Wildflowers On The North Coast

Cliff-Side Delights

This is one of those years where super blooms are being spotted all over California. But it doesn't take a super bloom year to have great flower discoveries on the North Coast. These images were taken in 2021 in the middle of the drought and the pandemic.

With a little exploring you will find flowers on many of the cliffs. These seaside daisies are pretty easy to find and they are often found right on the edge of a cliff making a great foreground object for you photographers. Just be very careful as with all of the rain we have had the cliffs will be especially vulnerable this year. Stay back a safe distance and enjoy.

All of these images were taken in early June. You will find that some locations are in constant change so that what you see one week will be dramatically different a week later. This is especially true at Stump Beach where you can walk on the trail and view gorgeous ocean scenes as well as an array of different flowers. On the south end there is a good size patch of yellow lupins and in the middle of the meadow there is a growing display of blue iris.

A short distance up the road (to the north) from Stump Beach is the Kruse Rhododendron State Natural Reserve. This is well worth a visit. The flowers are not as abundant as they were some years ago, but the setting is a real treat and the flowers are as beautiful as ever. The area along the coast from Fort Ross to Gualala has a lot of places were you can park and walk to locations along the shore. Most have fairly well marked paths. With a little luck you may find an undiscovered scene you can call your own!

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.

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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...

Notes To My Mother

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