watching the grass grow
You will soon be seeing more macro/closeup photography on the website. I got away from it for a while because of the summer heat we are experiencing around here. High temps are tough on an old man. But guess what? It is something I can do indoors, too, so it is going to be a
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
Fourteen years ago, we planted a three-gallon Japanese maple in the backyard as part of a new landscape project. At the time, it didn’t look like much. It was basically a skinny little tree in a plastic pot, surrounded by enough optimism on my part to make up for my questionable gardening skills. I remember
I have a perfectly respectable modern kitchen. I have electricity. I have a blender. I have 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 transformed into something edible. And yet I own a molcajete y tejolote.
Orchard Grass (Dactylis glomerata) is primarily valuable as a forage grass for horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. It makes nutritious hay and pasture, grows vigorously in spring, tolerates some shade, and can recover well after cutting. Its dense root system also helps stabilize soil and reduce erosion. It is particularly useful in mixtures with legumes
I quit drinking tequila years ago. Why? Well, there is a point in every evening involving tequila reposado when you stop drinking tequila and tequila starts drinking you. I have apparently found that point more than once. Reposado is particularly dangerous because it tastes so civilized. It has been aged in oak, it is smooth,
Foxtail Fountain Grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides) is one of those plants that seems almost perfectly designed for the Southern California garden. It forms neat, fountain-shaped clumps of green foliage and eventually sends up soft, bottlebrush-like flower heads that sway in even the slightest breeze. It likes sun, tolerates heat, and, once established, doesn’t demand much attention—qualities
Dinner tonght. When I look at a plate of chicken tikka masala and green beans, I like to think I am making a reasonably intelligent contribution to my own nutritional well-being, although I have never actually consulted anyone qualified to make that determination. The chicken gives me protein, the green beans provide vegetables and fiber,
These birds are American White Pelicans, a familiar and spectacular sight at the Salton Sea, where the species uses the lake as an important wintering and migration stopover. The large white birds with black-tipped wings and long, orange bills are remarkably well adapted to life on the water, using their expandable throat pouches to scoop
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
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
The pomegranate is one of those fruits that looks as though somebody designed it specifically to make ordinary fruit seem inadequate. Open one up and there is no simple interior of pulp and a few seeds. Instead, there are hundreds of little ruby-red arils packed together like somebody’s idea of edible jewelry. It is a
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
Heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica) develops its flowers in branching clusters, or panicles, that emerge from the ends of its stems, with the individual flowers beginning as small buds that gradually enlarge and open into delicate white blooms, often with yellow anthers. Flowering typically occurs in late spring to early summer, and the open flowers attract
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
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
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
Using a light table to photograph plants 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 front lighting can hide. Darker or opaque
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
There was a time when I considered myself a serious photographer. 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 that I knew what I was doing. Then, somewhere
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
I am a photographer. At least, that’s what I tell people. 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 photographed them. What I don’t do is talk about
For a long time, photography meant walking. I would take a camera, go somewhere, wander around and see what I could find. The walking was almost as much a part of photography as the camera itself. Now that I can no longer walk, that part of photography has simply disappeared. I can’t stroll down a