Tag Archives: california

Fall in Berkeley

The UC Botanic Garden in Berkeley was beginning to show the signs of fall when we visited. Located in the hills above Berkeley, the climate is probably quite different to other areas nearby. In a previous trip to the area, the clouds were rolling across the hillside making it cold and damp when it was warm and sunny a short distance away. I imagine this impacts what thrives on the hills. Some of the plants were clearly suited to arid conditions. However, there were signs of the trees turning red and brown as fall set in so obviously they have quite a variety of plants as would befit such a garden.

I don’t know much about plants and so cannot name what we saw. Instead, I shall share a few of the views through the gardens which looked particularly nice given the lower angle of the sun as the time of day and year.

Squirrels

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A steady stream of tourists means the local wildlife gets pretty used to people. Squirrels are usually pretty unfazed by people anyway but in this case they had no fear at all. I enjoyed the interest he seemed to be showing in us so figured a few shots were in order.

Jumping Sea Lions

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There are more sea lions along the coast of 17 Mile Drive than you can shake a stick at. The rocks just offshore are covered in them and the water surrounding the rocks is also pretty full. One thing I hadn’t seen before was just how much the sea lions seemed to enjoy leaping from the water. I have no idea whether they do this for fun or it is practice for something more important – avoiding sharks perhaps? Either way, it was pretty neat.

Unfortunately, they don’t give you a warning about where and when they are going to jump. Consequently, getting a shot was tricky. I got plenty where they were in the frame somewhere but not when I had focus. Consequently, they are a blurry shape off to one side. However, a few times I was pointing in the right direction and managed to catch them while airborne. In the best traditions of fishermen’s tales, the ones I didn’t get were far more dramatic with them further out of the water. You will just have to take my word for it unless you want to go there yourself to see.

I figured a bit of animation was probably worthwhile for some of these too so here is a GIF of one of the leaps.

Clear Lake Pelicans and Other Birds

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It wasn’t just planes that were flying over Clear Lake. While the splash in was the reason for me being there as discussed here, I also saw a lot of bird activity in between the planes. A few were flying along the shore and I got shots as they came by. However, at one point, a huge flock of pelicans appeared along the lake. I have no idea what prompted them all to fly at that time but I am really glad they did. Shooting images of large flocks of birds is sometimes tricky because framing the shot never really gives the impression that seeing them for real does. However, in this case, they were flying in echelon and got to a position where they were perfectly lined up for a photograph. I was surprised and happy in equal measure.

Friday Night Lights

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For someone who grew up in the UK, school sports take on a very different feel in the US. If you played on the high school team for anything where I grew up, the most you could expect of an audience would be a couple of parents and some girlfriends of the players. The US approach is very different with grandstands, floodlights, loads of spectators (both students and families) with bands and cheerleaders. Quite an event. There is catering and you pay to get in. (In the UK, you would have to pay some people to go and even then they probably wouldn’t!)

We decided to check out the local high school in Dublin to see what one of the games would be like. Of course, I took my camera. Shooting high school football is something that I have pondered in the past. For this I just had my stuff in the stands and I didn’t bring anything too large. The team played pretty well. We caught the end of the JV game when we got there and then the varsity team played. It was dark by then and the lights were fine for watching but left a lot to be desired from a shooting perspective. However, this was all just supposed to be some fun so I ramped up the ISO and went with what I could get.

The angles from the stands are not what I would normally want but even so, we had a pretty good line of sight for some of the plays. I wonder whether next year I shall make more of an effort to get there to cover more of the games and actually arrange to shoot from the sidelines.

17 Mile Drive

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It has been a while since I took a trip along 17 Mile Drive. The last time was when we still lived in Chicago and had a vacation in California with some of my family. Since moving to California, we haven’t done this part of the tourist trail around Monterey and Carmel. However, some great friends came to stay with us and that made for a good reason to head down that way.

17 Mile Drive is a lovely area but a bit prone to the weather. While we were there, the sun was out and shining on Monterey itself but a short drive away on this part of the coast and things were a lot more overcast. Such are the vagaries of the weather on the coast. Still, it wasn’t unpleasant and may have kept a few extra tourists away so we had the chance to run along at our own pace and always find somewhere to park when required.

The point for me of visiting the drive is the coastline. Some like to see the amazing houses that can be yours if you have a substantial chunk of change. They do look nice but it is the waves, the rocks and the wildlife that attract me the most. There will be more to come from this place.

Super Moon (?)

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A lot has been made of super moon events recently. While they have garnered a lot of attention, in truth the moon has been only fractionally larger than normal. Catching the moon low to the horizon will magnify it far more than the small change in distance manages. However, I am a sucker for a moon shot so I decided to try and find some high ground nearby to see this thing come up.

What I hadn’t counted on was the residual heat from the day. I stacked up the 500mm with a 1.4x teleconvertor on the tripod and awaited the arrival of the moon. It started to rise up and I really liked the view with the grass of the hillside ahead of me shadowing it as it rose. However, it was clear from looking through the viewfinder that the heat haze was a big problem. I got a few shots but they are not the clearest I have ever managed with the detail being heavily impacted by the shimmer in the atmosphere.

I did shoot a bit of video as well. The reason for the video was that I wanted to show the gentle wisps of cloud that drifted across the face of the moon as it rose. With the long lens combination, the moon actually moves quite quickly across the frame. I thought this looked pretty interesting. What I hadn’t appreciated at the time was that the video also dramatically illustrates the heat haze. Therefore, below is some footage of the moon at various stages of its progression supported by the sound of crickets on the hillside.

Petaluma Cars

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The California climate is certainly good for preserving things. There is no shortage of old cars in the state and many of them are kept in great condition. The fact you can use them year round probably doesn’t discourage the effort to restore them. I suspect only being able to get them out for half of the year and having weather that rots them reduces the incentive for some would be restorers.

A day in Petaluma provided quite a selection of old “motors” to look at. Some were heavily modified vehicles that would have looked interesting whenever you would have seen them. Others were just nicely preserved versions of standard cars that would have gone unnoticed when they were relatively new. Now they all catch your eye and the owners seem to appreciate the cars being appreciated. Plenty of nods and waves were exchanged and raising the camera to my eye resulted in a positive response too.

Fleet Week

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Fleet Week in San Francisco was something I had been looking forward to since moving here. The air display over the bay had looked great in shots I had seen from previous years and that combined with the parade of naval ships sounded good. Sadly, things didn’t quite go to plan. The parade of ships happened but there weren’t very many of them so it was not a huge parade. Then the flying started but, with cloud cover coming in from the Golden Gate, the flying tended to be pushed farther into the bay and away from us.

We did get a couple of V-22s doing a tour of the bay before the real flying display kicked off and the weather improved for Fat Albert’s part of the Blue Angels’ performance. However, the cloud came right back and the Blues did a few orbits above the clouds over us and then gave up. Apparently the weather was better on the following days but I could not be there for that so I missed out. However, I got to spend the day with a couple of friends so it was still better than being at work!

Mustangs Day

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Another day out took me to Vacaville to visit Nut Tree Airport for their Mustangs Day. While I wasn’t planning this as a feature for Global Aviation Resource, I did end up putting together a BloGAR piece for the site about the day out. A slightly less formal write up which is more about my day than the event. If you want to check it out, the link is below.

http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2014/11/14/bloggar-rob-edgcumbe-nut-tree-mustang-days-2014/

If you don’t check that out (please do though), here is a smaller sample of the aircraft that were around that day. I was getting a little silly playing with very slow shutter speeds so some things did not come out as planned but it was fun all the same.