Bright Orange Cloud

It is sad that people around New Orleans are facing flooding again. People sometimes want to ignore reality and pretend the natural disasters will never happen again. No one can stop weather from happening. So levees are built and dams are built and people claim land that doesn't belong to them because it really belongs to rivers and oceans and wind and rain. When the water goes the building starts all over... The same happens in forests and dry lands that face raging fires...here we are hoping it never happens to us...

 

This evening my son, David, saw this wonderful cloud and told me to look...I got my camera...what else would I do?

 

The moon isn't full yet...Darn!...it still makes a good picture.

I walked accross the yard for a different view of the cloud and the palms.

The cloud is fading soon only the very top would show bright color.

Yucca

My mother had a beautiful yucca in her back yard. It took a few years before it ever bloomed. She painted a picture of it...I've always wanted a yucca growing in my yard and a few years ago on a trip over to Borrego Springs we stopped at a plant nursery and bought one. There are almost fifty kinds of yucca and I have no idea what kind mine is. We planted it and watched it grow. More plants grew and now there is a clump of them crowded into the space. One shot up quite tall and this year it bloomed. I still don't know what kind of yucca it is. I've looked at photos on the net and can tell what it is not...

http://www.dotcombs.net/desert/desert6a.html Photos of wild yucca taken in 03.

 

The sun was setting so the light became golden. The hummingbirds love to sit on the yucca and watch over the feeder. They zoom passed us as we sit with our coffee in the mornings and afternoons.

 

 

Looking at information on yuccas reminded me that the Joshua Tree is also a yucca. I was a child the first time I saw Joshua trees. We traveled up US 395 on our way to Washington state. The route goes through The Mojave Desert. Somewhere I have an old black and white photo of my mother standing next to a Joshua Tree. The great thing about digital is that I can remember a certain photo and can pretty quickly go find it. At first I numbered my digital albums starting with the number 1. That worked great for a few years. Then I had to invent my own system. It got hard to remember where to look with so many albums. Now I put everything into albums named for the year and then into folders named for the month and day plus a description of the photos. So if I want an old photo I can go back and find it.

 

My old print photos are not organized. URF. I was going to scan my negs and old photos and keep them on the computer but so far haven't...that is for another day...

August Sunset

This is the evening sky on the hills on the other side of our valley.

 

A close up of the same scene with my zoom to 200mm

 

Humming Birds

Yesterday morning we had several hummers visiting our feeder. The sun in the morning shines on the side of the house. That is why the background is what it is. Sort of bland...

Orange Moon

I saw a lovely orange moon and ran for my camera...well these days I walk...anyway when  I got out to take the photo a big cloud came down and had it half covered. I managed to shoot the photo and then waited hoping the cloud would pass...only to see the moon totally gone behind the miserable cloud.

Shooting in RAW

The camera set on vivid to take photos in jpg can take some very pretty picturess. Still I like to hedge and also set my camera to shoot in both jpg and raw. A good example of this being a good idea...

This is the jpg just as it came from the camera...size reduced for the web. I also like to take my photos as large as the camera will let them be. You can see that the snow is blown out. I could have had the camera adjusted for that but Hailey doesn't stand still.

Same exact photo in RAW. Yes I did use the sliders and I think I got a much better photo because that option was available to me.

Bottom line...if you have a camera that takes both jpg and RAW take advantage of it and do both. If you have to choose one then choose to shoot in RAW.

And if Hailey doesn't look like she knows how to walk in snow...this is So Cal...