California's Central Coast

It's a gorgeous place. It seduced Henry Miller, lured in Jack Kerouac, and has bewitched generations of travelers with its dangerously beautiful foggy coastal cliffs and its rugged canyons brimming with towering red and green redwood forests. Stephanie and I go there from time to time to hike and unwind; we enjoyed camping there last weekend to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. The old cliché "pictures can't convey the beauty..." applies to Big Sur.

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

Pfeiffer Beach

Sunset in the ubiquitous fog

McWay Falls

Oh no you didn't...

Infinite elephant seals

That rock has been dealing with this for a thousand years.

Yes, I took a picture of my camera taking a picture. Who knows how far down the rabbit hole goes?

Good fences make good neighbors?

Pfeiffer Arch

No Professional Photographers Allowed

This morning I decided to have some camera fun, so I went to the local university's botanic gardens. There are signs all over the place telling us there are no professional photographers allowed, per University of California policy. Well, I guess they haven't gotten the memo yet... the definition of "professional photographer" has gotten pretty slippery these days. Not having lights or models or even a tripod with me, I went on in and shot. I was more or less the only person there anyway. But I do have a new policy here at home: no UC regents allowed.

European honeybee

Gulf fritillary

Datura, also know as loco weed or jimson weed

Prickly pear

Busy bees at a cactus flower

At the Fair

A visit to the Los Angeles County Fair. I decided to do a little something different there. Often I eschew black and white photography because I really value good color; monotone seems needlessly crippled. There are better ways to simplify a scene and emphasize essential shapes and tones. Cutting out the color information can seem stilted and contrived to me. But, sometimes I ignore myself.

Here are a few shots.

Strut Your Mutt Los Angeles

I was fortunate yesterday to attend Best Friends Animal Society's  fundraiser, "Strut Your Mutt Los Angeles." I was asked to shoot the event for California State Parks, who was hosting it at one of their parks. Helping animals is a great cause, very close to home. We have three dogs and two cats, all rescues, and would have more if we could. I've only gone through a few of the raw photos so far, but here are a few.

Think Small!

This labor day weekend I decided to take some pictures of true laborers... the ants. Nothing seems to work harder or more consistently than Harvester Ants, Pogonomyrmex barbarous. I found these ants in a wild desert place, and I hope you enjoy the very tiny details on these extreme macro photographs.

Bellyflower

These little guys are the size of a lentil. I can't help shooting them every time I see them hiking in the desert. I mean, when I'm hiking. The flowers are not hiking.

Communication With Compensation

I was delighted to provide image licenses to several new clients in June. It's a delight not just because it helps pay the bills, but also because it's gratifying to know that these little things I do to communicate can also help other people communicate as well. In its most basic essence, I think photography is simply a variety of communication; it's very dense, pliable, sometimes visceral and almost always extremely efficient. If strangers or even companies can use a photo to help communicate something of their own, then the photo must be a little broader in scope than merely personal. It means on the level of communication, the photo is a success.

Here's a selection of some of the licenses to new clients for June. I won't blog about who licensed what every single month, but I did want to highlight some licenses from time to time:

"Trio," a picture of Stephanie, Obie, and Cassie was licensed by Hughes Leahy Karlikovic, a Saint Louis ad agency.

"Desert Signpost," a picture of Stephanie being curious on a remote road in Desert Center, California, was licensed by a Dutch energy company called NUON.

Stanford Business Magazine licensed this fisheye image of wildflowers from Point Lobos, California.

"Immanent," taken in the Mojave north of Joshua Tree National Park, was grabbed by Styria Multimedia gmbh, a magazine publisher in Austria; as they say so beautifully, Die Styria Multi Media GmbH & Co KG ist eines der größten Österreichischen Magazinverlage mit Sitz in Wien und Heimat rund einer Million österreichischer Leserinnen und Leser. So a million readers. Cool.

Two Million Views!

Some time last week I crossed two million views on my Flickr pages. That's a 2 followed by six zeroes. 2 x 10 to the sixth power. 2,000,000. It's far less than a bazillion, but greatly more than a couple score. If views were simoleons, it would be a lot of simoleons. As a count of eyeballs, it approaches 4,000,000, assuming eyeballs mostly come in pairs.

It's gratifying that there has been this much interest over the last few years, and humbling to realize that it's not even a shadow of the interest that some photographers muster.

Still, I take it as a sign that I'm heading in the right direction as I continue to develop my craft and strive to visually eff the ineffable as well as I possibly can.

If you are one of the people who has visited my Flickr pages in the past, maybe even faved and commented a photo or two, thank you! I appreciate you!

Aerie. Salton Sea, California.

Ah, Face Time

The stuff of science fiction. Did you imagine, even 10 years ago, that we'd be casually doing Jeston's-type stuff like this? The kids jumped out of the swimming pool to spend a little face time with their parents (who are 5,000 miles away) while granddad holds the iPad. Next up: flying cars from Tesla?

Ghost Town on the Beach

South of Newport Beach on Orange County's opulent Pacific coast, right on the beach, lies a gorgeous little ghost town of summer cottages. In some of the most expensive real estate in the country you can find about 18 or so beautiful little rotting houses, boarded up and condemned.

The cottages were built in the 1930s for move industry people and have since fallen into abandonment and disrepair.

The State of California bought a three mile stretch of beach -- called Crystal Cove -- and made it into a State Park, so everyone can visit. They also began fully restoring these cottages to their prewar glory. Half of them in the south side of the park are restored and can be rented by the public for a vacation stay.

When the funding comes, the rest will be restored. In the meantime, we have the best of both worlds: a quaint beach community restored to nostalgic perfection on the south side, and a creepy, moving reminder of the unstoppable passage of time on the north side.