california

This was from a week ago at Joshua Tree. While Arch Rock is super cool, I find the area around it to be very fascinating with lot's of cool shaped rocks and formations. This is one of them, with Arch Rock basically being behind the rocks on the left side of the photo for reference. The Milky...

This was from a few nights ago as I ran out to Joshua Tree to shoot the Milky Way. The moon was setting about 2:30 so that gave me until 4:30 to get some nice moon shots. I ended up spending a majority of that time helping someone else out, so I couldn't focus too much on shooting the Milky Way...

A continuation of the surprise I was given on my recent trip a few days ago to Joshua Tree. I had gone out there solely with the intent to shoot the Milky Way that night, but I was totally surprised by the welcome I got from the wildflowers in the upper desert. So here are a couple of more...

So I ran out to Joshua Tree National Park on Thursday mainly to shoot the Milky Way. The moon was getting larger and staying out longer, but there was going to be a 2 hour window from 2:30am to 4:30am where the Milky Way would still be very bright. What I didn't expect was wildflowers to be out...

These are from Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve in California last Friday. There are several trails that go through and around the preserve. This area is on the backside of the Reserve after the sun had started to pop out. I went a little tighter on these as a change of pace, and went for more...

My favorite local park is the Sunol Regional Wilderness, about 15 miles from home. I went for a hike yesterday, checking out our rare green hills. This was one scene I liked, with a nice oak, some good clouds, and a few flowers (NorCal style). Any thoughts are welcome.

This is after the sun popped up and really helping the 360 degree wildflower color go nuclear in intensity in Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve in California the other day. As a reminder the wind was blowing and it had been totally overcast for most of the day. One of these is my clear favorite...

I ran out to the Poppy Reserve in Antelope Valley California. I found the Poppies are definitely Popping! :) It was a day looking like it would rain the closer I got there, and when I got within a mile, all of a sudden out of no where the wind picked up and was blowing in the 25 to 30mph range...

This was last night at the Huntington Beach Pier. I almost wasn't able to get in there to run since there was some kind of car show at the large main parking lot and the place was packed. I was able to find parking fortunately closer to the pier since it was almost sunset and people were...

I perhaps should have embraced the almost full moon sooner. I had spent an hour composing so that it was just out of the frame, and by the time I had decided to include it there was a rather large cloud on the one side. But still, the end result seemed pretty cool. This was out at Joshua Tree...

It was truly amazing to see the southern end of Joshua Tree so completely carpeted with wildflowers, so much so I drove out there 3 times to shoot them with this being from the final evening last Sunday. The wildflowers were so thick that even as I took extreme care as I moved about in them my...

It's sure been a windy place in California, at least in SoCal over the last week. I ran to the beach a couple of nights last week as the clouds were looking cool. In this case the tide wasn't supposed to be this high, but the extreme high winds seemed to be pushing the waves closer to shore and...

Sunny clued me in on this spot, it's up in the San Gabriel Mountains here in Southern California. I was shocked to hear we had wild Bald Eagles in SoCal. I am surrounded basically by hundreds of miles of houses and buildings here, so I would never have guessed we had a pair of Bald Eagles so...

Even though I had just gotten back from 3 weeks on the road in Colorado and New Mexico when I saw that the rain could stop just before sunset, I took the chance and ran down to Little Corona Beach here in SoCal. I got there 30 minutes before sunset and I was still using the windshield wipers on...

Who knew that pigeons could look so cool? At least they looked cool to me flying around at Bolsa Chica Wetlands. It was hard because they tended to fly as a flock so it was hard to get compositions with them that I thought looked well, on top of their moving around all over the place pretty...

I believe this is a Great Egret. I shot it in Bolsa Chica Wetlands a few days ago with my Nikon D850 and the Tamron 150-600mm G2. The sun was getting low and I liked how it was backlighting some of the feathers and giving them a golden glow. All comments are welcome, Jim

In Little Corona in Corona Del Mar by Newport Beach in California, as the sun dipped below the horizon this really cool crepuscular display occurred. It doesn't seem to show up here as well as I saw it in person, I moved from where I was shooting to center the display in the gap between the sea...

As I mentioned in another post while I was shooting Saturday evening at Little Corona in Corona Del Mar California, there was this guy flying his drone right in front of me for most of the duration of the sunset. Besides the constant buzzing and the occasional flying the drone within 10 feet of...

I was at Bolsa Chica Wildlife Preserve shooting birds and testing out different things with the new Tamron 150-600mm lens. I did shoot lot's of nameless birds. I had gotten there late in the afternoon so there wasn't much time before the sun was setting towards the horizon. As I looked over to...