Seeds of thought

Each Saturday I get up at 7 a.m. and run 2.5 miles. I then harness the dog and walk around the neighborhood. When we return to the house I exchange the dog for my camera and head back to the locations I scouted with the dog.

For the last three weeks I've taken photos of seed pods in a bush. Only today did I get something interesting enough to use. A cloudless day and some morning sun makes all the difference.

The sun shining through the "teeth" of this dinosaur was what made me stop and look today.


After so many weeks of cloudy lighting, it is a joy to have such stark contrast.

The contrast and the composition combined with the neutral background make this my favorite shot today.

Day 66 of 365

Daphne's visit

A friend of The Wife's brought clippings from her garden to our house. These are daphne flowers.




It's late and I'm fading fast. The Kid is driving to Los Angeles, and The Wife is already asleep. Two of the three cats are on the foot of our bed. I'm feeling a little guilty about the lack of effort I'm putting in here. But only a little. Mostly I'm tired.

Day 65 of 365

For the birds

Meanwhile, back at the river . . .

The leader and the clown. Even in the animal kingdom, some guys never grow up.

Orientation. Shift the frame of reference and the mind plays perception games. I see the skulls of cattle that always signaled danger when found on the trail in cowboy movies of my youth.

I know less about birds than I do about flowers. (We're getting really close to the problem caused when you try to divide by zero.) I need some here help putting a name to these birds. Comments welcome. They had the oddest, metallic squawk.


Visions of speed while standing still.

And then I get lucky. I must have shot a dozen photos attempting to catch these guys in flight. It's not the sharpest image, but it works for me.

Day 64 of 365

Playing Hooky

Had to visit a client yesterday, and when I saw those huge, fluffy clouds I couldn't bring myself to go back home to my office. I parked my car on Tribute Road near Business 80 and walked to the railroad tracks.

The trestles that burned a couple of years ago have been replaced with steel beams.

I took a path off the bike trail that leads to the river.

The reflection of the bridge gave whole new meaning to the phrase water color.

The clouds and setting sun, the mirror worlds -- this was the payoff for playing hooky.

Day 63 of 365

The Great Pumpkin

“You shall go to the ball Cinderella. But remember! You must leave at midnight. That is when my spell ends. Your coach will turn back into a pumpkin and the horses will become mice again. You will be dressed in rags and wearing clogs instead of these glass slippers! Do you understand?”

So maybe my last-minute post last night was a bit obscure. Let me explain.

I had been working on finishing up a web-based application that prints out a voucher for a pet spay and neuter program and lost track of the time. Well, actually lost track of this blog. It was only when I closed down my computer at 11:55 p.m. and was chatting with The Wife about my work that I realized -- Oops! I haven't posted anything.

Today I bring you the photos I was going to bring you yesterday which were actually taken the day before.



Assuming the 9th of each month is my anniversary, that makes today a two-month milestone.

A toast: Here's hoping I can keep the milestones from becoming millstones.

And now it's time to put the nose to the grindstone . . .

Day 62 of 365

Fear of pumpkins

Cinderella had a wonderful time at the ball until she heard the first stroke of midnight! She remembered what the fairy had said, and without a word of goodbye she slipped from the Prince’s arms and ran down the steps. As she ran she lost one of her slippers, but not for a moment did she dream of stopping to pick it up! If the last stroke of midnight were to sound... oh... what a disaster that would be! Out she fled and vanished into the night.

Day 61 of 365

More Narcissistic Flowering

My neighbor's daffodil patch -- a tiny plot of land next to the sidewalk and between the driveway and the neighbor's split-rail fence -- is filling up with blooms.

I've been so focused on macro-images in the past that I've ignored the broader landscape.

Shooting with the 50mm lens also gives me a better depth of field, even on a cloudy day like this morning.

I particularly like this composition. It offers both single beauty and wider context.

I had the colors still set from a website design I had been working (see it here) when I "stamped" this out of Photoshop. Instant art.

Day 60 of 365

Polar coordinating

OK. I managed to go 25 days without posting a photo mangled with Photoshop's polar coordinates filter. That's not to say I haven't been toying with them.

Here's the polar coordinate of a cowhand.

And this started with seagulls and just fell apart as it spun about on its polar coordinates.

But this is so far gone I can't recall where it began.

Day 59 of 365

Ruins

Not far from my home are some ruins. Well, OK, it's just a wall that's fallen apart on a lot that is overgrown with vines. Yes, it's just neglected, but it has this Old-World charm about its dereliction.

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1950s in a prototypical postwar suburban neighborhood that sprouted overnight in what had been for years citrus orchards.

Spotted here and there among the identical tract homes were the original farm houses. Each day I walked past one of those old houses on my way to and from school. The property was bordered by a chain link fence completely covered in vines. And the house, set back far from the street, could only be glimpsed between the forest of every kind of tree one could imagine -- big and small, deciduous and evergreen, fruit and ornamental. The owner of the property each year had planted a tree in the front yard. Now, more than 50 years later, the yard had become an enchanted forest inhabited by a really old witch who peeked out from behind her curtains watching for a hapless Hansel and Gretel to venture into her yard, as the story was told by the children as they hurried past.

That's what I think about when I walk past these ruins.

Day 58 of 365

A cat's life

Enough of the flower porn. I know that the 14 people who subscribe to this blog's feed prefer cat photos. So here you go.

Our black cat, Shadow, has finally mastered the cat door. Shadow is just this side of being feral and the scaredy-cat made three passes past the window to summon me before he could summon enough courage to enter the front door.

Our lone female cat loves to scratch. When she was a kitten I would play with her until my hands looked like a botched suicide. As an old spinster she has a quick temper. Petting is OK and then it is not. If you are not quick, she'll claw you.

Cardiel is the family climber. Or, more to the point, jumper.

He has this need to be on top.

Not that he stays, mind you. It's just jump up, walk around, jump down. Go somewhere else. Do stuff. A cat's life.

Day 57 of 365

N.S.F.W.

"Is there something more constructive that you could do?" asked The Wife when I showed her these photos.





Who originated the saying, "We're all pink on the inside."

Of course, the pink thing only works for people, I suppose.

Day 56 of 365

Birds and the bees, starting with the bees

A three-foot by three-foot planter around a tree in a neighbor's front yard is a riot of color. A riot.

Said The Flower to The Bee, sorry, honey, I haven't shaved my legs.

Crepe paper and kiwi. Well, that's what it looks like. Nothing looks real after I've run the colors through my Photoshop blender.

So I'm thinking there must be stigma in a flattop over your style when trying to look your best for those flighty pollinators. (See this explanation.)

"A heptagram or septegram is a seven-pointed star drawn with seven straight strokes." "In general, a heptagram is any self-intersecting heptagon." And, most important, "The artist/band Marilyn Manson has used the heptagram in several of his logos and on the official website." This explains a lot.

Don Johnson and the lady in the bar. Do you suppose anyone else remembers the Don Johnson shadow look? The Wife doubts it.

Which brings me to another point: I don't know beans about flowers. I would love to have someone help by identifying the flowers I post. Anonymous comments gladly accepted.

Day 55 of 365

Hard drive scare

So I'm sitting here. I need to scan some photos for a website I'm designing but the computer connected to the scanner is occupied copying 45.4GB at 17.8MB/second from one external drive to another. I don't want to disturb the magic that makes all of this possible.

Earlier tonight The Kid called me on my cell phone. He was in his art studio/bedroom and I was watching a Bones episode on DVD. Not sure when this family stopped being able to get up and walk from one end of the house to the other. The Wife does the same thing. She'll call me from the bedroom when I'm in the office. She'd only have to raise her voice slightly to talk to me but the phone is more reliable.

The Kid said something like "I can't connect to the Maxtor" and I knew immediately this was a big deal. He has years of film footage stored on that drive. And no backup.

"Can't help you now," I told The Kid. "Maybe in a half-hour."

It's been one of those days. One of my employers had a pair of "You MUST do this NOW" jobs and another spent a half-hour trying to sell me a distributorship for a vitamin drink while his wife looked for the FTP username and password for his web server. And all this time I had a deadline looming for still another employer.

When the Bones episode finished, all nicely wrapped up with no loose ends to flap about, I walked into Richard's bedroom and found four of his skate buddies looking very worried.

The Kid told me that he had been working with the drive and then it disconnected.

I looked at the drive. The power light was dim but not off. I tried cycling the power button and disconnected everything. It was while I had the power adapter disconnected that I noticed the power supply block light was on when disconnected but turned off when the power supply was plugged into the external drive.

This is all too much detail. I'm even boring myself. I apologize. I'll speed to the end. I have an even more ancient external drive -- this from the days when 76GB was enormous -- that I figured I could put The Kid's hard drive in for a quick test.

Sure enough, when I removed The Kid's hard drive from its external case and plugged it into my other external drive enclosure it worked fine. I decided to give the drive a test by copying folder called backupraw, and here I am with a couple of minutes left before I can get back to work.

While I wait, I'll toss in a few holdover flower shots.

Here you go:





Got to get back to work now.

Day 54 of 365