Notes To My Mother

If you are looking for wildflowers and would like to avoid the crowds I would like to share with you a location my good friend, Will Bakx, and I found in 2016. Like 2023, 2016 was anticipated to be a good year for a super bloom. We didn't want the crowds at the more popular places so we headed for the foothills east of Fresno, California. Not having a particular destination in mind for our photography expedition, we just wandered for awhile, finding patches of blooms here and there but nothing like a super bloom. In a moment of inspiration we approached the mailman on his rural delivery. He know just the place and gave us directions. Pine Flat Lake was our new destination and what a delight it turned out to be. We were on a road that traverses the north side of the lake. With the first scene of flowers our jaws dropped with excitement. Then we would turn the corner and another even more beautiful scene would unfold. We stayed that night in Clovis and were up early the next...

We were just getting ready to lower the two man kayak into the Estero Americano when I glanced up and saw the color beginning to form on the eastern horizon. Drop everything and grab your camera! The light will be very fleeting and if you are not ready, camera, tripod, settings - all ready to go - chances are you will miss the splendor. This light had just come on and it was gone within five or six minutes at the most. But what a great beginning to our first adventure down the Estero Americano! Paddling down this narrow waterway you are treated to a unique perspective on the ranches in the area. It of course is very quiet with only the sounds of nature and an occasional cow bleating.  And then you come across these unusual sights that make you wonder just what was here fifty or a hundred years ago. Like this fence sticking out over the estero, as if it were a fence to nowhere. Yet it must have served a definite purpose back in the day before the wa...

When I began wanting to know more about photography a friend of mine told me it would be a good practice to look at lots of photographs. So I bought gads of photography magazines, perused the internet, and read books with great images in them. One evening I stumbled upon a picture of Bass Harbor Head and knew it was definitely a place I needed to visit.  Now, I believe that every place in the world is special, it’s just that some places are a little more special. One such place is Bass Harbor Head, a lighthouse on the Coast of Maine, not far from Bar Harbor. I had never been to New England so going to get an image of this lighthouse was doubly exciting. I booked a trip in early October to be there when the trees were in color and made my way to the lighthouse. The first night I was there it was high tide.  In the best of conditions there is not a lot of room for photographers to shoot this location, but at high tide the situation can get pretty dicey. Most photographe...

One afternoon late in the day I was driving through Sebastopol on highway 12. The sun was low on the horizon, well into the golden hour, when I glanced to my left. I couldn’t have seen it for more than a fraction of a second, but it was unmistakable and it has been etched in my memory ever since. White blossoms set back in the dark of a thicket, framed by the trees and illuminated by the setting sun. Only the blossoms were lit, everything else was dark and undiscernable. I hesitated, should I stop, run back and see if I could get a shot of it? I had my camera, but the traffic, and where to pull off?  In the time it took me to debate it I was well down the road and I let opportunity slip away.  I have returned on subsequent occasions always looking to see if that scene would reappear. I am sure it has, but never again in my presence. Every time I think of those illuminated blossoms I remind myself, “If you see it, stop and shoot it”, even if I am a mile down the road: ...

About four days into a family vacation in Costa Rica, I grabbed my camera, jumped in the car and headed out alone.  I was told the dirt road ended at the river and that some good photography might be found at the end of it, especially birds, and someone mentioned something about a frog farm. I set off and drove to the end of the road finding a house set back a ways at the very end of the road and on the opposite side I wanted to explore.  I began searching the trees for birds. There was a Macaw high up in the canopy and I was trying to get a clear view of it when a man came over from the house. He spoke no English and I spoke so Spanish. But he knew what I was there for – good images – and he had just the subject. In his hand he held a little Green Costa Rican Tree Frog. As he approached the little frog leapt out of his hand landing on my face just above my cheek and quickly snuggled into my eye socket. I spontaneously handed the camera to the man and he graciou...

There is nothing quite like being with the night for several hours uninterrupted, alone and with no artificial light. When I was shooting stars at 11,000 feet in the White Mountains I stood looking up from sundown to around 3 am. It was exhilarating. At that altitude you see the stars with such clarity and there are so many of them! It is simply awesome. In fact, there were so many stars and they were so bright I could walk around in the dark without a flashlight. When the night got dark enough I turned on my camera and pointed it in the direction I had been gazing for the past hour or so. I set the camera to expose for about 30 seconds. In that amount of time the camera’s sensor picks up considerably more light from the stars than I can see with the naked eye. This is a picture taken looking toward the southern horizon where the center of the Milky Way can be found in the constellation Sagittarius. Look at the tremendous number of stars! These kinds of images are best c...

Why “Notes to My Mother”? My mother was the one person in my life who was always interested in what I was doing, what I had to say, who I was. She was never too busy to listen and take an interest. Never critical, always accepting. Even when I was wrong or misguided, there would still be a gentle interested listener present. Though she has been gone over 6 years, I still get the urge to write or call her, to share an image I am proud of or share my latest adventure to some beautiful place. I know she would love to hear about it. My mother was an artist. She painted most of her life, right up to her passing at the age of 96. When I was 4 years old we lived on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Range. She would take me out to paint with her - she with her easel, me with mine - and we would sit together creating our art. While I gave up on the medium she kept at it. Then, in the year she passed I picked up a digital camera and began my adventure into the world of landscape ph...