watching the grass grow
Courtney and Gail, friends from Canada, were visiting recently. The holidays are coming so while they were here she sliced and dried a few oranges in our dehydrator. I believe she was interested in their decorative uses – holiday decor, gift tags, potpourri. Although I can appreciate their aesthetics value, my interest in them is purely … read more
This is a story about my continuing refusal to make things easy. I have a perfectly respectable modern kitchen. I have electricity, a blender, a food processor and various other appliances designed to make food preparation faster, easier and considerably less physical. I can press a button and have something chopped, blended, pulverized or otherwise … read more
You may soon be seeing more macro/closeup photography on the website. I got away from it for a while thanks to the summer heat we are experiencing around here. High temps are tough on an old man. But guess what? This is something I can do indoors! It is going to be a bring the … read more
Getting older is a strange experience because nobody warns you that eventually your body will begin filing complaints about things you used to do without even thinking. When I was younger, I could jump out of bed in the morning and immediately go about my business. Now, getting out of bed is a carefully negotiated … read more
There comes a point in a photographer’s life when the question changes from “What camera should I buy?” to “What camera can I actually carry?” For years, I had happily accumulated photography equipment under the assumption that more equipment somehow meant more photography. Bigger cameras, bigger lenses, bigger bags. If a lens weighed about as … read more
For most of my life, photography meant going somewhere. It meant putting a camera in a bag, finding a place worth photographing, and then figuring out how to get myself, the camera, and whatever other equipment I had accumulated to that place. Sometimes it meant walking down a trail, climbing a hill, wandering around a … read more
There was a time when growing marijuana in Southern California seemed almost too easy. We have sunshine, warm temperatures, long growing seasons, and enough dry weather to make plants from wetter parts of the country look at us with envy. Surely, I thought, if people can grow tomatoes here, growing marijuana for medicinal purposes should … read more
For the past thirty years, I have considered myself a landscape photography enthusiast. I have cameras. I have lenses. I have tripods. I have memory cards, camera bags, filters, batteries, cleaning supplies, and enough photography equipment to give the impression that I know what I’m doing. I have also spent thirty years looking at beautiful … read more
Turning a photograph of an inanimate object sideways can reveal a surprisingly different photographic perspective, changing its proportions, silhouette, balance, and relationship to the surrounding space. A subject may look ordinary when photographed from its usual orientation, but rotating it can expose details, contours, textures, and shapes that are easily overlooked. Sideways positioning can also … read more
Using a light table to photograph plants is one of my favorite things. It creates a beautiful backlit effect, especially with leaves, petals, grasses, and other translucent plant material. Placing a leaf or flower directly on the illuminated surface allows light to pass through its veins and delicate structures, revealing details and colors that ordinary … read more
I have probably said it before, but here was a time when I considered myself a serious photographer. Well, semi-serious. I photographed landscapes, flowers, interesting buildings, unusual objects, and occasionally things that appeared to have some artistic significance. I had cameras, lenses, tripods, filters, memory cards, and all the other equipment required to convince myself … read more
I have spent the better part of the last thirty years creating websites, which sounds much more impressive than it actually is. Over that time, I have designed hundreds of them—probably enough to qualify as a minor case study in digital restlessness. I have built sites about photography, travel, hobbies, observations, food, and various other … read more
For most of my photographic life, I assumed that photography required three things: a camera, something worth photographing, and the ability to walk over to it. The first two have never been particularly difficult. The third has become a problem. Arthritis has gradually made standing and walking increasingly difficult, and eventually I had to admit … read more
Purple Fountain Grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’) is what happens when ordinary grass decides it’s tired of being overlooked and shows up wearing purple. With its burgundy blades and fuzzy flower plumes bobbing dramatically in the breeze, it has the unmistakable attitude of a plant that knows it looks good from every angle. It’s also wonderfully … read more
I am a photographer. At least, that’s what I tell people. I am more of a photography enthusiast theses days. I take photographs. Lots of them. I photograph plants, landscapes, buildings, interesting objects, strange things I happen to notice, and occasionally things that probably weren’t nearly as interesting as I thought they were when I … read more
Japanese maple trees (Acer palmatum) contribute to nature by providing habitat, shelter, and food for a variety of insects, birds, and other small wildlife. Their flowers can provide resources for pollinators, while their leaves support certain caterpillars and other plant-eating insects that in turn become food for birds and other animals. The tree’s branching structure … read more
Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) flowers can provide bees with a valuable source of nectar and some pollen, particularly when the plant is flowering abundantly. The fragrant, tubular white-to-yellow flowers attract honey bees, bumble bees, and other pollinators, with the nectar providing carbohydrates that fuel flight and foraging while pollen supplies protein and other nutrients needed … read more
A common honey bee visiting the flowers of a Japanese privet (Ligustrum japonicum) is taking advantage of the plant’s abundant, fragrant clusters of small white flowers, which provide nectar and pollen during the blooming period. As the bee moves from flower to flower, pollen grains adhere to its body and are carried to other flowers, … read more