Torrey Pines Hang Gliding

Beautiful day in San Diego. I stopped by the Torrey Pines Gliderport on my way home. They make it look so easy. Lessons available if you are interested, just follow the link ...

http://flytorrey.com/cms/

Thanks CJ for showing our photos yesterday.

Blue Sky Canyon

This beautifufl area is just 3 miles from my home. I'm trying to go there once a week to hike and enjoying it very much. Here are three photos from a few walks. I've never seen a "High Bee Activity" sign anyplace else. It was morning & cool, so figured it was safe, and I was right, didn't see one bee! I'm so lucky to have this beautiful area so close to home.

http://www.blueskyreserve.org/index.html

Surfing/swimming sign

Last week while searching for letters for our on-line class, CJ & I walked along the beach in Mission Beach. Not a great day for surfing, but there was one guy who was looking for a wave.

Little Italy

This photo was taken a week ago while exploring Little Italy (San Diego). The restaurant wasn't open yet, cleaning and set-ups going on. I liked this image with the repeating chairs on the bar and all the texture on the wall and floor.

It's "D" week ...

My friend Terry & I met in the town of Ramona to look for D's. We found a lot of R's and decided maybe we should have gone to DelMar for D week. We did find one at Doug's Shootists' Emporium (a different kind of shooting than we do) -- so it's today's post. Had a great time looking for letters & a good lunch.

For those of you who haven't seen previous posts, I'm taking Carol Leigh's "26 in 26" photography class -- and we're out shooting a new letter of the alphabet each week. Stay tuned for E's next week.

Mt. Soledad, San Diego

Mt. Soledad in La Jolla was built to honor veterans who have served our country. There are granite plaques with names and information about each veteran honored, plus brick pavers also honoring veterans. The monument was originally dedicated as a Korean War Veterans Memorial in 1952.

The view of San Diego is incredible. To the south you can see past San Diego and Coronado, Coronado Islands. To the east you'll see the mountains, north and you'll see UCSD and Torrey Pines. The sunset tonight was amazing. I liked this view of the cross, with the plaques reflecting the sunset.

McClintock Bldg.

The old and new ... down near the train depot. The McClintock Bldg. is on the National Historic Registry. I loved the two buildings side by side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:McClintock_Storage_Warehouse.JPG

Not a lot of info about the building, I'll have to check it out a bit more.

Reflections

San Diego architecture. Love those reflections.

Back to Lakeside

One more photo from the morning at Lakeside CA. A few years ago I took a photo class and we had to shoot something Red, white & blue. So here's my entry today for the blog and a (very late) entry for the Red, White & Blue assignment ... found in Lakeside.

Urban Barn, two more images

There are a lot of madonnas, crowns, keys -- whatever you'd like, I'm sure you can find it here. Check out next time you're in the San Diego area.

http://urbanbarn155.blogspot.com/

Urban Barn

When I was still living in Sacramento area, I was told I MUST visit the Urban Barn (Escondido). It's a hard place to describe -- a huge building and side yard full of treasures, selling everything including old keys, crowns, perfume bottles, dress forms, old bike (hanging from the ceiling), furniture. They also offer classes for crafters. New to the Barn is a wonderful dress shop next door. They were OK with me taking photos, so here's a couple from the day. It seem appropriate to convert these old treasures to black & white. I could have stayed there all day!

Check out their blog http://urbanbarn155.blogspot.com

Looking for C's ...

This morning I met C.J. in Mission Beach. She's a friend who is also taking the "26 in 26" class from Carol Leigh (www.photoexplorations.com). We searched for C's this week, and of course any other letters we could find. Here are a few C's I found today. We had a great time searching for letters, then had lunch at a restaurant called the "Firehouse American Eatery and Lounge". The food was great. This could be a habit -- D's coming next week.

Photo walk

My 6-year-old grandson, Cole, and I hung out together Sunday at Mission Bay. I have an older P&S camera that I let the grandkids use when we're together, Cole took a lot of fun shots. I liked this one I took of him in action.

Wild Animal park

I've been so busy processing photos taken in the past few weeks, that I completely forgot about posting to my blog. Here's another photo from the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal park/Safari park. Hope you'll enjoy it. I really enjoyed being there in the late afternoon, most of the animals were still out. This was taken from the tram ride that goes around the park. We caught the last one of the day, 4:15 pm -- highly recommend this time of day if you ever visit the park.

San Diego Wild Animal Park/Safari Park

BTW, the SD Zoo is in the process of renaming the Wild Animal Park: They are now called the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The name change will take place gradually -- main gate is still named Wild Animal park.

Here's a photo of the cheetahs I took last weekend and a link below to the Zoo web site. They are beautiful animals!

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-cheetah.html

iPhone photo -- Edited version

I was deleting old photos on my iPhone and found this one of Mono Lake -- taken last November flying from Reno to San Diego. Pretty much as taken, just a bit of cropping in Photoshop.

Haven't edited a blog before, so don't know how this will turn out. I was guessing at the lake & was wrong. Lake is Mono Lake!

It's "B" week.

The on-line class I'm taking from Carol Leigh (www.photoexplorations.com) has us out shooting the alphabet -- a different letter each week! Today, in addition to photographing B's, I played around with a cool web page (wordle.net). Usually I put in individual words or sentences and this program jumbles them up. I decided to play around with just the letter "B", did several versions, layered them all and came up with the above B's. Fun stuff!

Crows

This crow was just one of the many wild animals we saw at the San Diego Safari Wildlife Park. ;-) I also have many photos of the giraffes, rhino's, gorillas, etc., but this crow was speaking to me! Carol Leigh -- thought of you when I took this photo.

Reflections

Busy day today and no photography, but did take some time tonight to look through photos from the Rancho Bernardo Farmer's Market. It's held at the Webb Park Lake, and I couldn't pass up these reflections. Hope you enjoy them too!

Mallard feathers

Spent most of the day at the San Diego Zoo with my sister, brother-in-law and grandson, Cole. Lots of photos from today's visit -- this is one of my favorites. It was a cool day and a lot of the ducks were napping. I liked the swirls the feathers made on this sleeping mallard.

Golf today ...

No, I don't play, but I was the "caddy," got to drive the golf cart, and take photos, while my son, dtr-in-law, sister & brother-in-law played in a tournament. Here are two photos from the day.

Lakeside -- glass block window abstract

While wandering around Lakeside the other day I spotted this glass block window. This was a quick shot -- the wrong time of day I thought, because the sun was shining right on this glass block window -- but I took it anyway. I was drawn to the shiny glass squares, different colors, abstract patterns. I played around with it in Photoshop a bit, saturated colors and cropped. I'm almost tempted to go back and take more versions because I like what's going on here. Hope you do too!

Old photos ... 1976

I was lucky enough to visit Guatemala in 1976. I was into fiber arts then and this was a weaving trip. I learned how to do backstrap weaving from the young Mayan Indians who were our teachers. I still have the little bit of weaving I did. These photographs show one of our young instructors showing us how to prepare the warp and then demonstrating their style of weaving. They didn't speak any English and my Spanish wasn't adequate for their particular Mayan dialect -- but I knew I was making a mistake when they gently touched my hand and shook their heads "No", then demonstrated how to do the weaving correctly. Their patterns are the most complicated in the world

It was an unforgettable experience. I liked interacting with the locals, learning about their lifestyle, eating the great food. The most memorable meal was a blue-corn hand-made tortilla smeared with a fresh avocado, served up with a warm Coke! We were walking by this small house (with a dirt floor) with a small fire ring in the middle of the room -- the woman was making the tortillas and offered them to us. When we smiled & accepted, she brought out the avocado, warm Coke with a big smile. How could we refuse that?

My slides were never stored properly, and I thought I had lost them all -- so I am delighted that so many of them were able to be saved. Thanks to ScanCafe for doing such a great job.

Lakeside CA

I'm taking an on-line photography class given by Carol Leigh (http://www.carolleigh.net/) "26 in 26". Each week we photograph a different letter of the alphabet. I met up with Terry, CJ & Rich (also enrolled in the class) and found some A's to photograph. I liked this mural too. We met at a local restaurant for lunch and, of course, talked a lot about photography!

Flowers in my house

As many of you know, I do love flowers -- today I photographed this gerbera for the blog. For me the process of doing the photography is the exciting part, the final print (or sharing as in this blog) is the result of a satisfying experience behind the camera. Hope you enjoy it!

Out and about in Rancho Bernardo

There's a Farmer's Market just a few miles from my house at a place called Webb Lake Park. The park is lovely with a path surrounding it, lots of birds & ducks. Lots of crafts people at the market, good food and some produce for sale. I can't pass water without looking for reflections, and was happy with the above.

I met Kehaulani, a gourd artist. Her work is stunning, she carves and/or paints each gourd.

Check her out on FaceBook at Kehaulani Gourds.

How I spent 1-1-11

Well, somebody had to enjoy the beautiful sunshine we are having in San Diego and I was happy to do just that. I met my daughter-in-law and grandkids at Mission Bay Yacht Club. We played in the sand (they played in the water), made sand castles, watched a regatta, saw lots of birds -- and generally had a great time. I was home in time to enjoy the beautiful sunset. Loved the changing colors in the sky last night.

Editing question: I was trying to change the placement of the photos and can't figure out how to do that without deleting the whole post and starting over again. Any help would be appreciated!

Happy New Year 2011

Today is 1/1/11. May 2011 be all you expect. For me it's a new life in San Diego: exploring all that the area has to offer, hanging out with family, new friends, old friends visiting (guest room is booking up, so give me a call to save a date ;-) I plan on posting photos here of my San Diego adventures, so hope you will join me.

Happy New Year and best wishes for a wonderful, prosperous, healthy, happy New Year!