The first photograph is of Cathedral Rock in Sedona. I had hiked up to the top of Cathedral Rock via Oak Creek and was standing there admiring the view when a crow swooped by. I frantically grabbed at my camera to take its picture but by then it was heading somewhere else. I was disappointed but it was only after I was going through my photographs that I realized what I had. The lighting is perfect with the sun going down.
This picture is off the San Diego coast just below the University of San Diego Marine Preserve. I was walking through the rocks during the middle of the day when the light is generally at its worse and took this photograph. The tide was going out but there was still a lot of water in the tide pools and the resulting picture was a lot better than I expected it to be.
This picture was taken in San Diego at Point Loma. It was a cold, windy day--which they probably have a lot of there judging by how the trees are all blown back from the cliffs below. It sort of reminds me of Aruba with how the trees are all shredded on the windward side. I was walking with my head down as the wind whipped by and glanced up and took the picture. As you can tell, I did not stage the photograph at all because I included the sidewalk in the photo and who cares about an ugly sidewalk? I should have walked around the lighthouse and found an angle without the road, etc, but it was windy, my hands were in my pockets and I was more concerned about the cold than composition. But when I looked at the photograph on my computer, I was surprised. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it so I am including it.
This photograph was taken on the way back to Snowflake to Pinetop in the White Mountains of Arizona. The sun was going down and I was driving west and I looked at the car window at the island of Ponderosa pine in the sea of wildflowers and pulled over. I stuck my camera through the barbed wire fence and snapped the picture, got back in the car and drove home. The high planes of eastern Arizona are full of these islands and every island looks like someone drew a treaty between the grass and the trees. Trees, you can grow here, grass you can grow here and neither shall trespass upon the other until the end of time! The funny thing about it is that there really is no difference between when the grass stops and the trees start so the altitude is not any different. One side of the line does not get any more water or sun. The grass grows here, the trees grow there and you can stand with a foot in each with no problem.
This photograph was taken in San Carlos, Senora Mexico. It was taken from the walkway of the Condo I was staying in at sunset. I did not wait for the perfect moment. I did not stage it. I was walking by to go down to the lobby with my camera, stopped, and took the picture. The only thing I did do was try and minimize any cars or people. I got lucky with the boat and the car right above deer island that caught the fading sun. To the right of Deer Island is a former Club Med that went under after a bad hurricane about 10 years ago. The hurricane ripped the place apart and they gave up and moved out. It eventually opened up again as the Paridisio Hotel and they are slowly fixing everything. You can barely see a bar on the beach on the far right of the photograph just to the right of Deer Island that used to be called the Hurricane Bar and Grill for a number of years before the Paradisio went in and bought them out. It is now called the Soggy Peso Bar. The reason why I know so much about that area is that I park over there to go snorkeling around Deer Island. That island has some of the best snorkeling in the area and I love to go there. On the leeward side, the water is calm and clear and you can gently go through the rocks and tide pools with nary a care. On the windward side, the winds can be fierce, the waves high and you have to be careful not to be swept up and then slammed down on the rocks. The fish are scarce and the visibility is not that great with all the wind and waves but the ride is almost like an amusement park -- if you like risking life and limb.
Deer island is actually all three islands that you can see in the photograph. The small island between the two bigger islands is home to hundreds of pelicans. You snorkel out to the small island on the leeward side then tread water as the waves come through the gap and smash into you like you are going around the Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. Cape Horn has sunk thousands of ships throughout history and is famous for the fury of two oceans coming together. This is similar on a much smaller scale but instead of a boat, you are snorkeling and are so low in the water that with each wave, you go up and up and up and up and then down and down and down and down. The only thing you can hear is the crash of the waves bludgeoning the rock. More than a dozen times I have stopped there and asked myself, do I really want to go into that gap?
