Backcountry

While my wife was shopping in the visitor center for the Pelindaba Lavender Farm on San Juan Island, JCO and I found some time to explore and play around in the grounds and take some photographs. The lavender was nice, but I actually found the the old wooden fence and natural back country growth around the perimeter of the farm more photographically appealing.   

Its been really tough photographing JCO at this age.  Whenever the camera is pointed at him he either avoids eye contact, sticks his tongue out, or clowns around in some other silly way. The challenge is to time the shutter in between his antics or while his is distracted by something behind me or off in the distance. Another way I've found to be somewhat successful is to play along with his game and laugh along with him. In those moments of mutual laughter, I'll try to keep steady and grab a shot.

After spending the so much time lately shooting pictures with my iPhone, I finally decided to drag out my old and heavy (relatively speaking) DSLR and lug it around on this day. Although I've been quite happy with the results of the iPhone, and the ease of capturing, editing and uploading the images with it, I had almost forgotten the advantages of a larger sensor and telephoto lens has over any point-and-shoot or cell phone cameras; mainly, depth of field. Even though the pictures above were shot with a "slow" Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, I'm able to still get decent bokeh when racking out to >70mm, getting closer to the subject, and keeping the subject farther from the background.

Stainless

Stainless steel wine fermenters from a Temecula Valley winery. 

Light and Simple

Not sure why, but this lamp on a wall in Old Town, San Diego struck me as an interesting subject. I originally gave it a treatment that accentuated the texture of the stucco wall (see below), but decided to rather tone the texture down with a filter with more negative clarity.  The stucco texture is still there, but doesn't detract from the lamp, in my opinion.

Foilage and fungus

Textures from the forests of Costa Rica. When photographing in the lush forests in Costa Rica, one of the biggest challenges I found was isolate subjects and keep the composition clean.  Close ups seemed to be the answer. Once I made that mental switch, the forest floor became a target-rich environment.

Spinning

Long exposures at Magic Mountain.

Damas Mangroves

While in the Quepos/Manuel Antonio area of Costa Rica, we took a boat tour of the mangrove swamps. Between the monkey, bird, reptile, and anteater sightings, I found the imagery of the old, abandoned boats among the mangrove trees appealing. I'm not sure why. Perhaps they give a sense of levity as they exist between the trees and their reflections on the water and a sense of timelessness because of there weathered surfaces.

Arenal, Costa Rica

 

Back from a family vacation in Costa Rica.  Our first destination was the area of Arenal, with its prominent active volcano. We stayed at the Arenal Observatory Lodge, who's grounds and rooms offer breathtaking views of the nearly perfectly shaped cinder cone volcano. The grounds also have a vast network of well maintained hiking trails through lush vegetation, farmland, hanging bridges, streams and waterfalls. There is also a museum about the volcano on-site that houses a seismograph that you can monitor some of the many small eruptions that occasionally occur throughout the day.