Rediscovering Sonoma County, Part I

Silent Witness

Last October I ended a 45 years career in counseling. I closed the door to my office and three days later jumped in an airplane and went to Eastern Utah for two weeks. It was a rush, a total high. When I came back to Santa Rosa, I was only just beginning to get with the new program of being retired. It has some major differences as you might guess. Like on Sunday afternoon you don’t have to be thinking of the week ahead, you can actually relax and coast into Monday.

For the first time ever I do not have obligations first thing in the morning. So I have been spending early morning hours out and about in Sonoma County, rediscovering it’s beauty and charm, and discovering for the first time places I had never seen before, at least not in this early morning light.

First Light

This was taken along Highway One at the beginning of civil twilight twilight. This is an area of farmland. Lots of dairies, green pastures and farm houses. I was captivated by the lights of the solitary ranch house on the hill, imagining it marked the beginning of someone’s day.

Saint Teresa of Avila

I have seen the Church in Bodega innumerable times but never in the kind of light on this morning. Because it was illuminated almost entirely by the light of the moon, it required a long exposure of 10 seconds, a wide aperture of 4.5 and an ISO setting of 800. This captured the light on the Church and also brought out the color in the clouds and sky which were almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

Sunrise to the East

The sky before sunrise does puts on an amazing color show. This is looking East from a ridge near Dillon Beach.

Sunrise Over Dillon Beach

This is looking West from the same ridge about ten minutes after the previous image. I fell in love with this ranch house with its white fence, pond and green pastures. Tomales Bay, the northern tip of Point Reyes and the Pacific Ocean as backdrop create quite a setting.

Sunrise

The sun is just beginning to wash over the farm as the day begins.

If you enjoyed these images and would like to see more of Bob's fine art landscape photography click here to visit his web site.

Aurora Borealis - May 10, 2024, Last Installment.

On Friday afternoon, May 10, 2024, Jan and I were getting coffee in a very small somewhat crowded coffee shop in downtown Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We overheard people talking about the Northern Lights showing up that night. And thus began one of the most exciting nights of photography in my life. If you have read my three previous blog posts you have seen some of the spectacular color displays we were able to capture. In these images I have included some foreground information to put the color displays in perspective. The picture above was taken to the northeast of the Trumpeter property where they house the pygmy goats and alpacas. Looking to the northwest you can see the moon low on the horizon. The building shown here has an additional suite that is separate from the main B&B house.. This image is looking due east showin the stable for the animals. Another view to the east showing the building with the separate ...

The Aurora Borealis, May 10, 2024

This last May, my wife, Jan, and I were on vacation in the San Juan Islands, WA. We were there for a week staying at the Trumpeter Inn, a B&B on San Juan Island. Mid way through our stay we heard there was to be a Northern Lights display and that we would likely be able to see it since we were at a latitude just north of Victoria, BC. The excitement was immediate. The conditions were just right as the sky was cloudless and the moon was in its crescent phase and would be low on the horizon (and therefore not overly bright) during the expected good viewing time between 10 pm and 2 am. The image above was taken that night and is what I was expecting to see, a green Aurora. Little did we know what was to come! Early on the was the first hint that something special was about to happen as color in addition to green began to show. I found this very exciting as I had seen green auroras before but never one with the purple/blue colors an...

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