattin' Around

2012-01-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

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I went all the way up to Mt. Tam and didn't even get as far as Rock Spring. A marine layer of fog bathed the lowlands, and Mount Diablo's peaks looked good rising above it, but not as good as last time. Besides, I soon spotted suspicious activity off to the north. A look through binoculars confirmed it was a bobcat, so I parked and headed out along the Coast Trail on Bolinas Ridge to have a look.

The cat was headed my way along the trail, so I stopped and waited for him to come into view. He disappeared behind a rise, and I waited and waited, then decided to go have a look. He should have come into view by then, and I didn't want to lose him. It was only after I finally left him about three hours later and hiked back up the hill that I realized what had taken him so long. Right there in the trail was a fresh gut pile. He must have just made a kill.

He didn't like being surprised and galloped down the slope toward the woods, then stopped to get a better look at me. He kept going down the hill but didn't enter the woods, so I figured what the heck. I'll go down there too.

This was a male in his prime, not some jittery junior kitty, and he wasn't too troubled by my presence. The photo above was shot with a 35mm lens. The red arrow indicates where the cat was.

He made a perfunctory pounce at one point, but mostly he snoozed in the cool shade.

And scritched and scratched a little.

I continued to follow him when he moved out of the shaded area.

When I saw him head toward this log I wanted to start running so I could get in better position, but I didn't want to startle the cat, so I hustled gingerly.

I was psyched to photograph him giving his claws a little workout.

He climbed down the other side of the log and entered the woods. I thought I'd lost him, but I followed anyway and emerged in the meadow where I recently found the beer-bottle "offering" in a hollowed-out oak tree. I was surprised to scan the area and spot the bobcat very close by. He was comfy in the fresh green grass and made no attempt to flee. In fact he snoozed quite a bit and didn't move out of bed for a little more than an hour.

A group of Steller's Jays that had been mobbing something I could not see, finally spotted him after their mobbed quarry left the area. They didn't make any audible alarms for the bobcat, but instead flew a few feet over his head. They would fly from one tree, gliding and dipping directly over the cat, almost like counting coup, then rise to land in another tree.

I was flummoxed at one point when a human suddenly came into view. There is no trail there. What the heck?! "Excuse me, sir!" I called out, waving an arm to help him see me. "Could you walk around, please? I've been watching a bobcat right in here for about an hour." I wondered if he was a mushroom-picker, but I think he was just some guy like me who likes to hike off the trails. He walked around the cat and got a good look at one point. "Is he hurt? He's not even bothering to look at me!" I told him I'd just seen the bobcat hunting and that he was fine, and the guy kept on hiking down the hill, entering the woods with a lot of crunching that I could hear long after he was out of sight. I would soon find out that the Matt Davis Trail cut through just 40-50 yards below.

Not long after that, the bobcat got up and stretched, then headed into the woods as well, looking back to make sure I was following.... I got a nice clear shot of his distinctive nose and could certainly recognize him if I'm lucky enough to see him again.

I tried to fire off a few frames as the cat walked through the woods (much more quietly than I was able to), doing the best I could with a 1/10th-second exposure.

I loved watching the cat move through the woods, using a fallen tree to cross a barely wet ravine, but it was impossible to get a clear enough view to make any photos. When he disappeared I once again thought he might be gone for good, but before too long I spotted him in an adjacent field.

I snapped this shot with the 105mm to show the lay of the land. Anyone familiar with Mt. Tam will recognize the trees on the hilltop. The Doug fir on the right is the "iconic" tree.

I was glad to catch the bobcat in open sunlight for a change, but the fog threatened to blow in and send the landscape and everything on it into obscurity. Luckily, the fog dissipated almost as quickly as it arose.

All of a sudden the bobcat reached a hiking trail. I noticed the cat used trails quite often. He also did a lot of scent-marking along his route and had left a scat on the Matt Davis Trail back in the woods.

Unfortunately, despite it being a Friday in January, several groups of hikers were using the trail, and the cat turned off to head downhill once again to avoid them. And once again he took me through the woods. I would have lost him for sure, but I simply stuck to the trail. When the trail finally opened up I scanned the fields to try to pick him up again.

At first I thought this was my guy, but then I realized it was a second bobcat. She kept an eye on me, then became agitated by something down the hill to my left and scurried uphill into the nearby woods. I figured she'd been spooked by "my" bobcat and went looking.

There he was, in an open area above the chaparral. We'd come far enough down the mountain that trees and grassland were giving way to dense brush. Stinson Beach is in the background, obscured by fog and salt spray from huge waves thundering into shore. The cat soon disappeared into the chaparral. I heard a strange wailing sound that I first took to be a bird, but realized it most likely was the cat. Talk about territory. That cat was all over the place and knew his trails by heart.

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Tam-Cattin' from John W. Wall on Vimeo.

H A P P Y * N E W * Y E A R !

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

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Year-End Blowout

2011-12-28T03:50:00.000-08:00

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It seemed like I'd been doing lots of eating but precious little exercising the past four days, so my plan for Tuesday was to go up to Mt. Tam for a long and briskly paced hike. I brought my camera gear in case I wanted to do some photography afterwards. Driving up in the fog, I anticipated good conditions for hiking and lousy for photography. But just below Pantoll, the fog cleared and my plans began to seep out the window.

Although I've seen Mt. Diablo rising above the fog many times, something seemed new about it that morning, so I made a quick stop to photograph the scene. It really was a quick stop, and I might well have been on my way down the hiking trails moments later -- if I hadn't seen the bobcat.

The cat was hunting on a hillside just above the small oak grove where I recently photographed a torpid fence lizard and just below an area that in 2002 -- and no other year since -- bloomed with a dense carpet of sky lupines. The question was whether I was better off trying to approach from above or from below. I chose to approach from above, but it probably made little difference. The cat bolted for the woods as soon as he saw me.

As I hiked back up the steep hillside I saw these dragon's teeth embedded in green gums.

You'll notice that I seem to have slipped out of hiking mode and into photography mode. I had planned to park at Rock Spring and begin my hike, but the light was pretty good, so I told myself I would drive out along Bolinas Ridge for a critter-check if the gate was open. It was only about 8:30 by this time, and the gate is posted to open at 9 o'clock, but what do you know. It was open. The deer in the photo above was saying, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be hiking?"

I drove all the way out to my usual turnaround spot, stopping at one point to check out a red-tailed hawk that was using a very steep hillside as its hunting perch. With no trees around, it nevertheless commanded a view while standing on the ground. As I made my U-turn to head back and finally begin my hike I thought how I never manage to purposely find an animal. The best I can do is get out there, keep my eyes peeled, and hope for the best. I found that fact dispiriting. But no sooner had I turned around than a coyote appeared and brought my spirits back up. I made the photo above from the driver's seat.

The coyote marked the spot with a brief urination, then continued on his way. I drove up to a nearby pull-out, parked, think slunk back toward the coyote. I figured he'd bolt as soon as I came into view, but to my delight he simply kept moving.

I followed him for quite a while. It wasn't exactly a hike, but it was a bit of a workout.

I followed him up and over the hill and continued to tag along as he headed south along the ridge. He was staying high, so I walked along the road and staked out locations where I expected him to emerge from the thin fingers of woods that reached up the hillside. I saw him scent-mark several more times, but I never saw him make a kill, or even a pounce. I don't think he was particularly hungry.

Twice I saw him scoot his butt along the grass. I've seen a bobcat do the same thing, and I suppose it's a "wild toilet paper" thing.

I'd trailed the coyote far enough that I decided to jog back to the truck, then drive up to the next interception point. I did that and spotted this napping bobcat along the way. I grabbed a photo from the road, but continued on my way to find the coyote, who I'd last seen a short distance farther along.

The coyote wasn't there anymore, though, so I headed back for the bobcat. He still hadn't bolted, so I tried to get a little closer, gingerly stepping down the very steep embankment. I got as far as I could and sat down. The cat seemed to get used to me and continued napping. But as he got up, he suddenly seemed apprehensive and nervously backed up, then walked away, casting a backwards glance at the strange creature on the hillside. I climbed back up to the road and headed around the trees to pick him up in the adjacent open area, but this time he did bolt when he saw me.

By then I was thinking about doing a shorter hike and bringing my camera along in case I ran into anything interesting. I parked above the Laurel Dell fire road and spotted this kestrel hunting nearby.

At one point he dropped into the grass. . .

. . . and snagged a fat green caterpillar.

At one point the kestrel wheeled right over my head, and I frantically tried to keep it in focus and in my viewfinder as I fired off a few frames. When it flew away to a new hillside I finally strapped on my camera pack and headed downhill into the woods.

I stopped for this lone mushroom, then continued down a lesser-used trail to the bottom. There was lots of bobcat scat on the trail, and when I looked up into a grassy clearing I spotted the scat-maker himself. I wondered if it was the same cat I'd seen earlier and hiked up the hill after him. He wasn't having any of that, though, and he moved too fast through the dark woods for me to get a photo of him. Still, it was fascinating to watch him move through the forest.

A flock of juncos was bathing in Cataract Creek. I like his little underwater feet.

The water was barely moving, but I found this diminutive waterfall.

When I looked closely at the stones just below the "waterfall," I noticed numerous tiny encrustations on the rocks. I couldn't make them out, even with my reading glasses on. They looked like little snails. I set my macro lens to its highest magnification (1:1) to get a better look, and this is what I found. Some sort of "riffle beetle" larva, I guess.

While I was in macro mode, I photographed a fallen maple leaf.

Then I strolled along the creek until I found these mossy limbs. By now I'd spent around four hours messing around. I had no food with me and was running on a one-egg breakfast burrito I'd made before leaving home. Luckily, I was also running on all the party food I'd been eating the past few days, so I wasn't particularly hungry. Nevertheless, I was no longer in the mood for a hike.

So I hiked back up to the truck where one of the two local kestrels was perched on a sign. I'd just seen a red-tailed hawk land in the tree where the kestrel had been perched. The kestrel did a couple of screeching dives at the hawk, then flew up to this sign. It didn't like being so close to the trail and flew back to dive-bomb the hawk some more. Sure enough, the hawk gave up the perch and flew away with the kestrel in hot pursuit for good measure. Later on I saw a male marsh hawk (an unusual sight so high on Bolinas Ridge) chase a red-tail off its hunting turf.

I drove north along the ridge, checking out a spot I always check, but where I've actually seen a bobcat only once before. Now twice. Was this the same cat I'd photographed by the side of the road and seen bounding through the woods?

I don't know, but this cat wouldn't allow me to get so close again.

By now it was around 3 p.m., and I was thinking the clouds were interesting enough to make it tempting to wait for sunset. I had cell service from this point along the ridge, so I called Pam to let her know I was okay and was thinking about staying till dark. I hiked up to Druid Rocks where a trail runner came along and insisted (in good fun) that the rocks were placed there by aliens. He asked me how I thought they got there, and I lamely brought in geology and tales of uplift and erosion, but he wasn't having any of it.

My third bobcat of the day (assuming the middle ones were all the same cat) entered a meadow from the woods far below. I was tempted to go after him, but it was a long way down a very steep slope, so I entertained myself by watching him through binoculars. He soon entered a brushy area, and the show was over. Maybe he went to sleep under a coyote bush.

Most of the interesting clouds had evaporated by the time the sun set. The view south was nearly cloudless, the view west completely so. I pointed my camera north along the ridge, fired off a few frames, then packed up and headed home. If it was my last trip to Mt. Tam for 2011, it was a year-end blowout of a way to say farewell.

* * *

Surprise in the Willows

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

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I heard a faint cheeping in the willow branches above my head. The last few yellow leaves were still hanging onto the willow's mostly bare branches, but the first buds of the coming season were already showing. And there, leaping from branch to branch, was a little bird with a red head. It was a Ruby-Crowned Santa Bird!

May you find nature's gifts in abundance throughout the year!

* * *

Best 10 of 2011

2011-12-21T21:30:00.000-08:00

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I anticipated this moment of truth -- participating in Jim Goldstein's end-of-year blog project -- with a certain hesitancy. For one thing, it's always hard to pick your own "best" photos, much less whittle down those 11,572 NEF files to an easily digestible 10 pictures.

For another thing, I've been on a little guilt trip because my blog (now five years old) is still called "Natural California" even though I've hardly traveled at all during the last year. That means the vast majority of my photos were made within a fairly small radius from my home in San Francisco.

Although I did little traveling, I had an interesting year of showing my work outside the confines of the blog. I had a photo in a juried art show in Mendocino County, had a nice group of photos published (including the April-June cover) in Bay Nature magazine, and most recently had a photo essay on Mount Tamalpais in the December issue of Marin Magazine.

Winter's half-way mark has arrived. A new year is just around the corner. In the spirit of taking stock of the past before forging ahead, I hereby present, in chronological order, ten of my favorite photos of 2011.

* * *

The first time I saw this bobcat hunting meadow voles on a grassy hillside (January 7th) he was in his prime. I hadn't even thought of naming him at that point. Then I met another photographer, Joe Brady, who told me he called a different photogenic wildcat in the area "DeNiro" after the charismatic actor, Bob(cat) DeNiro. When I thought about the very "rufous" coloration of this particular Lynx rufus, I hit upon "Redford", after Bob(cat) Redford. Unfortunately, Redford was struck a month or so after I made this shot with a debilitating illness, some sort of parasite that caused him to lose much of the weight that made him an alpha male. He remained charismatic despite his weakness (even frightening some local hikers due to his increased lack of shyness around people). I kept hoping to see him improving, but I never did. On April 29th, I photographed him for the last time.

Shooting the sunrise from Drake's Beach at Point Reyes has been done many times. I wanted to try a little different take on it so I made my way to the top of the bluffs in the dark, passing through a cloud of skunk-scent on the way. I stepped carefully to avoid falling to the beach below while seeking out the best iris with the best view, then waiting for nature to take its course.

As these bull elk with velvet antlers stopped to keep an eye on an encroaching photographer, they ambled into a circle and completed the scene with its verdant carpet of grass and freckling of purple iris blossoms. The moment lasted only a few seconds before the magic circle was broken.

I almost didn't include this image because it's somewhat alarming -- an aesthetic harmony, a beautiful sadness, that most would prefer to turn away from. The mystery of life feeding on life is a central fact for us all, a kind of axis around which we build our lives. I'm grateful to have been able to photograph such a quotidian moment in the life and death of these two animals.

If I hadn't gone up the coast to Gualala to hang a photo in a gallery exhibition I might not have visited Salt Point State Park at all this year. Thankfully I arrived at the end of May to witness a fantastic wildflower explosion, perhaps made all the stronger by the first wet winter in four years. What made it stand out even more for me was spooking up a killdeer that had been sitting on four speckled eggs in her nest. Here, she has scuttled away from the nest, pretending to have a broken wing in order to entice me away from her brood.

Ever since I was a kid in Hawaii I've loved the underwater world, and this past year I visited Fitzgerald Marine Reserve probably more times than in any other year. I still feel like a novice photographer on that reef. It's often nose-runningly cold, slippery, wet, salty, windy, too dark, too bright, and just downright difficult trying to work out there. The number of keepers I generate can be depressingly low, but every now and then the elements come together and offer the chance to photograph some tidepool magic.

I was a little too early for the Kokanee salmon run on Taylor Creek when I stopped by with a friend after a Sierra backpacking trip, but I went back with my wife a month or so later and was almost too late. Many of the salmon had already spawned and died, but there were still healthy numbers of fish. I'd looked forward to once again photographing a thickly populated group of the colorful salmon, but my favorite shots turned out to be of single fish, including this portrait of a spawner swimming above rounded pebbles in crystal-clear waters.

After visiting the salmon, Pam and I headed over to the Eastern Sierras to check out the fall color. Instead of going to all the popular spots (which we've been to before and will certainly visit again), we took it easy and spent most of our time in the relatively small area of Lee Vining Canyon. While Pam painted and worked on her journal I scouted the fishermen's trails along the creek and felt like I'd reached Shangri-La when I entered this forest of warmly glowing aspens with its thick, cool carpet of ancient equisetum.

The skies were clear when I left home to check out the sandhill cranes off the interstate south of Sacramento. I ran into heavy fog on Hwy. 12 out of Suisun City, but out along my destination of Woodbridge Road it wasn't too bad -- for a while. It was still dark when I arrived, and mostly clear, but as the crescent moon and, finally, the sun came up, so did the fog. Even a foggy day with the sandhill cranes is a good day, though, and I was happy to be out there. I've been waiting for a chance at some clear weather ever since I made this photo in late October, with no luck so far.

I couldn't post ten favorite photos without including at least one macro image. This elegant, dew-laden moss sporangium must have been the first of its cohort to sprout. Usually where there's one, there are many, and I don't believe I've ever seen one so nicely isolated on its leafy bed. I created a 16-image focus stack to keep the finger-like leaf tendrils in focus along with the sinuous stalk, while keeping the depth of field shallow to minimize the background's distracting elements.

That's it. Ten photos. I didn't get to include anything from my Ansel Adams Wilderness trip, from my interactions with DeNiro the bobcat, or even my first-ever snow on Mt. Tamalpais. So it goes. For many more of my favorite photos of 2011, please check out my online gallery at Zenfolio.

* * *

Tough Luck

2011-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

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Some days you bring home a CF card full of goodies. Other days you bring home a tick.

Heading up toward Haypress Camp I ran into Trish Carney, who I hadn't seen in ages, and mentioned how some days photography seemed more like a challenge than an inspiration. She'd just been hiking instead of shooting and commented on how few animals she'd seen on the chilly, gray day. (By the way, if you think I'm in to macro, check out this amazing Flickr group!)

We had a nice chat about photography and critters before Trish continued on her way and I started trying to meet the challenge of scratching my itch to do some photography. I first picked out a dewy Sticky Monkey Flower blossom and considered whether there is any month of the year when you can't see sticky monkey flower in bloom. Thank you, my orange friend.

Another flower that helped break up the December monotony was a Milk Thistle. As I photographed the plant in its prickly pulchritude I couldn't have known that it would be the last time the plant would be photographed alive. I moved out when a group of volunteer gardeners showed up to rehabilitate the area from its dreaded but beautiful Harding Grass infestation. When I passed by the spot on my way back, I spoke briefly with one of the volunteers who told me about the Harding grass, and I noticed that they'd also pulled up the milk thistle.

Still trying to scratch the itch....

You know it's a slow photography day when you actually kind of like a shot like this....

I hadn't been all the way to Haypress Camp in months and was quite surprised to see the brand new cement outhouse. My, aren't we civilized. While I was there, a group of eight or so horseback riders passed through, as well as a couple of bicyclists. A pick-up truck also passed by.

As I walked back my heart leaped when I spotted a bobcat sitting on its haunches at the edge of a small meadow, its back to the still-dry creek bed. My heart sank, though, when one of the bicyclists also saw it, then stopped and stared at it. The cat turned and bounded back toward the creek. I picked out a nice spot on the hill across the road from the creek and sat for a full hour in the hope of seeing the cat again, but it was not to be. I finally got up to leave, half-frozen from sitting still on the ground so long.

Once I got home and began downloading my pictures I felt a gentle tickle on my right leg. I lifted the edge of my jeans and found a little Tennessee Valley hitch-hiker dowsing for blood. I took him out to the stairwell where we have some potted plants, put him on a dead leaf, and took his mugshot. Don't tell my wife, but I didn't have the heart to kill him....

* * *

Coyotes & Mushrooms

2011-12-16T17:13:00.000-08:00

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The sun hadn't risen yet, and it was tough to decide whether to look for a good vantage point for a landscape photo or stick with the coyote at ISO 800 and 1/30th sec. I thought it might be hopeless to photograph the coyote at such a slow shutter speed, but he was kind enough to hold still for a couple of frames.

But only a couple. I wasn't in a very good spot for a landscape photo anyway. I was on Azalea Hill, just above the very frosty greens of the Meadow Club golf course.

An MMWD pick-up drove around the bend just as the coyote decided to leave the Hill and cross the street to head west. The truck stopped, the coyote crossed, and all was well. I also headed west, toward mushroom country.

I couldn't remember the name of this mushroom to save my life, but I thought it would be easy to look up since it's black. There just aren't that many black mushrooms. Finally, the genus Leptonia popped into my brain, and I think that's gotta be it.

I found various stages of Witch's Hat mushrooms, but this was the only one with a dry cap. Usually the cap is the definition of "viscid," dripping with gooey goodness. I went to look for mushrooms, not just because we just had a little bit of rain, but because we're not supposed to have any more for at least a couple of weeks. Bummer! I hope we're not headed back to Drought City around here.

This is not a trick photo, not a Photoshop job. I used a flash to make the color as neutral as I could in those deep, dark woods. This is a Green Stain Fungus (Chlorociboria aeruginascens), the first one I've ever seen. This unusual guy really was easy to look up. Tom Volk has a dynamite page on it, where you can learn that Renaissance Italian woodworkers prized the stuff, and other brilliant information.

I didn't even try to look these up. They look way too normal. But I liked their shapes and the little bit of sunshine dappling the redwood forest floor in the background.

It was cold in them thar woods! I was glad to leave the mushrooms behind and drive up into the sunshine along Bolinas Ridge. I was also glad when I spotted another coyote, this time a female, right off the bat.

She pounced and caught a very fat gopher that was big enough to give her some difficulty. She killed it right away, but she had to chew it up quite a bit to be able to swallow it. At one point she had to lay it back down on the ground and get another grip.

I watched her long enough to see her make two more successful catches, but neither was as big a meal as the gopher. I was also happy to catch her jumping over this dark ravine.

She mostly kept me at a distance, but I'm a sneaky photographer and got fairly close to her a few times. She never did take to me popping up at close range, though, and always trotted off.

I always tried to anticipate where she was heading so I could angle my approach, but she often didn't show up where I expected, and I'd double back to the point last seen and take up the challenge once again. I liked photographing her with different aspects of the landscape in the background. I tried really hard to get one with some nice rocks in it, but I didn't pick any of those for this post.

Instead of rocks, I give you the Pacific Ocean.

* * *

Can't Always Get What You Want

2011-12-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

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I went up to Mt. Tam to make a couple of particular photographs. I wanted to shoot the still-blooming California fuchsia, and I wanted to take another crack at some pixie-cup lichens. I wanted both to be kissed with dew, and since there wasn't any dew, I brought my own in a small mister/atomizer filled with water.

I quickly surmised that the pixie-cup lichens weren't ready for their big moment and moved on to the blazing red fuchsia blossoms. I fired off dozens of frames, trying multi-image focus stacks from various angles, until I was tuckered out and ready to move on. Just as I got up from my uncomfortable crouching position among the cryptic poison oak branches I realized I'd forgotten to change the ISO after photographing some wildlife. "Oh, no!" I thought. "Have I screwed it all up and shot everything at ISO 400?!" Turns out, I hadn't shot everything at the less-than-ideal "film" speed (ISO 200 is the cleanest). I'd shot everything at the much worse ISO 800.

So you won't be seeing any pixie-cup lichens or California fuchsia in this post. Although I didn't get what I wanted, I got much more than I needed, starting with this torpid Western Fence Lizard.

I must have stepped on the fallen branch he'd been snoozing under because when I was packing up my camera gear and looking all over for my "lost" lens cap (which was in a jacket pocket all along), I saw the lizard belly-up on the ground. My first thought was that he was dead, but when I picked him up I realized he was quite alive but also not quite alive. Too cold to move his body, he could only move his eyes. He was basically a zombie lizard. I took the opportunity to focus-stack him a couple of times, then placed him back under another fallen branch to await some warmth.

As I began to drive from Rock Spring out along Bolinas Ridge I spotted this buck deer jogging toward the road, so I pulled over. The deer nearly reached the road, decided he didn't want to cross it, then moved in a sprightly fashion back toward the woods, heading in the general direction of Rock Spring and occasionally looking over his shoulder. He was obviously panting, and I waited to see if he was being pursued by coyotes. I never saw his pursuers, but something hidden in the dense woods was drawing the alarm calls of a scrub jay. Later on I'd see a coyote dining on something much simpler to catch than a healthy young buck.

I don't know if it was because of the stiff wind making it easy for big birds to fly, but the Red-Tails were thick as mosquitoes out there. I would have sworn the first group I saw was Ravens. I'd never seen so many hawks flying together. But they were indeed hawks. The youngster above was chilling out in a Douglas fir, but finally took off when a strong wave of wind made flight irresistible.

Another pleasant surprise was catching the Acorn Woodpeckers at work. Eventually this long-used snag, which is conveniently located at a vehicle pull-out, will topple over, and the acorn pantry will be closed. The birds will find another snag, but a bright spot on Bolinas Ridge will be gone.

I was heading home when I saw the light breaking through the cloud cover and striking the ocean in an interesting way. I decided to stop and head out with a landscape lens. When I reached the iconic Douglas fir (that looks like a Monterey pine), I spotted a red-tailed hawk on a high branch. I'd left my telephoto lens back in the Jeep. The hawk soon flew into the wind, but I went back for the telephoto just the same.

On my way back out to the vista on the ridge I photographed this brave Oregon Junco keeping watch from a budding Willow tree.

As I was sitting on the hill in position to photograph any red-tailed hawks that might like to come back to the icon tree and pose for me, a coyote turned up in the ravine below. She was eating something, chewing much like she would if she were eating rodents. But she wasn't eating rodents. She was eating Peppernuts that had fallen from the Bay Laurel tree.

Although a hawk did land in the tree on two additional occasions, it never landed on the right branch. This raven was more accommodating, and I made some nice silhouettes with it, including this launch from the "target" branch.

I also spotted this group of Wild Turkeys from my sit spot. They mosied along the ridge, reached the end, gobbled nervously at the sudden drop-off, then remembered they were birds and flew down, one at a time, to the bottom.

Perhaps fed-up with peppernuts, the coyote checked out the action out in the fields but didn't find anything to pounce on and soon disappeared from view.

I went looking for her, stopping to check out this big old Oak. The base of this tree is so hollowed-out, I was actually a little nervous walking beneath its massive branches. I looked into one of the hollows and cringed when I saw a beer bottle. But as I looked more closely, I realized it wasn't just a beer bottle. It was an unopened beer -- someone's idea of an offering, no doubt. You never know what you're going to find on Mt. Tam.

* * *

Two Townsends And A Taro

2011-12-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

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Down from Alaska, or maybe the Queen Charlotte Islands, Townsend's Warblers are in town to ride out the winter in mild San Francisco. I believe this is a young male since his throat feathers are flecked with black rather than being solidly black.

I always forget how small these guys are and was surprised to see them foraging with some Pygmy Nuthatches that seemed nearly as large as the Townies.

While I was watching the antics of numerous Hummingbirds in the Succulent Garden I was surprised to see Taro, the feral dog, come around the corner. He was surprised to see me, too, and turned back to detour around me.

I'd been hoping to spot the young Red-Tailed Hawk, but she was nowhere to be seen. Since the garden staff have given the dog a plant name, I was thinking about doing likewise with the hawk (who I only want to name so I don't have to keep referring to her as "the hawk who was rescued with a nail in her head."). I'm kind of partial to Banksia, or maybe even Banksy. Not that she's a graffiti artist, but she perches sort of like a Banksia flower (many examples of which can be seen in the garden).

* * *

Moonset, Seal Rocks

2011-12-10T07:21:00.001-08:00

* * *

As we were noshing on bagels and drinking hot coffee at 5:15 this morning, Pam and I watched the full moon being eclipsed from the comfort of our living room. The plan was to photograph the eclipsed moon as it set behind Seal Rocks near the Cliff House. I'd checked The Photographer's Ephemeris (screen shot above) to figure out my angle. It looked like I needed to be on the Esplanade just below the Cliff House, but as we looked at the moon from home, it appeared that TPE was going to be way off. How could the moon swing so far north in so short a time?

Easy!

I will never doubt TPE again. There was another photographer in the same place, and she had used TPE to plan the shot as well. Another guy was shooting from down on the beach. Unfortunately, the moon disappeared behind a fog bank long before it reached the horizon, and well before it started to come out of the eclipse. Still, it was a lovely morning to be looking out over Ocean Beach and the Pacific Ocean, not too cold and with no wind. The parking lots down along the flat part of the beach were just about full, and at least three of the fire pits were being used.

Now the question is: back to bed, or up to Tam?

* * *

Name That Hawk

2011-12-09T16:47:00.001-08:00

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I had a couple of errands to run in the neighborhood "down below" (around Ninth & Irving) and decided to bring my camera along for a quick tour of Strybing Arboretum. As I strolled along a trail in the California Garden I heard a peculiar sound that drew my attention to the Scrub Jay seen above.

I soon determined that the jay, which stood on one leg with its feathers fluffed out for warmth, had made the sound. I sat down on a park bench and watched the jay. The jay in turn watched me, but also followed the flight of several insects that winged past him. He made the curious sound a couple more times.

Who was he calling, and what was he saying? It couldn't be a predatory thing because the call gave him away. Yet the call was very quiet. More of a grumble than a full-fledged squawk.

A few Golden-Crowned Sparrows foraged on the ground below, but the jay paid them no heed. Even though I was just a few feet away, I knew the jay wasn't reacting to me. That's when it dawned on me to turn around and look where the jay was looking.

Immediately, I spotted the Red-Tailed Hawk in a tree behind me. I shot the photo above from same spot on the park bench from which I'd shot the photo of the jay.

As I moved in for a closer look at the young hawk, I was struck by the fact that she didn't fly away. And that reminded me of something.... This was the same hawk I'd recently seen and photographed in another post. This was the hawk that had been rescued with a nail in her head!

I hung out with her for quite a while once again in the hope of seeing her pounce on something, and once again she out-waited me. I watched a squirrel come down from a tree and work its way around the area below the hawk, but eventually the squirrel circled back to its starting point and was out of range. The hawk seemed mesmerized for a couple of minutes when a Robin landed on a branch above her, and again when a Hummingbird buzzed in front of her for a closer look. A Brown Creeper worked its way up the trunk of the tree, only to scream and fly away when it reached the limb the hawk was on. But the hawk never left her perch.

I hope to see the hawk many more times as she matures. I feel like she needs a name, though, and I haven't come up with anything that seems just right. What do you think? What would be a good name for this wonderful hawk?

* * *

Lunar Eclipse

2011-12-09T08:11:00.001-08:00

* * *

The problem with being a photographer is that you don't just want to see the eclipse, you want to photograph it. I'm still unsure whether I'm even going to get out of bed early enough to view the total eclipse on Saturday morning, but I have been thinking about photo locations just in case motivation strikes.

A few years ago I drove down the coast with my wife specifically to photograph the full moon setting behind the Pigeon Point Lighthouse. I'd just stuck my toe into the digital waters at the time and did the shot with a Nikon D40 and the same 300mm AF-S that I still use today.

At one point during the drive I was surprised to see the full moon in my rearview mirror. I thought, "If I'm driving down the coast, shouldn't it be out the passenger-side window?" I didn't know about The Photographer's Ephemeris at the time.

The moon was too low to keep driving, so we pulled over and started shooting. I'd hoped to get the moon much closer to the lighthouse than it appeared from my vantage point -- something closer to the image shown above. Here's what it actually looked like:

I'd like to try again to find just the right vantage point. Maybe Franklin Point would be good. I'll have to check TPE. I'm also thinking about shooting from Treasure Island and getting the San Francisco skyline in the foreground, but I suspect the moon will have sunk behind Twin Peaks by the time the eclipse reaches totality at 6:05 a.m. (It will last until 6:57 and the moon will set at 7:18, 4 minutes after sunrise.)

Somewhere over by Fort Baker might present a good opportunity to get the Golden Gate Bridge in the foreground. Or I might just wait till the last minute and walk over to Grandview Park, a couple of blocks from home. In any event, I expect to see lots of great images from other folks after it's over.

* * *

Frost

2011-12-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

* * *

There were no bobcats waiting for me this time. I stepped outside the Jeep and scanned the hillsides, but what interested me most was the frosty earth at my feet.

Mostly it was the wild radish leaves,

but the poison hemlock also looked good in a crystalline coat.

The thistle leaves were interesting, but a little too 3D.

By "too 3D," I mean they were tricky to photograph even as focus stacks. The simpler, much less 3D photo above is a stack of 31 images, which tested the limit of my patience.

Even this apparently flat leaf took 28 images. I also shot it in a single frame at f/32 but it wasn't as nice.

Sugar-frosted and almost good enough to eat.

After all that chilly-knees photography it was nice to head out into the sunny valley.

If sparrows were bobcats, I'd have been golden.

* * *

Walking With The Gear

2011-12-02T13:09:00.001-08:00

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It was a gorgeous day for hiking on Mt. Tam, but I could have left the camera gear at home. All the wet, fungal goodness of just one week ago has been thoroughly turned into shroom jerky by the high winds of the last few days, so I basically took my camera for a walking loop: Rock Spring to Cataract Falls, High Marsh Trail to Old Stove Trail to Laurel Dell Road to Barth's Retreat and returning via the Simmons Trail.

Down at Cataract Falls I saw a couple of MMWD folks working on the trail. They were carrying, by hand, those big wooden steps you see down there. So much for wondering if they used pack animals. Man, that is some heavy work on a steep trail. The photo above shows the trickle that is Cataract Falls right now. The photo below shows what it looked like 10 years ago, in December 2001.

We're going to need a lot of rain to get to this point! This was shot, by the way, with a Contax G1 and 35mm lens using Kodacolor film.

In a comment from a previous post, "zzzahof" asked, "We wanted to buy a new lens to carry when we are hiking, what would be a good lens?" The photo above shows what I carried today, which goes to show that there basically is no answer that covers all the bases. I was actually thinking it would be nice to have something like a Panasonic FZ150 to lighten the load, but it's always a trade-off.

* * *

A Walk in the Park

2011-11-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

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A walk in the park can be just what it sounds like -- a pleasant, leisurely stroll in a manicured landscape. It can also be slang for anything that's easy to do, especially when it really isn't. I met up with my friend Dave for a neighborhood photography session and wanted to challenge myself a little, and I chose to do that by giving you a little tour of the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

I knew I was in trouble right off the bat. The light was flat, and so was my inspiration. "If I were a creative person," I thought, "something would come to me." Not that I could force it, much as I'd like to. Sometimes you just have to wait and keep the faith, like a hawk on a limb, for inspiration to arrive.

Just as I was trying to photograph a quiet nook with a memorial bench, all quite serene and wood-crafted, yet not the usual subject for me, a Red-Breasted Sapsucker came to my rescue. I guess it was an immature bird, still not terribly put out by close proximity to people. From the evidence of all the holes, this bird and this cherry tree are not strangers, and that probably made the bird more comfortable.

One of the things Dave and I talked about was how photographers are often reticent about their images. We'd both seen an excellent photo that morning of a bobcat with a coot in its jaws, and I expressed my amazement that the photographer had nothing to say about it. I wanted the whole story -- the before, during and after. Then again, sometimes you just want to let the images be images. So, with very few more words, I present a morning at Strybing Arboretum.

You've no doubt heard about all the feral cats in Golden Gate Park. This is Taro, the feral dog. I learned from the woman staffing the entrance that Taro has been visiting the arboretum since July, but this is the first time I'd seen him. He looked healthy and wanted nothing to do with anyone.

This young Red-Tailed Hawk remained perched on a relatively low pine branch for a long time. Dave and I waited for her to take flight and possibly catch something, but the hawk finally outwaited us. All the neighborhood birds knew she was up in that tree. All around us there wasn't a single fox sparrow or towhee kicking in the duff, no chickadees and warblers hunting in the trees. We were sitting on a park bench, but not a single squirrel came to see if we had a peanut. Even most of the people who walked by knew she was up there. She didn't care. She didn't sweat. Something would come to her.

(I learned after preparing this post that this hawk is the one that was rescued from having its head pierced by a nail. Read about her here.)

* * *

Green Friday

2011-11-25T15:45:00.001-08:00

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Although I might like to upgrade many of my possessions, the stuff I already have is still quite serviceable. Black Friday, therefore, held little appeal, but I'm always up for a Green Friday. I wasn't the only one. Mt. Tam opened for Green Friday to a line of hikers, bikers, botanizers, photographers, trail-runners and others looking for a good deal on food for the soul.

I liked the unusual coloration of the Wild Turkey above. I noticed some of the feathers on these birds appeared to be tattered, or certainly less than pristine and perhaps in need of a molt. One tom's fanned-out tail feathers were just pitiful. Then again, maybe it's evolutionarily smart for a turkey to look sickly this time of year.

NOTE:

Just saw the PBS Nature documentary My Life as a Turkey last night. Fantastic!

Don't miss this one!

I followed a small group of turkeys into the woods. Most of the backgrounds were a jumble of distracting elements, so as I anticipated the movements of the turkeys I looked ahead for a spot with a clear field of view and a cleaner background. I'm not sure I've ever photographed turkeys in the woods before.

I left the turkeys chirping their companion calls and, without having to get back in the Jeep, I walked over to a likely jumble of rocks with my wide angle lens. One of the joys of photography is to approach a naturally chaotic scene such as a random jumble of rocks and present it almost as if an artist like Andy Goldsworthy had placed them there.

As the end of the year approaches, I'v been thinking about my "10 favorite photos" for 2011. I know that when I look at photos like these two rockscapes that they will never make my "top 10" list, yet they still mean a lot to me. There's something essentially "Mt. Tam" about them.

Wanting to lighten my load, and figuring I wouldn't need it anyway, I'd left my telephoto lens in the Jeep when I started hiking down the Cataract Trail. Almost immediately I spotted a Coyote coming toward me on the trail. I stopped, backed up, watched to make sure the coyote wasn't going to bolt, then turned and jogged back to get my 300mm lens. I didn't see him when I returned to the spot and thought I'd lost my chance, but then I saw him nearly hidden by tall grass just off the trail.

In fact, there were two coyotes, both of whom appeared to be digging for field mice. The big male above had just finished chowing down on his catch when I finally found a relatively clear vantage point to photograph him from.

The female (I presume) retreated to the woods as soon as she saw me, and the male followed at a more leisurely pace after licking his chops.

I followed the coyote into the woods, but he never stopped to look back at me as he made his escape. Still, I liked the "Jim Brandenberg-esque" image of the coyote disappearing into woodland's depths. I angled out of the woods and circled over to where I thought he might come out, only to once again surprise the female who'd emerged from the woods into an adjacent meadow.

She took off without a backward glance. I gave up on the coyotes and resumed my hike.

I couldn't resist this tight little group of Mycena mushrooms emerging from a downed Douglas fir log.

Beneath the same log, another group of the same species was just emerging from undifferentiated mycelium.

This group of Polypody Ferns always attracts my eye when I pass it. I think today was the first time I ever figured out how to photograph it.

Furry-capped young Honey Mushrooms. I'd see a more mature patch a little farther down the trail.

Here's another Mycena grouping. I photographed the honey mushrooms above with a single frame at f/32 since the background wasn't a distraction, but I focus-stacked these mycenas with 15 frames at f/5.6 to keep a soft, out-of-focus background.

Here's the maturing group of honey mushrooms. I was pleased to see when I returned later on that no one had kicked the clump. It still looked as intact and gorgeous as it had when I first passed it.

I believe this is Clavaria vermicularis, or "Worm Coral."

A healthy-looking Banana Slug bellies up to the Russula Bar.

I'd never seen a coyote in this meadow before. I think he wanted to hunt but was too bashful to do so in front of all the Green Friday hikers passing by.

My stomach was rumbling and I might have headed home without photographing the Zeller's bolete if not for the fact that it was growing on a ledge which allowed me to get an especially low angle on it.

* * *

Giving Thanks

2011-11-24T08:13:00.001-08:00

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Back-Button Focus Test

2011-11-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

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I went back to Tennessee Valley with high hopes of seeing another bobcat, but I also wanted to try out this new-fangled "back-button focusing" I just heard about, thanks to Jim Coda, and figured it might be good to practice on some birds before I got around to bobcats. This Bewick's wren obliged me right away. (The yellow in the background is a metal stripe on a telephone pole.)

I didn't know what to expect from the new camera setting, but I was slightly disappointed that it didn't work miracles.

The setting lets me use the little AF-ON button on the back of my D300s to engage autofocus, but the key thing is that it also shuts down that function on the shutter release. Now I focus with the button and re-compose the shot. When I fire the shutter release, the lens doesn't try to find a new focus point.

Yes, you can do the same thing by pressing the shutter half-way, then recomposing and firing (as long as you're in single-servo AF mode). But try to take a second shot -- say the bird tilts its head and catches the sun just right. If your shutter release is still engaged, you'll have to obtain focus all over again, keep your shutter pressed half-way, and recompose again. Oops, the bird flew away! With back-button focusing, you focus once, then take all the shots you want.

Although a Canon camera is used, a more detailed explanation of the technique and its uses can be found here.

The miracle cure remains elusive, though. I'd like to be able place the focus on, for example, this golden-crowned sparrow's eye, then have the AF keep focusing on its eye when the bird moves. If anyone knows how to do that kind of focus-tracking, please let me know!

Anyway, I'd checked Haypress Valley and scoured the brush with my eyes all the way down to the lower valley stables before I finally spotted a bobcat.

He was up the hill on the north side of the trail, so I hiked up toward him, stopping at a reasonable distance. That is, the bobcat thought it was reasonable enough that he didn't ditch me. I wanted to be closer, but I'd reached a certain point where moving closer wouldn't necessarily have put me in a better position to see the cat. From a new, closer, angle a bush or even the hill itself might block my view. I remembered that from following a group of wild turkeys up this very same hill last spring.

I sat still for what seemed like a long time, but once the cat sat down he stayed that way and began to alternately snooze and open his eyes to keep tabs on me, as they often do when they're not going anywhere in particular and are just waiting to hear some little critter moving in the grass nearby.

There was a ravine between us, and in order to get closer I'd have to cross it. The risk was losing sight of the cat -- and the cat losing sight of me and heading for cover as a result. If the cat can see you approaching (assuming it didn't bolt as soon as it laid eyes on you), it's more likely to stay put if you stay in sight so it knows exactly where you are. I eventually decided to take the risk, and I spooked up a second cat that had been in the ravine. That cat bolted for cover, but the original cat stayed put. Unfortunately, I did have to lose sight of it briefly, and of course the cat took off.

I was hugely disappointed and wanted to second-guess my decision to move closer, but I really just have to make my choice and live with what happens. I could have sat there for an hour, only to have the cat get up and walk away anyway. I mainly wanted to get closer so I could get a detailed image of his face for identification purposes.

Like I was able to do with DeNiro the other day.

Instead I roamed along the edge of the meadow in a vain hope that the cats would come back out of the dense brush and pretend I wasn't there.

A pair of kestrels was hunting nearby. I wondered if it was a parent and its new youngster. There were lots of first-winter golden-crowned sparrows down below, and I even wondered of the "scaredy-cats" are in fact youngsters.

One thing's for sure, if the young bobcats aren't used to people yet, they are getting plenty of opportunity on the weekends. On Sunday I saw a humongous group -- maybe fifty people -- walk right below where the cats had been.

As for me, I walked back down to the trail, then picked up the Coastal Trail heading south and steeply up to the Miwok, then back down via the Old Springs Trail. I didn't see any other cats, but to prove I was looking intently, I actually spotted (with binoculars) a striped skunk poking around an open meadow waaayyy across the valley, on a hill near a couple of buck deer (probably the same pair I recently photographed in that area) that I couldn't see at all with my naked eyes.

* * *

Mt. Tam Photo Essay

2011-11-21T17:55:00.001-08:00

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Hey, my little Mt. Tam photo essay has come out in Marin Magazine.

This came out of a 40-page print-on-demand booklet I did with my Mt. Tam images, each of which I captioned with a little haiku-like poem. I sent a copy to the magazine, and they liked it enough to turn it into a photo essay for the December issue (the print version's layout is more interesting than the web version).

* * *

Wet Woods Wandering

2011-11-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

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Once again I spent a few hours wandering in a relatively small patch of woods around the north side of Mt. Tam. Mushrooms were going gangbusters, but I was looking for something a little different. In fact, I was trying not to look for "things" at all. I wanted to let my eyes roam a little more freely and not glom onto identifiable "things" so much. I spent quite a bit of time photographing a madrone, but I came away with zero pictures of "a madrone."

Shortly after I got there it started raining pretty hard. Luckily I was close to the Jeep. So close that I was upset with myself for having locked it, so that I was struggling to keep my gear dry while fumbling for the key. Once I was snug inside, I liked watching the water run off my windshield and snapped the photo of the woods from the driver's seat.

Looking at this little sprig of moss growing in a knot in a madrone tree, I think about the elapsed time from when the branch died and fell off the tree, the soil gathered in the hole, and the moss spores took hold and grew the leafy parts that have now spilled out.

More madrone etchings.

Moss and several kinds of lichen have made their homes on this skinny Bay Laurel tree.

Bumps on a log. Red-capped bumps, that is.

Here's a green-capped bump, a moss sporophyte, on the same log.

Smooth puffballs. I'm tempted to draw faces on them.

"Golden Fingers" coral fungus.

As I hunkered down to photograph these Bubblegum Slime Mold sporangia (the bright pink innards have yet to spill out), I displaced a stick with my knee. Beneath the stick was a Slender Salamander that was kind enough to pose for this "Still Life With A Salamander," a 17-frame focus stack.

Back in early October I photographed something I called "Tiny Bubbles." Little did I know that nearly amorphous blob was going to turn into this lovely monster (Hericium ramosum)!

I'll often set up a mushroom photo with props from the surrounding forest floor, but this lichen-covered stick was already there and made an interesting composition that I probably wouldn't have set up on my own.

I was probably unduly excited to find this opened Bay Laurel nut, but I snatched it off the ground as if I'd found a nugget of gold. I'm amazed the nut is still in there. Did a tree squirrel dig into the shell from a branch high above and lose its grip? Or is this the natural dehiscence (releasing of the seed) of Umbellularia californica? And if so, how come I never noticed this before?

I felt about ready to wrap things up after photographing the peppernut. My jeans were about soaked from the knees down, I was getting chilled as well as thirsty and hungry. I mosied just a little bit farther, though, when I caught sight of a large number of bright red Russula mushrooms freckling the earth beneath some Bigleaf Maple trees.

I couldn't find a caterpillar smoking a hookah, so I put this banana slug on the mushroom cap instead.

On my way home I stopped briefly to photograph this young red-tailed hawk on a soggy branch. I was heading home in a heated car, dry, looking forward to ordering Chinese take-out. Humans are the one percent.

* * *

Celebrity Cat

2011-11-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

* * *

There were so many bobcats out there that I almost tripped over one.

I spotted this extraordinary 'cat (so good to see you again, DeNiro!) as soon as I set foot outside my Jeep. I hadn't even closed the doors when a critter that was not just a bush caught my eye. "Coyote?" I thought. Get the binoculars. Check it out. "Nope! Definitely a cat!"

Emboldened by my recent no-tripod forays after birds in Golden Gate Park, I'd left my tripod at home. My plan had been to hike up the Marincello Trail to the Miwok Trail, then head west and loop back into Tennessee Valley near the beach. I'd only brought my camera "just in case," but "just in case" arrived right off the bat and called for a change of plans.

I spotted DeNiro in the meadow with the rocky knob just north of the parking lot, tagged along as he walked through the meadow where he had the undivided attention of at least a dozen California towhees, spotted towhees, wrentits, and assorted finches and sparrows, then watched him disappear in the adjacent woods surrounding a little creek. I stepped into the woods to follow, but the embankment was steep and the creek-crossing looked quite muddy. What a bonanza of animal tracks there was in that mud, though!

Instead of going through, I doubled back and jogged around to the section of the Miwok Trail that heads north from the parking lot and soon found DeNiro in the meadow again, still heading east, and photographed him leaping on some lucky field mouse (that got away).

The terrain and light were both a challenge. I wasn't always successful in keeping the sun behind me, and I couldn't always judge when the 'cat would reach a relatively open area. The dry grass stalks, especially when there are lots of them, play havoc with autofocus. As I did with the birds, I ran continuous-servo and used the click wheel to place the focus point on DeNiro's eyes. If they ever put face recognition software in a DSLR, I hope it's smart enough to lock onto an animal's eyes -- or eye, in the case of a critter in profile.

DeNiro had been cleaning his fur when I first spotted him from my Jeep, but he stopped again to deal with the muddy paws he'd picked up back at the creek-crossing. When he finished and set out once again, still heading east, I moved ahead to set up at a point where it was more open and where I hoped he'd come out again.

As I turned to get around the last of the coyote brush, though, he suddenly jumped up and ran up the hill. I'd almost stepped on him! I was surprised he'd reached that point so quickly, and I set out to follow him in case he only ran off a short distance. I got about twenty feet and looked over where he'd been cleaning his fur -- and there he still was. I'd spooked up a second bobcat, not DeNiro!

DeNiro took note but he was about as excited to see the new cat as he had been to see me. "Yeah, yeah," he says, "just another critter in the chaparral. What else is new." He got up and soon disappeared into the next wooded ravine. I looked in as he did so and checked out the diminutive animal trail, considered whether to follow on hands and knees (since I am more than eighteen inches tall), but chose to leave him in peace and be on my way.

I hiked out of the chaparral (glad to be bushwhacking in jeans instead of shorts) and picked up the Miwok Trail heading up to the Coyote Ridge Trail, then looped back down via the Coastal Trail.

Once I was back down in the valley I scanned the hillsides and spotted another 'cat way up the hill north of the trail. At first glance I'd mistaken the cat for a bush -- until I realized the bush had moved since my last scan! Once again it took binoculars to confirm that it was indeed a wildcat.

I jogged to the base of the hill, then as carefully and quietly as I could I began my ascent, keeping to cover as long as possible and stopping when my breathing became too loud. The cat was facing away from me when I finally came into the open. I hoped it might be Redford, another local bobcat that is amenable to human company.

I moved toward him with care, but I was completely exposed and it wasn't long before the cat noticed me. It was not amused. It was not amenable. It ran full-speed and non-stop until it was over the hill and out of sight.

* * *

Seeking Clarity

2011-11-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

* * *

The problem with tidepool organisms is that they live underwater. Photographing them from above the surface means having to focus through the distortions of light being bent by the water. The bent rays distort your subject, and the reflected rays can cause glare. Scuba divers get sharp photos underwater because they too are underwater, so there's less distortion and glare.

But tidepools are too shallow to dive in, and besides, I don't have an underwater camera housing. I thought about buying, for example, a Canon G12 and getting an underwater housing for it, but that's a fairly expensive solution. Images from even smaller pocket-sized underwater cameras, unfortunately, leave much to be desired due to limitations of the cameras themselves. A housing for my D300 would probably be too big to use on tidepools, especially with strobes. An Ewa-Marine bag would protect the lens, but prohibit using the on-camera flash.

Looking for a cheaper solution, I used marine epoxy to attach a clear plastic circle to a clear plastic tube, and I stuck my 105mm macro lens into the tube. Now I could get the lens under the surface of the water, which is how I photographed the hermit crabs seen above. It's kind of like having a portable glass-bottomed boat.

It's not a perfect solution, though. A better solution would be a waterproof macro lens that I could stick right in the water, but even that wouldn't cover all the bases. If your subject is much bigger than a hermit crab in a shallow tidepool, you'd bee too close to photograph it. Sometimes you just have to shoot through the distorting air/water boundary.

To photograph the Sunburst Anemone and Shield-Backed Kelp Crab, I reverted to shooting through the water's surface using a polarizing filter and a flash.

Only four pix from this trip. Harbor seals occupied the beach, so all us humans had to occupy a small patch of reef near the creek outlet. Pam soon lost interest and relaxed up on the beach. By the time the seals moved off their section of beach so the humans could spread southward it was nearly sundown and quite dark in the depths of the tidepools. Trying to focus on a dark green kelp crab in a sunless pool with a polarizer eating up another stop-and-a-half was challenging, and the value of meeting the challenge questionable, so we decided to leave further discoveries for another day.

* * *

Dew Drop Inn

2011-11-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

* * *

Fog in the trees. Try as I might, I can't resist it.

Bolinas Ridge, looking ethereal.

As I was driving out around Fairfax-Bolinas Road, going slow and marveling at the dozen or so road-killed California Newts whose warning orange coloration couldn't save them from careless motorists, I looked into the woods at a random spot and liked what I saw.

What I saw was a section of woodland I'd never entered before. The obvious route leading into it was a deer trail. In the shade, dewdrops bejeweled the grass and some of the younger Douglas fir trees.

I didn't want all my backgrounds to be green, so I picked up a couple of red leaves to place behind my subject. I'd been working with the leaves for several minutes before it dawned on me that the leaves were poison oak. I tried to remember if I'd briefly held them between my lips while I set up a composition.

Giant Chain Fern, growing next to Bay Laurel.

I didn't immediately recognize the poison oak leaves because there were no poison oak plants in the vicinity. But when I wandered over to the patch of giant chain ferns I saw a thick vine winding its way up a bay laurel tree. It was a huge poison oak plant, its red leaves raised high and falling at some distance from the tree.

Little mushrooms.

Littler mushrooms.

Little mushroom-muncher.

* * *

All Is One

2011-11-11T17:18:00.001-08:00

* * *

Back in college at Humboldt State in the mid-80s I was down in the Lumberjack (school newspaper) office when a fellow student standing next to me looked up at the clock and said, "All right, 11:11, my favorite time of day. All is one." I don't remember that guy's name, but I'll bet he's in Oneness Heaven today.

As I was looking for birds to photograph in Strybing Arboretum this afternoon, hunkered down against the rain beneath the umbrella-like awning of a large oak tree, I wondered if I'd actually just needed an excuse to walk down the hill and get a Jenny's Burger on Ninth Avenue.

I had a little bit of trouble getting my flash dialed in to get a proper exposure. I haven't used my flash in a long time, so it took a little trial and error to realize that my overexposures were due to a combination of too-high ISO speed and insufficient auto-exposure compensation. When I settled on ISO 400 and set my SB600 flash to underexpose by 1.7 stops, I was ready to capture this Orange-Crowned Warbler in a manzanita bush.

I was surprised my autofocus worked as well as it did, especially on a Brown Creeper working the bark nooks along the trunk of a pine tree.

I thought this Townsend's Warbler had a bug in its beak until I got home and took a more leisurely look. I have no idea why he'd pick up a piece of bark, but he worked it for a couple of seconds before flitting away.

Another Fox Sparrow presented itself on a branch

in the little aspen grove of the California Garden.

Chestnut-Backed Chickadee, on the move as usual.

I'd been hearing a sweet bird-whistle and made a couple unsuccessful attempts to track the sound to its source. I'd never have guessed it was a Golden-Crowned Sparrow if I hadn't seen this little guy make the whistle from this perch. Listening to the call here, it didn't even ring a bell. Must be something about the lack of context back here at home.

This Ruby-Crowned Kinglet fluttered off its tule stalk back by the Children's Garden just as I snapped the shutter. One of the things I like about using a flash is capturing moments like this.

Are Pygmy Nuthatches supposed to have so much rufous coloration?

Another Townsend's Warbler caught mid-flutter.

And since I began with a Hummingbird, it's fitting to end with one. I also like that it's feeding on a native California wildflower -- yes, a native wildflower still blooming in November!

* * *

Yellow Fellows

2011-11-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

* * *

While I was sitting with the sparrows, this Orange-Crowned Warbler paid a visit to a nearby yucca. The only other time I've photographed an OCW at Strybing, the birds were feeding on another orange-flowered yucca in the Succulent Garden.

The OCW flew into some nearby bushes when my clicking made it nervous, but it returned after a short wait.

I didn't know what it was doing on the perch until it finally reached over. I'd like to have seen what it was feeding on -- whether plant parts or nectar, and if nectar, how it was reaching the nectar.

Not a yellow fellow, but there were lots of Hermit Thrushes in the garden.

I'm guessing the throat patch on this Yellow-Rumped Warbler makes it an Audubon's Warbler.

I guess this is another OCW. This one was feeding on a large flannel bush near the California Garden.

An Oregon Junco in the big California Buckeye looks slightly disheveled after a bath...

...but cleans up nicely.

A whole flock of Lesser Goldfinches had descended on some inviting seedpods (which I believe were from a large, showy, yellow member of the Evening Primrose family).

Goldfinch shawl.

Even a tripod hasn't really helped me get a sharp picture of a Brown Creeper, and trying it hand-held was crazy. They're always on the move, and always in the shade. I shot this at ISO 800, wide open (f/6.7) at 1/80th sec.

* * *

Sparrows

2011-11-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

* * *

I didn't feel like driving anywhere, what with the extra hour of sleep and all, so instead of motoring out of town I ambled on down to Golden Gate Park.

The first Sunday birding group had Strybing Arboretum all to themselves when I passed by at around 8:15. The gates wouldn't open for the rest of us until 9 o'clock, so I kept on ambling until I reached Stow Lake. Of course the Great Horned Owls weren't there anymore, probably long gone, but I was surprised to see so much ivy wrapped around the owl tree. There was also a new picnic table in the owl viewing area.

I couldn't get anywhere with bird photography at Stow Lake. There's a constant stream of joggers and dog-walkers that makes a mockery of any photographer's attempt at stealth.

Luckily I didn't have to wait too long before it was time to head back to check out the botanical gardens. My first stop was just inside the gate, where several White-Crowned and Golden-Crowned Sparrows were taking advantage of the bird bath.

I felt kind of naked without my tripod, but I'd wanted to travel light and get some practice using my rig (D300s, 300mm f/4, TC-17E) without it. It felt quite liberating as long as the light was good, as it was for much of the morning, including when I photographed this female white-crowned sparrow.

Fox Sparrows can be tricky to photograph when they're feeding because they like to kick around in the duff where it's often relatively dark. This guy must have been bathing recently, though, before hopping up to this pine branch to preen in the warm sun.

A few of the birders were still around, and I overheard someone telling the others to look at the Lincoln's Sparrows. Otherwise, I'd never have figured out that's what this guy was.

* * *

Coyote Lessons

2011-11-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

* * *

I wanted to find a Bobcat so bad this morning, I was sure one would accommodate me.

It was downright nippy at Tennessee Valley when I got out of the Jeep and hiked up a hill that was still in shade. It's been many months since I last saw a bobcat up that way, but it just seems like such good 'cat country that I always have to check it out, and even when I don't see bobcats I've often been treated to Quail, Owl, Deer and Jackrabbit up there. This time, nada. There was frost in the grass, and I began to wonder if all the critters were still snuggled in their burrows, beds, and what have you.

The sun had just crested the southern ridge and was shining in Haypress Valley, so I turned around and made my way over there, following construction crew pick-up trucks that were heading out to the camp. I found a likely spot to sit tight and wait for bobcats.

The light was so gorgeous. All I needed was a cat to mosey out into it. A Jay was scolding something in the woods nearby. Could it be a cat? At one point I heard footfalls close at hand and thought a cat was coming for sure. And then I wasn't so sure. Maybe just a bird kicking in the leaf litter. I even heard it again, so near! But still, nothing came of it, and I decided to go back to the main trail and head west. One of the pick-up trucks came hauling down the little dirt road at something like 30 mph. It was easy for me to get off the road, but I'd hate to have seen 'em meet up with a couple of folks on horseback.

Down by the big meadow that divides the upper and lower trails I could hear the surf crashing at Tennessee Cove. I decided to hang out in the area awhile, and almost immediately I spotted an animal. I knew right off it was too big to be a bobcat, but I still hoped it was. When it sunk in that the animal was a Coyote, I guess I was slightly disappointed, but certainly not so much that I would ignore him. In fact, when he disappeared from view I hiked up after him, only to spook him off. It's been a long time since I encountered a TV coyote that was amenable to being followed.

I surprised a couple of bucks after I let the coyote go about his business. It's interesting that I found two bucks traveling together last week at Mt. Tam, then again here. I guess the rut is over and things have calmed down, hormone-wise. These bucks, like the ones on Mt. Tam, took my presence in stride with no undue excitement or skittishness.

I spent some time just sitting on the hillside with expansive views all around, just waiting for a bobcat to turn up. So much great habitat, and if scats were cats, I'd have been golden. There were lots of birds in the area, including dozens of house finches. Every time they got excited and flew into cover I anticipated a bobcat showing up, but it was not to be.

The young buck above was also with a partner, and I could see they were working their way down toward my position, so I set up my camera and waited. They were both out of sight for a while, so I walked away from my camera to peek up the hill and saw that they were still coming. As I waited back at my camera I was surprised when one of the bucks came running down the hill toward me, obviously spooked. He saw me and detoured into the brush, through which he noisily crashed before stopping to get his bearings. A few people walking by and chatting didn't notice the racket at first, but when the buck got going again, one person finally looked over her shoulder. Seeing nothing, her attention returned to the story she was telling her friend while the buck finally came into view behind her and trotted west over a rise and out of sight.

The whole time I expected to see the second buck also come running out of there, but I never did. I even hiked up the hill to where they'd been peacefully feeding just moments before, half wondering if I'd find a Mountain Lion feasting on the other deer. But there was nothing. Just another nature mystery.

Back in the big meadow south of the main trail (the yurt meadow) I again spotted a coyote, probably the same one I'd photographed earlier. I briefly considered trying to catch up with it, but success was a serious long-shot, so I shrugged it off and headed back to the Jeep.

* * *

Tam Ramble

2011-11-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

* * *

If I was a man with a plan on Mt. Tam, it was a very simple plan indeed. Photograph the leaves. I don't mean the fall colors, either. I mean, take a closer look at ordinary, familiar leaves and see what happens.

At first I didn't let the troupe of Wild Turkeys distract me from the plan, but I reasoned that leaves could be found just about anywhere, including out on the hills where the turkeys were. I parked at Rock Spring, then hiked back past the Serpentine Power Point until I found the turkeys milling around in the shade of a small group of trees. My approach sent them back into the sun where they foraged with minimal enthusiasm until I had safely passed by.

My first leaf victim was this backlit Tanoak. On one hand, I think I could lose myself in its intricate details and meditate on the lines, curves, edges and tones pretty much indefinitely. On the other hand, it's just a leaf.

This is an aerial view of a nutrient delivery system in a chlorophyll universe.

Or, if you prefer . . . a leaf.

I was briefly distracted from my leafy plans by this

meaty little Death Cap mushroom (Amanita phalloides).

I really liked these hairy leaves. The plant grew with numerous leaves in a bunch, and I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know what it is. I thought it might be something in the Waterleaf Family. I'll have to try to remember to make a note of them when they eventually flower, even though it'll likely be months from now.

While I was quietly photographing something on the forest floor I heard heavy footfalls in the dry leaves of the woods close by. I thought it was people at first, but then I heard a deer snort, maybe when it caught my scent.

I marked their noisy progress until they eventually trotted out of the woods. They were pretty far away, but I decided to go look for them. We found each other at about the same time, and the bucks were quite close. With my 500mm lens I was unable to fit one whole animal in a frame. I needed them to be farther away, and I also needed to get the sun behind me, so I began to loop around them when they moved off.

They settled into a meadow on the edge of which I once photographed a Coyote pup that had been left by itself near its den. I don't know if these bucks sensed any presence other than my own, but eventually they walked to the edge of the woods opposite the direction of their gaze.

The bucks were curious about the strange interloper with the three-legged friend (Mr. Gitzo) and walked toward me a couple of times without quite trusting me enough to come close enough scare me.

This buck was the daredevil of the two. He stopped to have his portrait taken before continuing on his way, but the second buck detoured more deeply into the woods when he reached the same point on the trail. Is this a great-looking animal, or what.

Fall colors on a fallen Coast Live Oak leaf.

I left the deer to their browsing and walked back across the meadow in the opposite direction, soon entering the woods. As dry and downright hot as it was, I was pleasantly surprised to find a few small tufts of yellow mushrooms. Continuing my ramble on a well-used game trail I was soon running parallel to Cataract Creek. I crossed the barely flowing stream to join the human trail and was soon back at Rock Spring.

* * *

New 'Branch

2011-10-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

* * *

The calm wind I'd experienced in the morning at Corte Madera Marsh had become quite agitated by the time low tide arrived in the late afternoon at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. I went out in shorts and surf-walkers so I could get wet, but wore a fleece jacket to keep from freezing. I arrived a bit too early to explore the reef, so my attention was drawn instead to the intricate beauty of the sandy beach.

It wasn't long after I finally stepped onto the reef that I spotted a species of nudibranch (Diaulula sandiegensis) I'd never seen before. I was excited and frustrated because of the wind blowing over the surface of the water and making it nearly impossible to focus my lens.

I picked up a new book, Eastern Pacific Nudibranchs, since the last time I photographed the tidepools, and that's how I was able to identify this guy. The book, by David W. Behrens and Alicia Hermosillo, is full of gorgeous photos and information. The 'branch above feeds on sponges, but I think it was just looking for someplace to hide and wait out the low tide when I found it.

Here's a beat-up looking Bat Star snuggling in the seaweed. I wonder if the unusual coloration is from wear-and-tear, old age (same thing!), or what. It appeared to be completely at rest, not moving around or even dangling its little tube feet in the pool.

This Keyhole Limpet was another first for me. I'd never seen one out and about before, nor had I known that some limpets are bigger than their shells.

The Sunburst Anemone appears to beckon with its beautiful, poisonous tentacles. As for me, I can never resist a close approach.

Low tide was hitting right around sundown, and it was a Friday, so there weren't any docents on the reef who might have been able to tell me something about this little Orange Sea Anemone. I wondered if it's a separate species, or simply an unusually colored Aggregating Anemone.

As the sun sank toward the horizon I stopped to photograph a close-up of this Sea Urchin shell (or "test"). And speaking of tough conditions on the reef, I heard a loud whump! behind me as I was hunkered down over the test. I turned around and saw a guy who'd slipped and gone down hard on his back. A moment later I noticed the upside-down infant right next to him getting an up-close-and-personal reef experience. Both were merely shaken up, but they spent several minutes laying on the reef to recover.

I kept an eye on them for a while to make sure they were all right, and he was soon joined by his wife and more kids who'd missed the big moment. Meanwhile, the tide had gone out considerably since my arrival, and I was excited to see that the tidepools full of Purple Sea Urchins were now exposed. Like the anemones, I can never resist photographing these guys, and I enjoy trying to find a pleasing composition in the random chaos of their surroundings.

This Sunflower Star was not displaying its need for speed when I encountered it at the very edge of the exposed tidal zone (where the pool was still quite sloshy, making it impossible to get a sharp photo). I've only been fortunate enough to see one on the hunt once before, and it's stunning to see how fast they move over their underwater "landscape." This guy, however, appeared to be settling in for the low tide's duration.

Besides all those rays (I count 23), the startling thing about this sea star was its apparent inner glow. It looks as if there's a light on underneath it. Or maybe it's an alien spacecraft disguised as a marine organism. It'd be fun to appear at a Halloween party in a costume like this....

As the sun began to sink below the horizon I looked around for a vantage point from which I could make one last photo. When I spotted the Giant Pink Star I hustled over, taking care not to step on creatures or slip and fall. In this shot it looks like the sea is quite far out, and that's what I thought when I was out there. And that's why I was surprised to suddenly find myself being inundated. Luckily the water rose no more than an inch around me.

* * *

Surprises

2011-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

* * *

I'd finished watching a streaming video and didn't feel like reading or going to bed yet, so I turned on the television and started flipping through the channels. Same old, same old. Until I came upon game six of the World Series, where it was the bottom of the ninth inning, with two out and two strikes on the batter. Texas was just one pitch away from winning its first World Series ever. I'm not a sports fan, but that was one exciting baseball game. Sometimes even TV can deliver a nice surprise.

The next morning I headed out to Corte Madera Marsh to see if I could find the American White Pelicans I remembered seeing when I drove by a couple of weeks ago. It was a beautiful fog-free morning and all, and I did find some pelicans, but I felt a little bit like I was just going through the motions: situated right next to the Hwy. 101 freeway, a visit to the marsh is something of an urban nature outing.

A few nice photo opportunities presented themselves, including pelican fly-overs and trying to catch a squawking Great Egret as it flew by my position in the pickleweed patch.

In addition to several great egrets, many of their smaller cousins, the Snowy Egrets, were also standing by, preening and resting, and maybe waiting for the tide to come in and create a bit of a hunting opportunity.

The morning started off calm, leaving glassy conditions on the pond.

Here's Corte Madera Marsh with Mt. Tam's East Peak in the background. Most of the smaller white birds are American Avocets. At this point I thought I was about done for the morning. I figured I might drive out around the north side of Mt. Tam again, but I didn't really have anything in mind. I'd had a little excitement earlier, seeing an interesting bird whose identity I was unsure about, but in very poor lighting conditions.

I took a little detour to try my luck with the strange bird, this time keeping the sun at my back. Sure enough, I saw it again, the kind of surprise that comes with no expectations and spices up what might otherwise have been a fairly routine outing.

My first California Clapper Rail!

The California subspecies of clapper rail is a rare bird, as its Latin name implies: Rallus longirostris obsoletus. I felt lucky to see it, and even luckier to be able to observe it for quite a while as it hunted along the muddy banks of a slough.

Finally, before I left, I spent a little time watching several

Greater Yellowlegs hunting as the tide came in.

* * *

The Gray Canadians

2011-10-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

* * *

It was a gray morning with the gray Canadians, the Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis), out along the Woodbridge Ecological Reserve. A bit of a white-knuckle drive through fog-cloaked pre-dawn darkness on SR-12 got me there at about 6:30 in the morning. I needn't have arrived so early.

It was too dark to shoot, even under the light of the waning crescent moon.

Ironically, the fog became even more dense as the sun came up.

There wasn't much I could do in the fog, so I motored a few miles up I-5 to the Cosumnes River Preserve. They didn't have fog, but they didn't have cranes either, so my visit was brief.

More Canadians, eh?

Watch out, Blue Angels....

As the cranes rose up en masse, I thought, "Not my fault! I didn't do it!" It always puts a shiver on my spine when the giant flocks noisily rise up. I was so awed by the sudden uprising that I nearly forgot to fire off a few frames.

As the fog began to burn away, Mount Diablo could be seen in the distance.

White bird, black hole.

Lots of shotguns blasting away in the distance. I guess I bagged my limit for the day. No food for the table, but plenty for the soul.

It was a joy to hang out with the cranes again this year -- a short visit to be sure, but enough to refill the inspiration tank.

* * *

Fall Color

2011-10-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

* * *

Kokanee Salmon make their annual fall pilgrimage up

Taylor Creek at Lake Tahoe.

After a leisurely start to the day, Pam and I were out of San Francisco and admiring Lake Tahoe's spawning salmon by a little after 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

It was warm and sunny, a beautiful day to admire the feisty fish who carried on as if numerous Mallards weren't munching down the roe as fast as it could be produced.

Last year there was a barrier along the creek where black bears could easily catch the salmon. It was quite a spectacle and seemed like a really bad idea, and I suspect the salmon were overjoyed that the barrier is gone this year.

(Click to view at 1200 pixels.)

We drove from Lake Tahoe to Mono Lake, where I'd hoped to photograph the moonrise. I should have been there the day before, though. This time the moon came up too long after sunset. Maybe I'll time it right next time.

After camping overnight in nearby Lee Vining Canyon we made a short drive the next morning to the June Lake Loop & Fall Color Photography Festival. I drove past a long string of photographers shooting by the side of the road and didn't pull over to join the fray until I found a spot with no one else there. We had that spot to ourselves for about ten minutes.

(Click to view at 1200 pixels.)

The June Lake Loop was nice, but there was some very good color up toward Parker Lake, just south of the vista shown above. It wasn't along a road or trail, though, and I didn't want to drag Pam on a hike that probably only a photographer would have loved. I'll have to save a visit to that spot for another time.

We broke camp at our first site in the lower part of the canyon and set up for our second night at Big Bend Campground just below the power station near the top of the canyon. It would have been great if not for the large group of "neighbors" howling and singing until after one o'clock in the morning.

I didn't want to do a lot of driving to check out all the Eastern Sierra hotspots, so we spent much of our "fall foliage" tour right there in Lee Vining Canyon.

This was probably my favorite spot, with the Equisetum growing thick as grass beneath golden-leaved Aspen trees.

We sat by the creek awhile, and I made these images (above and below) without getting out of my camp chair.

The shot above is actually near the right end of a 20-image panorama I shot which my computer, using Photoshop CS5, was unable to stitch together. This photo was stitched from the last five of the images.

Momentarily deterred by this lack of computing power, I returned to the job later and stitched four separate panoramas with five images each, then stitched those four panoramas into a single image. After all that, I wasn't too crazy about the panorama, but seeing the whole thing made it easier to crop out a 16x24 section of it.

(Click image to view at 1200 pixels.)

But I still wanted to see what it would look like as a traditional panorama, so I stitched the two images above, then cropped and resized to get an 18x54-inch pano.

(Click image to view at 1200 pixels.)

The Big Bend Campground is up in those woods, in the valley behind the golden Rabbit Brush. Despite all the times I've driven Tioga Road, this was the first time I ever took a side trip up Lee Vining Canyon. I'd often wondered what the camping was like down there, and now I know that it's pretty typical: RV generators add the industrial touch, and raucous groups ignore the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. quiet time.

It would have been nice to have another day or two to take a closer look at the Dunderberg Meadow area which showed some promise from Conway Summit on I-395, but it was not to be. We headed home through Yosemite, stopping briefly at this little jewel of a lake near Olmsted Point before making a quick pass through Yosemite Valley.

Down along the Merced River we found evidence

of the season's powerful floodwaters.

I couldn't resist making the obligatory El Capitan photo from the riverbank. My 12-24mm lens on a D300s wasn't wide enough to make this image, so I photographed it in stages. Point down, click. Point up a little, click again. Blend when done. It's basically a vertical panorama.

After making the obligatory photo, I snapped another shot looking up the river from nearly the same spot. You gotta love Yosemite that way. Beautiful images -- and sometimes just funny ones -- seem everywhere to abound.

* * *

Gone Camping

2011-10-12T19:08:00.000-07:00

* * *

Gone camping, all right, but I'll be occupying the Eastern Sierras, not Oakland. This was the scene in a made-to-order meadow in front of City Hall when I passed through this afternoon on my way to grab a swim at the local gym. It must be quite a scene out there after sundown....

* * *