Sunset from a Sea Cave
This was on the northern side of the Mendocino Headlands, at the end of a very calm summer day. The sunset was really pretty, and I liked the way it looked from inside the cave.
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Raindrops with Roses
I took this picture in June, just after the sky had cleared up after several days of light drizzle. A very light rain will cover everything with big drops, while a heavier rain will knock the drops off as they form. Each raindrop can act as a lens, showing an inverted image of whatever is on the other side. To show roses through the drops, I had to find grass stems that were at just the right angle to the rose bushes. These drops ended up looking to me like old fashoned glass paperweights. The roses are old cultivated varieties that have gone wild on the Mendocino Headlands.
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Red-shouldered Hawks
A few miles north of Ukiah, this nest was set against the trunk of a tall oak tree on a hillside overlooking a stream and valley with vineyards. I watched from a blind of green sheets and camouflage nets that I built out on the horizontal limb of another oak. Mostly the male hawk hunted and the mother stayed with the chick. He would bring in a lizard or vole and she would tear it up and feed it to the chick bite by bite. Here the male hawk is just dropping off a freshly caught alligator lizard.
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Bowling Ball Beach at Dusk
The balls of Bowling Ball Beach are large sandstone concretions that weather out from the softer sandstone. I took this picture in the late evening, using a 30 second exposure to get the misty look in the waves. I was standing on some other rocks to take the photo, and when I was ready to leave I realized the the tide had come in behind me and was too deep to walk through. I had to jump from ball to ball like stepping stones, and just before reaching shore I slipped and fell in. I went in thigh deep, but was able to hold my camera up out of the water.
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Waves Hitting Rocks
This was at the north-western most point of the Mendocino Headlands, on a very windy evening in late September. By hanging my heavy backpack from the tripod, I was able to keep it still enough to take some longer exposures. For this image the shutter was open for about half a second, just long enough to show some motion in the waves. At one point during all this I had to stop and chase down my hat after the wind caught it.
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Dewdrops on Web
One foggy fall morning near Willits, I noticed these dewdrops suspended on spider web between two yarrow stalks. The droplets were unusually large, and each one acted as a lens on the scene behind. If you look at the picture upside down, you can see a tiny image of the hills in each drop.
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