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.

Comments

Family Life Of Red Foxes

The family life of a red fox is a joy to observe. The kits are very much like puppies, jumping on and chasing each other almost the entire day. Of particular interest is how the Vixens teach the kits to eventually become self sufficient around their food supply. There are two vixen in this family unit, the mother and grandmother, and I can not tell them apart. The kits you see here are still suckling from their mother. But by this time in their young lives she is well on the way introducing them to game. In the beginning she will stash the game, encouraging the kits to forage for it. The next step in the process you can see here, where she brings game directly to the kits. Here she is dropping a rabbit for them. At this stage in the teaching she has killed the rabbit. The next stage will be for her to bring them live game. The little black one grabs the rabbit and makes a run for it getting away from his siblings. A...

Red Foxes

I had never experienced anything quite like photographing red foxes. I was with them nearly all day, for three days in a row. I was so taken by them, especially the way they related to each other. Above is the dog fox, the adult male of the group, with one of his offsrping, a female kit fox. In this family group there were two vixen, one was the grandmother, the other the mother of three kits. The adult females attended the den all day with one or the other going off to hunt, returning with food for the kits. Missing most of the day was the dog fox and when he would return the kits all gravitated to him. All of the kits seemed to adore the dog fox but the moments between him and his daughter were especially touching. What a gorgeous, photogenic animal he is. When I returned a year later he was still there and there was a whole new brood of kits. I am hoping to return again this year having missed last year due to a bout ...

Art Display At The Center For Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa

The Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa, has a wonderful program that encourages artist members to display their work. The work is hung in the Social Hall and typically has about twenty pieces hanging for two months at a time. On March 1rst I will be hanging several images taken in Iceland, along with some wildlife images, including foxes, coyotes, eagles and kites. I will also have some paintings by my mother and two of my own. I am pretty excited about this showing. One of the pictures I will have in the show is of Godafoss, a beautiful waterfall in Iceland. When I first saw pictures of this waterfall I knew I wanted to go to Iceland to take pictures of it. This composition required gettin into some very cold water.

Notes To My Mother

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