Salt Point State Park

Interesting Tafoni details:

Point Reyes Lighthouse and Inverness Shipwreck Again

A day trip to Point Reyes Lighthouse to see if I could walk up the steps (equivalent to a 30 story building) afterwards without stopping. It turns out I could - just. As usual there was a lot of fog at the point, but I managed to capture a little bit of blue.

On the way back I stopped to get another shot of the boat wreck at Inverness that I shot 18 months ago. This time the tide was out so I was able to get closer to the boat.

Sunflowers

I drove up to Yolo County California, the farming areas between Davis and Woodland, where I had been told I would find fields of sunflowers. Normally you would find fields of sunflowers, but this year there is a drought. I actually saw field after field of browned, dried up, sorry looking sunflower failures. The ground was dried up clay as hard as concrete. This is the reality of the drought for the farmers in this part of California - dead fields and millions of lost cash crop dollars. Very sad.

After about an hour, and half a dozen such fields, I decided to give up and come home. Just as I was about to turn onto the highway, I saw this field of yellow to my left. This farmer had irrigation. What a difference water makes.

The Eye of Sauron

From Lord of the Rings:

Actually it's just the cat. Looks pretty evil though.Taken with the Olympus 45mm F1.8 attached to FOTGA macro extension tubes.

Mono Lake / Eastern Sierra

On my way to Death Valley I stopped one night at Mono Lake. Here are a couple shot at dawn, using the the Lee big stopper to slow the exposure. 

The filter lets through 1/1000 of the light allowing for the ten second exposures I used here. It also gives a blue cast, most of which can be removed in post if you shoot raw. I left some of it in though as I like the look.

This one was shot on the route to DV. It's from where the 136 meets the 395. That's Mount Whitney beyond the trees.

Death Valley #2

Three more from my Death Valley trip. First, Badwater Basin:

The Mesquite Sand Dunes just before sunset:

 Zabrinski Point at sunrise. This is known as "The Manifold" for obvious reasons:

See the rest of my Death Valley Pictures.

Death Valley #1 - Cottonball Basin Sunrise

I just got back from a three day trip to Death Valley in California (with a one night layover at Mono Lake). Four mornings of getting up at 5am went surprisingly quickly. With over 500 photos and spectacular scenery it's almost hard to know where to start, so I'm just going to post a few at a time from each location. These were sunrise shots at the Cottonball Basin.