A few shots from Crescent Bay Park in Laguna Beach, it was a heavily overcast/foggy day. A bit of drizzle. All shot with a Zeiss 21mm f2.8, the first two single images were taken using a Lee Filter big stopper. I need to experiment more with this filter. The panorama was taken without filters, and is 5 shots in portrait orientation.
An image of star trails taken in the Alabama Hills in the Eastern Sierra. The curved star trails are the edges closer to the two poles, and in the center the trails are more or less straight the closer to the ecliptic plane. This is a stack of 99 exposures of 30 seconds each using a 14mm f2.8 at f2.8. Towards the end of the run the moon was coming up and that is what illuminated the mountain range. The tall peak just to the left of center is Lone Pine Peak, and off to the right slightly of center is Mt. Whitney. Mt Whitney is actually a taller peak but it is further back in distance relative to where I took the images. The lights down at the bottom just right of center is the Mt. Whitney Portal area, Mt. Whitney is just above those lights.
I used to go fairly often to the Huntington Library, located in San Marino California, just below Pasadena. However lately I have only been able to go every so often, and in fact I had not been there for about a year or more, until now. I had a chance to go with my friend Greg, who got us in early in the morning, before the general public. Being able to get in early is really nice, first the earlier the better for me, and with the summer “June Gloom” going on made for some nice diffuse overcast light, which is great for flowers. The gardens always have a lot of flowers and they are very well maintained, so a target rich environment! I was hoping that the ponds would have some nice lotus blooming. I really miss the large lotus blooms at Echo Park lake, it really is too bad that people saw fit to steal the roots and not let others enjoy them, and I know they also had a disease issue, but it really was a combination of the two factors. The bloom there was really spectacular and now there is nothing, I sure hope that it can be restored at some point. Anyways back to the Huntington, there was some pink lotus flowers at the lower pond and some yellow lotus at the Chinese Garden, so that was really great. Also I can’t miss a chance to visit the large cactus garden there, always a treat to get some abstracts of the different cacti. So here are some shot from around the Huntington Library gardens. Hope you enjoy them.
