The Coy Pond

I love walking up and down this hill

Let me calculate the angle of descent...I think the slope is 7 degrees.

I think I will get really close to the camera and attack it.

The playground has a rock garden too. I love rocks.

Here is my castle. Would you like to see it?

Do I have to lead you by the nose? Come on in!

 A few weeks ago on our trip to Bishop, we took a side trip up to Mammoth. Christy wanted a creative morning so I dropped her off with her accoutrements (folding chair, bug spray, snacks, and painting supplies) up at Lake Mary (up above Mammoth) so she could paint. And paint she did creating a materpiece. She will have to post about that in a different post. While she was soaking up some creative energy I took the boy down to Mammoth in search of a playground/park. And I found one with one of those modern art/new age castles for the kids to play in (or possibly for a philosopher to come up with some deep thoughts… the view was enough to inspire some).  Jarrod played in the playground for about an hour before getting bored, and then tried playing in the castles and running up/down the hill. It is amazing that Jarrod can be entertained with walking up and down a hill for so long. Anyway while he was having fun, I snapped a few pics of him. Hope you enjoy.

Our little boy loves my new flash

I knew he was special, but I didn't realize how special he was.

I think most of you know that I am a photo geek. So when I dropped my flash at the Oregon zoo a few months ago, and it stopped working,  I was really sad. My birthday was the perfect justification for an upgrade, so I spent a $200 on Ebay for my new flash, and so far it is working perfectly. The first couple of days that I had it,  I started playing with it. Jarrod fell in love with it, and wanted it really badly. He is reaching for it in this picture. When we got our new computer we bought the new Photoshop Elements for playing with photos and neither of us had used it before. Christy has been using photoshop for years, and she saw a lens flare on one of the menus. For you non-photo geeks, a lens flare is generally something that you want to avoid in your photos, since it means a bad reflection is hitting your lens (like the sun reflecting off of a chrome bumper right in your eyes). But the more we played with the lens flare, the funnier it looked. I think it is no surprise that our little boy has been wanting our phone for months. I thought he just wanted to talk to me, but maybe he was trying to “phone home”.

I'm not sure if this is a turtle or a tortoise, but it was big!

The red dragonfly was so much bigger than a normal purple one

All aboard

He almost looks like a fighter plane

This was number 2, the second that I saw on that day

Fluffy and prickly thistles

More thistles

This kind of reminds me of a streetlamp

Big thorns!

This is kind of like barbed wire on top of a fence

These are just some pretty flowers I saw blooming. I don't know their name.

Last Friday I had the day off. In the morning I was on kid patrol, but I wanted to take some photos in the afternoon. The problem of course is writer’s block (or photographer’s block). I couldn’t think of a new place to go that I could get to relatively quick and still be able to take some good shots. I have been struggling with this quite a bit. So I asked Christy, and we didn’t come up with a good answer. So rather reluctantly I headed out with my tripod and camera to El Dorado Park Nature Center. I have been going to El Dorado for over a year and taking photos there. It is some place that I go at least once a month if not twice. It is great, and I’ve gotten some great photos there, but it is so familiar. Last year about at this time I took some photos of thistles, which I thought were an unlikely subject, but ended up being one of my best photos  last year. So  anyway last week I went out and the thistles were out, but I didn’t bring my camera.

I went out with low expectations on Friday, but I was so impressed. On my trip I found not one but two red dragonflies. I saw one of them for the first time in May, but because of our hard drive on our other computer and the transfer process, I lost the photos. The dragonflies are amazingly striking and big. I kept my distance and used a zoom lens that was all the way zoomed at 300 mm. I also happened to see a regular dragonfly and it was about 1/2 to 1/3 the size. Though the length was maybe only 50% bigger.  My trip also involved a close sighting of a Red shouldered hawk (I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo though, booo!!), a large tortoise, a rabbit, another hawk perching up in a tree, and two large blue herons. I got some good shots of the thistles, seen above (and got sunburnt for my trouble). Anyway all told it was my best day at the park in months, and I was a little sad to leave to come home. Hope you enjoy the photos.

Reminds me of a simple bouquet

Lots of explosions! Nice!Patriotic colors!

Looks kind of like a lollipop

This looks like a spider on top of a melting ice cream cone. Maybe?

I could see this as a company logo. Maybe I could sell it?

Saturday of course was the 4th of July, and for most of the day I had to work. Work was alright, but no one likes working on a Saturday, and much less the 4th of July. A few days before the 4th I had an idea of photgraphing fireworks. For some reason I had never  thought about photographing a fireworks show until I got an e-mail this week with tips on how to do this. I thought this was a great idea and nothing that I’ve ever done. Also we live really close (about 1 mile away) from the military base that hosts an annual show.  No hassles or hours waiting to find parking, just a nice walk. It was so much fun. Not only being able to see the show (which was amazing), but capturing it on film added something to my satisfaction. 

For those photo buffs out there, I set my ISO to 200, the aperture to F8 and turned my shutter to bulb mode. The recommendation was to shoot the shots for 5 to 15 seconds depending on  how much you want going on. I put my camera on a tripod and hooked up my remote switch, so that I didn’t have to hold the shutter down  and move the camera while taking the shot. All of the fireworks came up from about the same place so I really didn’t have to move my camera much. I tried a couple of different positions for fun. Anyway it was really easy, and I was amazed at how much fun it was.

I think that firework shows are so cool, and that I forget how cool they are. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen one so the “Wow Factor!” was fresh. And it was even more so since I was taking really nice photos (well I think so, hope you do too).

Unfortunately Christy didn’t get to share in the fun! Someone had to stay home with the sleeping boy. But she is hooked on the Twilight books, and for a Saturday night fun, we rented the movie. She enjoyed it and didn’t feel that deprived, especially since she stopped to watch some of the show by stepping outside.

Anyway hope you enjoy!

I want to pick some strawberries!

Look daddy! I've got one!

They are really good...but I guess you can share.

Sorry daddy, this one is mine. Thanks mommy!

Who needs strawberries, when you've got yogurt!

Hah! I know that yogurt on my face makes me look extra dignified, despite what anyone tells me.

Yogurt and strawberry fields; it was a good day!

In late March, Christy and I were aching to go on a road trip. We love going to Santa Barbara and before Jarrod was born we went there a couple times a year for mini road trips. Oxnard was always on the way, and we were excited for strawberries one year and stopped there to pick them up. There are tons of fields in Oxnard, but we realized pretty quickly after stopping to pick up fresh grown strawberries there, that they weren’t all that good. Quite a disappointment.

Anyway we decided we would love some fresh picked strawberries and we didn’t want to go all the way to Oxnard, especially for subpar strawberries. So Tanaka Farms in Irvine was the answer. We couldn’t really take Jarrod to the U-pick lot, since he was too little and squirmy, but the kids play area with kid size strawberry pots were perfect. And the strawberries, were amazing!

We thought we were so smart big hats, and SPF 50 sunscreen to spare. Christy and Jarrod had a great time. Jarrod explored every pot and hay bail (my goodness, I didn’t realize that a baby could love a hose so much), and Christy enjoyed watching him and eating fresh strawberries. I was the miserable one, lubing myself with so much sunscreen that it got in my eyes. I could hardly see, and my eyes kept watering. I had fun taking some photos of Jarrod, though. Anyway hope you enjoy.

Well since the park is only 5 minutes from home, why wouldn’t I go take some photos on a late winter afternoon, when nature deficit disorder is calling me. The light was pretty dark on this afternoon and my lenses weren’t fast enough most of the time, but it was still a lot of fun.

But I heard all sorts of great stories on the trail. One man told me that he had seen a juvenile bald eagle earlier in the week. Another family told me that they had been in the nature center and there was a photo there of an albatross lifting a fish out of the lake, with a bald eagle below him, about to steal his fish. I did not pick the right moment to see the bald eagle, but I was looking really hard for him. I was fortunate enough to see an albatross though, perched at the top of a tree just before sunset (Wow! They are a really big bird, almost intimidatingly big)

Anyway the fall color (which in Long Beach turns out to be Winter Color) was pretty nice and made a nice reflection. And of course the ducks were out in force and putting on a bit of a show. These ducks are quite the tame variety, the kind that will come right up to you almost on your foot wondering if you are going to feed him. Even if this isn’t the wildest sort of park, it is still really nice and only a few minutes from. Hope you enjoy the photos.

So this weekend Christy, Jarrod and I decided it would be fun to have a snow day. We just had a bunch of local rain and snow in the mountains. And with the mountains only an hour and a half away I could hear them beckoning to me. Having decided on our destination being the town of Crestline and a 1 mile hike to a small waterfall with a heart shaped rock, we were set. The only problem was the local temperature was hovering about 30 degrees. This is of course was too cold for both Jarrod and Christy. Having dropped them off in town, I headed off for my trailhead. When I reached the trail I discovered was covered in about a foot of snow. In fact the only way that I found the trailhead is that some trailblazing people had already made the hike and I could see their footprints (6 inches deep) in the snow.

But it was a joy trudging through the snow on a crisp morning. And surprisingly I was still singing after I slipped into the creek, trying feverishly to protect my camera. Maybe it was the scent of the Incense Cedars or the vanilla scent of the Jeffery Pine. The tree cover though made the canyon pretty dark, so the light wasn’t great for photos, but it was still fun. And the icicles were way cool.

The rest of the trip which was to go to the local ski resort at Wrightwood and check out the shops, build a snowman and get lunch, was pretty much unsuccessful. It seems that snow is such a yearly novelty that everyone in LA wants to bring the kids up to the mountains and try it out. So the traffic was a mess, and after an hour and a half of wading through this, and it was still 5 miles away we turned back and went home. But it was still fun. A nice day trip. Hope you enjoy the photos.

We had no idea how Jarrod would do with his presents, but he did great! He really enjoyed the paper, and I helped him a lot less than I thought I would. He didn’t really understand the concept of putting down an unwrapped gift in order to open another one, but thankfully he was easily distracted. :)

“YES!! I have always wanted one of these!!
Thanks Mommy and Daddy!”

“I think it will be easiest to open this one
if I climb on top of it first!”

“Yay! Different paper! Thanks Grammy!”

“Please don’t take my Christmas paper away from me.
It’s my favorite present of the whole bunch!”

“I was totally right, climbing on this one
was the best idea ever! I love this present!

…You mean there’s something inside it too? SWEET!”

“Why are you staring? Is there something on my face?”

“Mmmm… donuts!”

“Awesome! Books are always my favorite presents!”

****

Some recent Jarrod stats, from/since his 9-month appointment:
30 inches (that was actually our measurement)
23.6 pounds (that was more than two weeks ago, so I’m thinking we’re closer to 24 by now)
19 inches around his gigantic noggin

He’s a healthy, happy, sweet baby who just got his first tooth today! He’s pulling himself up to stand all the time, and has been cruising for awhile but really got the hang of it tonight. All of a sudden he took off and was zooming around at top speed, giggling all the while.

He is such a joy, we just love him so much!! What a special gift we have received!

We hope you all had a great Christmas!

So this Thanksgiving we spent with my family in my parents new house in Bishop. It is an amazingly beautiful place. We had a nice time there despite both Jarrod and I fighting off colds and Christy having a gimpy back. It was a definite time of feasting, relaxing, and watching the kids play. We were both a little sorry to leave.

I also found some time to go and have a little fun taking photos. The first picture is my first experience trying a star trail photo. Since I wasn’t really set up to do a really long exposure, I did about as long as I felt like my battery would last (30 minutes). It actually could have gone longer, but I didn’t want to lose the photo. When I took the photo it was really pitch dark outside if you can imagine, so the photo isn’t exactly how the scene looked to the naked eye. That is one of the reasons that I like it so much since it is a scene that you couldn’t really see. I actually painted the car into the photo by using a flashlight for about 10 seconds during the exposure, lighting it up. If I could retake it, I think that I would try another 10 minutes on the exposure and move the car over slightly to the right so it doesn’t obscure the mountain. Anyway I thought it was pretty fun to do.

The other photos are from the road (395) taking time to set up a field (which we nicknamed Christy Field) with fresh snow on the peaks in the background. The other photo of the field in front of the large peak is from an area just outside of Bishop called the Buttermilks, which is climber’s paradise, with tons of granite boulders to scale to your heart’s content. Since I was taking care of Jarrod while Christy was busy painting I was in no position to go climbing. Ah but next time that would be fun. Instead I was drinking in the late afternoon light and the amazing peaks. I found a shallow field of tall grass that was just adjacent to one of the rock formations and it worked pretty well for my shot. I loved taking pictures, but next time I want to try rock scaling as well.

The lake is Convict Lake, which was named after some escaped convicts who fled from the law and hung out around the lake before they got caught. Christy and I went here about 2-3 years ago during the fall and took some great fall foliage photos here. The place is a bit of a resort, but I counted no more than 2-3 people there in late November. Maybe I should publish some PR photos for them for the winter travel season?

And of course Jarrod’s first experience in the snow was a little rocky, but he warmed up to it after we took a shopping excursion up in Mammoth. He didn’t really like having a cold butt. (Who could blame him?)

Anyway hope you all enjoy!