Thursday, December 20, 2012
Annas in Flight

This is another shot of one of the beautiful Anna's hummingbirds I was following around Valley Hills Nursery in Carmel. It looks like a beautiful spring day, but a beautiful nursery can make any day look like a beautiful spring day in California.

Saturday, December 15, 2012
Thoughtful Hummer

This little guy was actually as interested in me as I was in him. He flew around a bit and kept coming back to this spot. As I moved closer and closer every few shots, he would tilt his head back and forth seemingly trying to see what I was up to. Even at rest he was graceful and beautiful.

Thursday, December 6, 2012
Nectar Sample

This is another shot of my friend from the Carmel Nursery. This is after he got bored with me. He watched me for a while, tilting his head back and forth, and when he decided I was safe or maybe not very interesting, he decided to make the rounds to his favorite flowers. He was so graceful as he hovered from flower to flower.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Taking Flight

This weekend between rainstorms, I had the great pleasure of wandering around a beautiful nursery in Carmel California. Valley Hills Nursery is one of my favorite spots to visit when I'm in the area, and not only for thier plants. They always have a very friendly Hummingbird population, this weekend they seemed to be even more cooperative than usual. This beauty was actually almost hamming it up for me, he seemed as curious about me as I was about him.

Monday, July 16, 2012
Cosmos Honey Bee

A Honey Bee on a cosmos flower at a beautiful spot in Carmel Valley.

Sunday, November 20, 2011
Iridescent Hummer

This guy was pretty suspicious of me. There was really no way for me to easily get much closer to him, but he was not taking any chances. He was tilting his head back and forth trying to size me up, which was actually great since it flashed his beautiful feathers every time he moved.

Thursday, September 18, 2008
Mallow in the Rain

Another shot from the back yard. This is our Sea Tree Mallow. Zoe pointed these flowers out to me on an early morning vacation walk in monterey. (She was a good dog!) Once we got home from the trip we found this Mallow, a small tree at the time, at a local nursery and brought a little piece of our vacation home.

Saturday, December 1, 2007
Painted Orchids

This is another one of my low depth of field experiments. I really like the way it helps you focus on one flower, but you can still see the others fading into the background. The lighting was something special on this one too. It was in a nursuy in Carpenteria, CA. The roof of the building we were in was translucent. It let the sun through, but the light was filtered and beautiful.

Monday, October 22, 2007
Garlic Reflections

In addition to my local Santa Barbara images site I am in the process of doing some self promotion work for my commercial food & restaurant photography. I've always loved photography and I REALLY love food, so I guess it was only a matter of time 'til I made the connection!

Ohhh I just LOVE Garlic!!

Friday, October 19, 2007
Harbor Earth Shadow

I really love this shot and all the others I took along with it. It was a great evening right after a Photography show walking with my dad at the Santa Barbara harbor.

Aside from the beauty of the scene and the great memories it brings back (as most of my photos do for me), I like the science in this shot. If you poke around the photo of the day it's not hard to notice other evidence of the left side of my brain creeping into my photography. In this case, the dark blue near the horizon that slopes upward to the left is what intrigues me. It is actually the shadow of the Earth. As the sun was slipping further below the horizon behind me on my right side, it still lit the atmosphere above me. It is easiest to see this effect looking out over the ocean so there are no hills or even buildings and trees to block it.

BTW, I finally got back to the photo of the day thanks to a really nice post the other day from Mary Ann. Always wonderful to know people are enjoying my creativity. One of the many things I was doing in my absence was working on a new gallery site of my Santa Barbara photos... www.ImagesOfSantaBarbara.com.

Thanks again Mary Ann!

Sunday, May 13, 2007
Purple Geranium Flowers

This looks like a field of purple flowers. But they are actually all on the same plant. This is the top of a "Geranium maderense" it is a wild plant that has big leaves on long stems with a large spherical inflorescence of these beautiful purple flowers (as you can see at the right).

The plant is a biennial, the first year you only see the interesting leaves. The flowers (and resulting seeds) come the second year. After that the plant usually dies. Fortunately, it re-seeds easily and can even have pups come up from the roots.

Unfortunately this guy was not for sale, he was just the display plant. But I did bring home his little brother. :-D This, and a VERY cool Ginkgo bonsai tree are the reasons I waited to get yesterday's cactus at the succulent show!

Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Batik Bearded Iris

This Iris has not bloomed for years. It took us a while to get it settled in to our new back yard. This is the first blossom of what looks like will be a busy spring for it. The last time it bloomed, I got a great photo that was part of my first solo show at the Santa Barbara Public Library.

We are very happy to see it coming around, they are not the easiest things to find. For several years you could not buy them anywhere.

I always thought the little fuzzy area looked like a yellow caterpillar.

Thursday, February 22, 2007
Backlit Morning Daisy

Even in the middle of winter there are beautiful flowers to photograph here. That's not to say it is not cold. The day after I took this was the windiest coldest day of the winter so far. But fortunately the ocean seems to keep things just warm enough for things to survive. Even if we get frost it is usually mild and patchy.

Aside from these tough daisies, the Calla Lilies are starting to really put on a show now too. Some of our spring bulbs are already coming up that we planted in the fall. So many beautiful subjects! So little time!

Thursday, February 15, 2007
Mallow After the Rain

This was taken right after yesterday's photo of the day. The rain had just stopped and the sun came out beautifully. This shot is looking up at a couple of exceptionally tall branches of our small potted Mallow tree. The drops of water are actually on the other side, the top of the flower. It would probably be a good idea for us to prune it. But it blooms constantly and if we had pruned it I would not have had the opportunity to get this shot.

Sunday, January 21, 2007
Still Sleeping

When normal people go on vacation they sleep in. Then you have me and my hound dog. Miss hound seems to like to get up early when we are in a different place. Maybe because she knows that is when I get some of my best pictures. Or, maybe she's excited to go out and smell what there is to smell. (She has long since sniffed all there is to sniff at home.) At any rate, she woofs and since she has me wrapped around her cute little paw, we get up and go out. When this started I was not very happy about it, but I have learned that there will usually be a number of beautiful images that reveal themselves during our morning constitutional.

I would write more, but Zoe is sitting by the door right now. She is trying to remind me there is more to life than sitting in front of the strange glowing, humming box.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Mallow

A couple of years ago when we were in Monterey for my birthday The Hound walked me by this beautiful bush. When we got home my wife found one at Home Depot and we have it in the back yard now. Now that we are visiting Monterey again I had to see if my favorite spots were still there. As you can see it is still as happy as ever, even with the strange weather these days!

Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Daisy in the Morning Dew

This is another photo credit for The Hound. There is no other reason I would be up early taking a walk when everything is cold and dew covered. She always leads me to nice photos though so she is worth it.

Saturday, December 9, 2006
Costa Rican Butterfly Vine

Now there's somthin' ya don't see every day! Well, unless you have one of these vines in your front yard.

This one is growing in a garden center near Santa Barbara. It's pretty wild!

Friday, September 22, 2006
Rebel Cyclamen

A few months ago we put some new plants in near our front door. Among them were a few white Cyclamen and one purple one. The Purple one was right next to this white plant but it did not seem to do so well. There is not much left of it above ground But it has managed to make it's presence known. (they are tubers, so hopefully it is still down there)

These plants are interesting and beautiful anyway. The flower is actually pointing down and the petals turn around and point up. (called "reflexed petals") But this little addition has made this one of the more interesting plants in the front yard at the moment!

Thursday, July 20, 2006
Serendipity

It is really interesting to me to see the motion in this shot. The bee is actually leaning into the turn like a bike rider.

I was framing up the shot of the flower when the bee flew in from the left. She made a beautiful arc into the photo and I hit the shutter release as many times as I could!

Friday, April 28, 2006
Purple Coral Pea

We actually went looking for these pretty little flowers. My wife remembered seeing them but she was not sure where. We found them, of all places, climbing the side of one of the grocery stores we go to regularly.

They are called Purple Coral Peas and "violacea" means violet but apparently they come in pink and white too.

Saturday, April 22, 2006
Little Purple Mums

Our next-door neighbors have a little girl that is just old enough to wander down the sidewalk with her grandpa. On a number of occasions we have seen her wander over to these flowers and examine them very closely. She seems to really appreciate the structure of them. I have never seen her grab them like you would expect of a small child. She seems to really love them and I can see why! Maybe she'll be a photographer when she grows up!

They were not the easiest things to identify though. They seem to be some type of mum, closest we could find was Chrysanthemum frutescens 'Vancouver'.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Spring Starflower

Another shot from Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens. I like the way the petals on this flower alternate, three on top and three on the bottom. Looking it up online was quite an adventure, apparently it has about five different names. [Tristagma uniflorum] [Milla uniflora] [Triteleia uniflora] [Brodiaea uniflora]

Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Purple Calla Lilies

It's been cloudy and rainy lately but there was some nice sun this weekend. Was a good time to see all the flowers out for spring. These were in a big display at Home Depot. That place is almost like a botanical garden.