I love it when a plan comes together

This was the sunset two Thursdays ago. I think it turned out pretty well. Of course I knew it was going to turn out nice because I had a 'Plan D.'

That night I had a light schedule at work with enough time to sneak out for what was shaping up to be a good sunset. I prioritized what I thought would work best. A, the tree that was in the sunflower field looking west, the right direction for sunset. B, the tall old oak about a quarter mile from that one that could be shot in any direction. C, the industrial area in north Woodland looking west had some nice grain towers and machinery that could make a good silhouette. D, hope one of the first three worked. C was on the way to A and B and as soon as I passed it I could tell it wouldn't work with the way the clouds were moving. A and B would've been good picks but it was tomato harvesting night so all the roadside parking near both those trees was clogged with the dusty cars of the migrant workers.

Fortunately I'd had other Plan A's fail in this part of the county before and on the drive out saw a previous 'A' that could work as my 'D' tonight. I'd stopped at group of old oaks along the levee before but never got the right combination of tree, field, and sky like the treat I found this time. After seeing the result, I'm glad my other plans fell thru.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little frustrating having my Plan A's fail so frequently. But my confidence in my backup plans keeps me going back out. Take last Friday's sunrise for example. I couldn't fall back asleep after a pre-dawn changing and feeding for Abby. Looking out the window I could see clouds on the eastern horizon that piqued my interest enough to head outside at 6am. Plan A was a drainage ditch just north of town and Plan B was a line of electricity poles right next to it. Both ran east-west and since we were near the equinox I figured the sun should be rising almost in line with them.
A:
It was okay. The sun wasn't directly lined up and I had to do some photoshopping to remove some large power lines running across the top of the photo. I can see why I thought it would be good but I'm not sure conditions could get much better than this so I don't know if I'll try it again.
B:
My original thought with these power lines was for a full moon rise but I think the combination of summer haze, road dust, and light clouds made this a nice sunrise photo. The Sacramento skyline on the right side adds a gritty feel but I wish I'd balanced out the poles better and moved ahead of that bush. Maybe some other time I'll try again.
I didn't have any more plans so I decided to throw a few pebbles at a group of pigeons sitting on the power lines and see what they'd do with the clouds.
C:
Meh. I was beginning to think I should have just slept in. I was only 2 miles from home, there wasn't a whole lot of room for a Plan D if it was going to show up on my drive back. But every other time down this road my thoughts were in sunset mode, with eyes to the west. Looking east for sunrise gave everything a new look. The boring-at-sunset west pond at Wildhorse Golf Course caught my eye. I pulled over quickly and snuck thru the fence.
D:
Plan D I knew I could count on you.

A few weeks ago I had an assignment south of town around sunset. This was a direction I don't usually go so I kept my eye out for good landscapes. I spotted a collection of distant oaks with the gap in the Vaca hills in the distance. I researched google maps and the US Navy sun/moon data table to find out when the sun should set in that gap and marked my calendar for a return trip. And of course I put together a set of backup plans. When I got to the levee road that looks over the oaks it was obvious I had miscalculated the position of the sun so it wasn't as close to the oaks and the bottom of the gap in the hills as I'd hoped. But this time the tomato harvest worked in my favor. The silhouetted machinery contrasted nicely with the oaks and the extra dust from the harvest gave me a scene I was happy with.

I went to try my B option
and returned the next night for my plan C
but this was a time when my 'A' game was on.

Having found the Wildhorse pond to be quite photogenic I put it at the top of my Plan A list. With a new moon and a near windless night I headed out to the pond to try star trails again. A small rowboat on the shore lined up well enough with the north star to make a nice Plan A composition. And except for a few fish and frogs jumping the water was still enough to reflect some of the star trails.


If I had remembered bug repellant I probably could've stayed out there all night. But after 100 minutes a few clouds started to move in and I decided to get some sleep. Before I headed home I had to try a Plan B composition just to see what I might need to try next time.
The clouds that were going to ruin the star trails made for a great starry still photo. Plan A and Plan B both gave me something good.

Now I just have to wait for a Wildhorse pond Plan A to fail to find my next great photo.

East Davis: A Photographer's Home

We in California are blessed with some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. There's Yosemite, The Big Sur, San Francisco, and East Davis just to name a few. Okay, maybe most people won't put East Davis, or any of Davis, on that list. But for the past 14 years it's what I've called home.

When I first moved to this part of town I had just started taking photos for the Aggie. This side of the tracks seemed to be popular with other Aggie folk, especially those of us who were more artistic minded and in that bottom income bracket. Often times, in search of free entertainment, we ended up in the cemetery in the middle of the night. Not so much the tombstone area but the undeveloped part in the back. At the far end of the property was the old Chiles mansion site. Though the mansion had burnt down decades ago the old barn still stood at the edge of the cemetery. A few times some of us slipped thru the fence to sneak around the barn but it was already creepy enough being behind the cemetery on dark nights so I never had an inkling to go inside, until last week.

Even though the barn is smack dab in the middle of town It's pretty easy to forget it is there. It's only visible from a low traffic part of Eighth St and the lot is mostly overgrown. Except for a couple assignments I had for the newspaper when the property went up for sale I had forgotten about it.

I'd been wanting to try a star trails photo lately. In thinking of good foregrounds most of my ideas were old oak trees further out in the county that would require parking my car on the side of a lonely road for an hour or two. Then I remembered the collapsed barn and truck south of town I had shot over the winter that was only a 20 minute bike ride away. As the new moon approached it dawned on me that the perfect test subject was only a few blocks away. So last week I rode my bike back behind the cemetery to make sure the barn hadn't been bulldozed yet. It was still there. Either some homeless or drinking teenagers had pried open one of the doors so I took a look inside and wondered why I'd waited so long to come here for pictures.

That moonless night around 9:30 I loaded up the tripod and camera and headed out to the barn. I was surprised to see how many stars were visible here in the middle of town, I could even see the Milky Way. I put a fisheye on the camera to get as much sky as possible and started clicking away, one minute at a time. It was dark and just breezy enough to make the leaves rustle creepily behind me for the hour plus I was out there. After compiling the shots together in photoshop I'm pretty happy with the result.

After my peek inside the barn I decided I needed to come back for some daytime interior photos. The barn sits in a north-south position and the picture I envisioned was light slipping thru the barn boards at high noon, which is technically closer to 1pm this time of year. I took some test shots before the sun was in place,


Then when the sun was lined up with the boards I stirred up some dust to make the rays of light really shine.



The barn was a gem hiding right here in town. Just east of East Davis I found another little hidden jewel. A few weeks ago, while driving back from an assignment in Sacramento, we had a rare cloudy summer evening. Thinking of a good place to shoot the clouds I remembered a lonely shack, hidden by the train tracks and a cell tower, that I'd seen in the distance of a Duck Days falconry exhibit two years back. I pulled off the freeway, headed over the tracks and took a right on probably one of the least used roads in the county. I parked the car and walked down the old driveway to the shack. Some homeless had obviously called it home in the past but now it was the perfect subject for my sunset photo. I backed away to emphasize it's loneliness in no-man's land outside of town and let the sky dominate the shot.


So close to town, just a few hundred yards from the freeway, yet seen by almost no one. Kind of the same way I feel about Yolo County's scenic value when compared to the better known locales in this well photographed state of ours. Sometimes I feel blessed to call this place home.

Saturday Night Lights

You'd think I'd learn. For as much as I've talked about taking advantage of all the timely photo opportunities nearby I still seem to find a way to blow it when the time is right. That sunflower field and old oak I thought would make a great photo when the flowers were in bloom probably would have, if I had made it out there in time. My first return to the field to check on the sunflowers was on what I thought might be the last day with clouds for the summer, hoping I could match an interesting sky with an interesting subject. But only a few of the flowers had opened and a return trip would be necessary.

About two weeks later I looked out the window in the morning and saw patches of clouds, the timing seemed perfect. As I headed north of Woodland several other sunflower fields were in perfect bloom, giant seas of gold soaking up the sun. It was going to be my lucky day. But when I turned down that old county road the color I had hoped for wasn't there. The big flowers had already begun to droop, their heads too heavy with seeds. Although I wasn't going to get the picture I was hoping for I couldn't let the 20 minute drive and puffy clouds go to waste. I started shooting with the artsy half of my brain, shallow depth of field, slight vignetting, etc.


But sunflowers just have that 'cute' appeal so I changed moods and let the flowers have their play day in the sun.


While the sunflowers that dominate the land around town peak for only a few weeks there is one constant that lasts all spring and summer, saturday night River Cats fireworks. For the past 4 or 5 years I'd stuck with the tried and true shot of the Tower Bridge and fireworks from the waterfront. Each year a new camera or lens helped me make slight improvements on previous shoots. This year I gave up the comfort spot and tried some new positions.

First I headed down the Capitol Mall for a distant view. It was a nice shot but a little cluttered with light poles and signs.


Mir and Abby tagged along with me for the July 3rd show. This time we watched from the Capitol Mall on the I5 overpass. We got Abby to wake up in time for a great show.


While it was fun having the family with me for a few minutes of fireworks I'd really been wanting to give Mir a nice night on the town. And what I surmised from these other views of the bridge was that there was probably a really nice view of the show from the top floor of the Embassy Suites hotel overlooking the bridge. So I made reservations for the next saturday. In exchange for dinner at Fat's and dessert at Il Fornaio, Mir became my camera assistant and held up a black shirt by the cameras to block reflections in the window.



A great finale for a great evening with my lovely girls, even though Abby slept thru the show.


There's one Saturday game left this season, one more time to take a new look at a an always spectacular view.

The Valley Oak

About two years ago Miranda suggested I try showing my photos at a gallery. I wasn't too keen on the idea at first. But having gone to many exhibits over the years for the Enterprise I often thought I could put together a better show than most of the ones I was covering. So I put together a few photos and took them to the International House here in Davis. The director there was a former writer for the paper and she thought it was a good idea, too. The art committee liked my photos but thought I didn't have a good enough theme for a show. Even though I thought most of the shows I had seen had pretty cheesy statements about how all the works tied together I understood this was the artsy thing to do.

So I gave up on the gallery thing and kept shooting what I thought looked good. I had an idea a trend might appear, but tried not to focus on it and let it emerge on it's own. What I found is that whenever I would head out on a short photo adventure I'd find my mind thinking back to that old valley oak off Pole Line road that fell before I found the time to really appreciate it. It was really strange how one tree (or former tree, I suppose) affected not only my photos but also my whole attitude towards life and the chances we are given during it.

After a recent assignment chasing feral cats around Woodland I took a scenic route home into the fields north of town. It was raining at the time and though the wet weather wasn't the best for photos it did help create a new scenic view for my photography. An old, solitary Valley Oak minding an ag field had partially collapsed in that last round of storms. I set out to take advantage of this opportunity right away.

Since the tree was east of the closest road it wasn't going to be a great sunset tree like the old one. Nope this was a sunriser and this time of year the sun rises at 5:43 in the morning. I set the alarm for 5:15, drove 20 minutes north of the house and waited.

She didn't disappoint. Although I think I'll head back and try to put the sun right on the tip of the broken branch.

Just up the road was another very tall and weathered old tree. The sunflower field in front of it wasn't in bloom yet but still looked nice.


And again silhouetted


When I was on my scenic drive this tree in a tomato field was my original motivation for a return at sunrise. I thought the low sun would highlight the plants but leave the dirt channels dark.


In the same field as that one was a group of three. I didn't think they were that interesting at first but after editing the photos I like this group better than the single one.

The mangled canopy of the center tree balanced by the more symmetrical outside trees and aligned nearly perfectly with the tomato rows, I couldn't have designed it better myself.

On the drive to those trees I spotted one more in that area that required a closer look.

I think this photo is pretty good now but those plants around the tree are all sunflowers that should be coming into bloom any day now. Those gentle arms dangling down to a field of sunflowers is going to make a great photo and hopefully help bring together a collection of timeless Valley Oaks that will be worthy of a gallery showing someday.

Small World

When you're two and a half feet tall and just learning to walk your view or the world is pretty limited. Little trips into the front yard can be a huge deal. The small scale things most of us take for granted like twigs and leaves are still new and exciting to a young observer.


And when you're the father of said young observer, husband of a full time college student, and avid photographer your photography view of the world also becomes a lot smaller. No more road trips on a whim or disappearing for hours on countryside bike rides.

Fortunately this year the spring rains led to a heavy bloom of flowers in our front yard. It was a treat for both of us young explorers. Abby enjoyed the marigolds because she could pull of the petals easily. I liked them because they made for simple subjects. I call this one 'Curly'

a fresh bloom and grass seeds

even the dying ones looked good to us and the aphids

With flowers on my mind and in many other yards around town my new little photography world was definitely in bloom. (bad pun, I know)

flowers and ladybugs, everybody's favorites

Now that Miranda is done with school for the summer she and I are hoping these photos will be the beginning of a new part of my photo business. I bought a new large format printer that can print on canvas and we're thinking of starting a shop on Etsy.com to sell small and medium canvas wrap. The mirrored image to make the wraps almost look cooler than the wrap itself.

Hopefully, like Abby's small world, my photography will continue to grow while still enjoying the little discoveries along the way.

Fog

Last summer Jonathan Edwards (the reporter for The Enterprise, not the adulterous presidential candidate) and I took a flight with a UC Davis pilot as he brought a teenager to a camp in Fresno for kids with burn injuries. While flying in a small plane along the central valley foothills on a 100º day wasn't fun for my stomach being able to see both the Golden Gate and Mt Shasta at the same time or into Yosemite Valley from the air was a lot of fun for my eyes.

For all the grand sights to see around northern California what caught my eye the most was right outside Davis. Just south of town, in the middle of an ag field, was a half collapsed old barn or farmhouse. With its slanted old shingle roof and surrounded by overgrown old farm equipment it looked like the perfect subject for a photo.

Now that I knew what to look for I could spot the old building from the I80 overpass just before the downtown exit. I searched it out on google maps and found the levy road that would take me most of the way to it. I just had to wait for the right time to go.

With only one morning assignment and a fog that thickened as the day went on Saturday turned out to be the perfect time to go. I loaded up the backpack with my 'artsy' lenses, hopped on the crusty old mt bike, and headed south. The fog was thick enough that I couldn't see the building which was less than a 1/4 mile off the dirt levy road. I cut down off the road into the dirt path between fields. Not only did I pick the muddiest path to ride but I also ended up one field away from where I wanted to be. I hiked across the dirt clods of the plowed field and used my bike as a stepping stone to cross the 5 foot irrigation channel. Two lessons learned here: walking or biking thru mud is a good aerobic exercise and don't wear the new shoes when mud may be involved.

The old barn was cool but wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped.




When searching on google maps I also saw the a field east of the old barn peppered with a few oaks. I couldn't pass up this iconic image of Yolo and Solano counties. A flock of blackbirds was working its way around the field and I moved into position to line them up with an old tree.

Same field, looking north along the fence line

Utility pole across the field to the west of tree.


South of that first oak was a cluster trees including two standing dead trees. Their skeletal remains made for a nice contrast with the living trees nearby.

These trees looked as if they'd been put in place on purpose. They balanced and framed the scene so well.


On the way back to the levy a couple more oaks in a field of grass seedlings.

This last photo I think was my favorite for the day. Placing the camera almost on the ground and using vignetting from a wide open aperture gave it the feel of an old, large format photo. Sounds like a good reason to dig out my old large format camera and wait for good time to go back.

A Daughter

I've been planning this blog post for over four months now. Everyday thinking a little bit and planning the profound statements I was going to make about my discoveries in fatherhood. I meant to write this at two weeks, then three weeks, and then one month. At first there wasn't a whole lot to write about. Sure we had a rough go the first few days in the hospital. And having someone completely dependent on me when I frequently can't depend on myself required a whole change of thinking. But as bad as it sounds to say it baby time was almost a chore.

Then around six or seven weeks life with Abby took a noticeable turn on, of all places, the changing table. What was once a crying session so intense she could barely breath and beads of sweat covered her forehead suddenly became happy time to play with her feet and reach for the curtains. She also started to respond to questions and smile at familiar faces. While she'd always made good eye contact and smiled a lot, you could tell there was some thought behind her responses now. Knowing all the love we'd given her was finally loving us back was just the inspiration needed for a great blog post.

So why didn't I blog about all this two and a half months ago? In the time it takes to write a post there's a good chance I'd miss something.

In 19 weeks Abby has gone from a little bundle of joy who mostly slept and pooped


to an inquisitive and exceptionally cheerful little person.


Her squinty-eyed, chubby cheek smile can interrupt even the most serious conversation


and her big blue eyes are a constant source of amazement to her brown eyed parents.



For 35 years and 9 days I was free. Free to eat what I wanted when I wanted it. Free to sleep when I wanted. Free to take random road trips thru the southwest and free to update my blog when I wanted. While I did give up a little bit of freedom for friends and family, and shared a little bit more over the past three wonderful years with Miranda, in the end I did what made me happy. But nothing has made me happier than the daughter who now dominates my life.