Janet asked me to go to the Del Mar Fair Grounds Bonsai gathering. I could not go, so I made this for her because she is my longest time friend.
We have to keep our friends. 😉
See it here: http://flic.kr/p/Vmedjk
This particular flower just asked to kept for a hundred thousand years. So, I took several pictures of it, and this is the one I kept.
See it here: http://flic.kr/p/UGKR1p
This is just one picture taken on the patio just a few minutes ago
The Gathering Tree
by Jack Foster Mancilla
The small LensLord™ gallery on Flickr
The Full LensLord™ Gallery
I love this place in the canyon. It had always appeared to me as a place to gather; gather friends, gather performers, or just gather any group of people in the shade of a tree, sitdown and have a beer, and a very good conversation.
The other day, I mentioned that Macros were everywhere. And I used a piece of moss that I cut out of the planter that the Plumeria was in, in the back yard.
Well. … I placed that moss in a little plastic container, and added water. “Why?” You ask. Well, I do not really know. … I like Moss. I was hoping to see it get really green. I just like all life and did not want t throw it away. … I would put it back where I got it, but I had not done that yet. …
So, as Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise. Surprise.” When I looked, this morning there was a little hairy surprise in the moss. … So I shot this image. … When you look at the moth under normal light, it is much closer to the color of the moist ground around the moss. It is only because of the reflectivity of the moth, and the transparency of the water on the surrounding dirt/moss combination that channels the light away from the camera, that the moth stands out so brightly in this image.
Anyway. … The serendipity of unforseen consequences oftentimes adds an opportunity. … Take advantage of the opportunities.
Tiny little Moss Heads
by Jack Foster Mancilla
The small LensLord™ gallery on Flickr
The Full LensLord™ Gallery
I received a very fine complement on one of my flower macros. Actually, the complement used one macro image to refer to the quality of almost all my flower images. Thank you Vern. … Vern’s Link.
Back to today. 😉
After thinking about my response to his complement where I said something like, “Flowers are all over the place. You do not have to drive anywhere, and waste gas, nor are there other hidden costs for keeping your photo practice up-to-date.” … Or something like that.
I thought I might illustrate that statement. So I did. … That little image, of the tiny moss heads, was shot a couple hours ago. … The moss is from a potted plant in the back yard. The little instructional image following, also includes some extra information. … 🙂 Ok, not much extra information, but it does show how I got the background.
Small White, in a field of Purple and Deep Red
[by Jack Foster Mancilla
a photo by LensLord on Flickr.
An early morning walk through the neighborhood, brought this blooming to my eyes.
Later, in the life cycle of this flower, it would be very different, the reds would be gone, replaced by something more muted. The purples would have lost the richness, and become very blue. And the single white, would be joined by a whole flock of white siblings.
 |
| From a walk on Fiesta Island. |
This is what the plant looks when it is a little older. You will need to click on the image to see a larger version. 🙂
Sometimes things are hidden.
San Diego has many beautiful areas in which one can play with a camera. Some of the places are hidden, like under the trees in Tecolote Canyon. Some of them are out in the open, for all to see, like Fiesta Island.
Fiesta Island is in the middle of Mission Bay. People play Over-The-Line there. They go water-skiing, kayaking, watch the Thunder Boats, walk their dogs. People do all kinds of things there.
Mostly people do those things on the edges of Fiesta Island, next to the water. After all, is that not why you go to an island in Mission Bay, to play on a beach, and in the water?
But on the interior of the island, things are quite different. Here is a link to a bunch of images on Fiesta Island. Most of these images have nothing to do with the water.
And then, we have the image of the Jimson Weed. It was hidden under the yellow flowers, on the little-traveled interior of Fiesta Island.
Some of the first, easily noticed, spring flowers are the Silver Lupins that pop up. … They are mostly noticeable because they are purple/blue, and stand out from the normally dusty colors of Southern California.
This plant jumped up on a firebreak along Tecolote Canyon after our most recent rain.
Lupinus albifrons, Silver lupine, white-leaf bush lupine, or evergreen lupine, is a species of lupine (lupin). It is native to California and Oregon, where it grows along the coast and in dry and open meadows, prairies, and forest clearings. It is a member of several plant communities, including coastal sage scrub, chaparral, northern coastal scrub, foothill woodland, and yellow pine forest.
Whenever I look at a flower, I try to see its entire life. Really, I also try to see the life cycle of the plant in my head. It helps me look at what is in front of my eyes. And it makes me happy.
For example, this image is of what? What will it become, and how long does the plant live? Is it an annual? A perennial?
This small flower, not much larger than your thumbnail is part a perennial. The plant lives through many seasons. As a fact of note, the first season you plant this, it is not much useful for bearing fruit. But, after that first year, it is a wonderful addition to your garden.
Just picture yourself, walking out to your garden with half a bowl of vanilla ice cream, and then reaching down and picking yourself a dozen fine strawberries to toss into that bowl. … Ah, those summer days are on the way.
O.K. It is not really a thousand flowers. … But, as soon as I saw this cactus, and got close enough to see that it was flowers all across the crown, I thought, “Holy smokes! That’s a thousand flowers.” … 😉 No, really, I thought that.
But it is beautiful. …
One thing about Macros that bugs many people is the narrow depth of field when you are so close to the subject. … One way to fix that is to shoot many images and pick the focused part of each image and then blend them together. … This image is not really a single image. This image is made from thirty images of differing focus points. …
Pretty cool!
This little flower lives by a surface street on the way towards Tecolote Canyon, a location where I walk my dog quite often.
Someone said that this flower is called a monkey’s paw. I do not know. …. What I do know is the location. … And that location is here. -> On Google Maps.
If you go there, give me a call and I will show you some other arts of Tecolote Canyon. It is a nice walk.
I like people. They are fun. They have a life of their own. And one of the greatest things that I get because I am a photographer is that I get to share some time with people that I like.
This is a friend. We walked around an island with my dog on a nice winter day in San Diego, between the winter rains of January 2011.
We spoke of hopes and desires for our tomorrows, and we spoke of times gone by. We shared a very nice day.
Happy Thanksgiving. I am happy for many fine friends and fine things.
This is a morning Hibiscus flower in the back yard.
I wanted to shoot something for the 10-10-10 day. I got busy doing some other things and did not get to go out into the world and shoot something that illustrated the day.
But, I did have this flower laying around on the tenth day of the tenth month in the 2010th year of the modern calendar. …
So here is my visual ode to that specific day.
Wandering around in the valley, I came across this culvert with its walls covered in colorful graffiti. The colors of the paint contrasting with the luminescent green algae, and the urban location of this image are some of the things that keep bringing me back to this image.
I wonder about the people that painted these walls. Was it practice? Who did they think they were painting this for? It can only be for themselves. Like the walls of caves, long time deserted, this art will stand through time. Here is the heart of man.
I love these shiny balls. Everyone of them is a locus of intellectuality. … In this image, the reflective ball captures, not only the world in a sphere, but the entire universe. In that miniature captured Universe, everything can be held in your hand. If you can hold it in your hand, you can perceive the reality of it.
A few of my friends, and our dog partners, visited Fiesta Island. 😉 All of us had a very nice time in a beautiful section of San Diego.
My dog, Gypsy, and I go there quite often. We have a wonderful time there.
This is a link to a few more Gypsy images
I wanted to invite all of my friends that could make it, down to fiesta island with their dogs so we could do a giant dog shoot. (I will set a date for that soon)
But, June 26, I will be shooting pets for Citibank customers at …
Citibank
2240 Otay Lakes Road
Chula Vista, CA 91915-1003
Phone: 619-216-1251
You might want to check out those kinds of images as well. …
Furry Un-Dogs
Dogs … Really, dogs. 😉
Scales, Feathers, Amphibians, Other Pets
Pets and People, together 🙂
Come on down! 😉
I have a fun time with my niece when she chooses to go with me to the canyon to walk with my dog, Gypsy. We have a wonderful time down there. Gypsy chases lizards, never catches them, but she has fun. Lena runs ahead, then lags behind, continually looking, laughing, chattering away, having a great time. …
Me, I have a great time always. … But, I get to capture some images of the really good times.
One time, when this tree was maintained, it lived, and was beautiful.
As time goes, the humans that tended this tree died, moved on, found other interests, and so the tree was left in the desert where it had been placed by men. It was left to die. And so it died.
One weekday, I had a hair to drive to Gila Bend and see an old motel. I found this tree, and reveled in its continued beauty. But, it is, indeed, a shadow of itself.
As I was driving down the east grade of Palomar Mountain with a couple friends and we saw this pink and yellow tinge way across the lake. Where is this? This sentence is linked to a map of the location.
I was so excited to see this place that I neglected to secure the car keys. … We looked around all over this set of hills, every location that I had laid down in the grass to shoot something. We looked for over and hour. I was about to call San Diego and have someone drive up the second set of keys. … Luckily, Jeffrey found the keys on the ground, right next to the driver’s door.
So, you should also take an eagle-eyed-friend along.
I have been watching the Garlic bloom outside the kitchen window. It has been blooming for a while, and I have been watching it, …
And, today was the day I wanted to capture. I do not know what to say about this image, really. To me, this is Garlic, Sweet Garlic. And I think it is beautiful.
In this image, we are way east in California, a long way from the mountains. The sun has set in the valley where we are shooting from. The dark line, towards the horizon, is the place where the air below is in shadow, and the air above is still in sunlight. If you look at the larger image, you can see streaks of the mountains shadows in the air.
Definitely a nice place to watch the sun go down. … And looook at all the cotton.
Jenivive and I went around and shot some images. There were so many images I enjoy out of the day.
I really love all the images we shot while clambering around on the huge stack of bailed hay. The color of her hair just takes my breath away.
I really look forward to our next chance to do something like this again.
This is an interesting image to me. … It evokes loneliness, and yet it is a colony of birds as well.
They are protected here in their lonely home on the lake. Land based predators cannot reach them through the shallows.
For me, sitting on the shore, they are unreachable, except by my long lens.
