steamy -- Phoenix Lake, part 2 of 2

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photo by Donald Kinney

With emphasis on e-a-r-l-y, whoever who gets to Phoenix Lake e-a-r-l-y enough might occasionally, if lucky, be rewarded with steam wafting from its surface.



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I imagine the frogs might view it as just another cloudy morning.



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I see it as my steamy morning cup of coffee. Gulp gulp, lup lup, sip sip.
Ah, 'dats good...


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green -- Phoenix Lake, part 1 of 2

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On Tuesday, with slim chances for any sort of dramatic sunrise, I opted for an early morning hike around Phoenix Lake.



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Close, but a million miles away. Phoenix Lake is nestled beneath our beloved Mount Tamalpais on its eastern slopes, behind the small and upscale town of Ross. The creek flows slowly this time of year.



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Call them Horsetails or call them Scouring Rushes--these plants OBVIOUSLY came from Outer Space!

additionally, Wikipedia says they are very old:

Equisetum ( /ˌɛkwɨˈsiːtəm/; horsetail, snake grass, puzzlegrass) is the only living genus in the Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds.

Equisetum is a "living fossil", as it is the only living genus of the entire class Equisetopsida, which for over one hundred million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests. Some Equisetopsida were large trees reaching to 30 meters tall; the genus Calamites of family Calamitaceae for example is abundant in coal deposits from the Carboniferous period.

It has been suggested that the pattern of spacing of nodes in horsetails, wherein those toward the apex of the shoot are increasingly close together, inspired John Napier to discover logarithms.

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Coyote on the ridge at Mt. Tamalpais

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The ridge of our beloved Mount Tamalpais is a wild place, indeed. With slow and deliberate steps this Coyote was hunting something in the dry grass.

It has been a banner year for "shooting" wildlife on "The Mountain". Earlier this year I snapped a Wild Turkey, and a few months ago I came across a plethora of Woodpeckers with romance on their minds. I even got close to shy Coho Salmon spawning in the Lagunitas Creek.



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But it has also been a good year for ripples. And the surface of Alpine Dam has some of the finest.



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Photographic proof -- When ripples reflect, magic can happen.


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Pride Parade, San Francisco 2012

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Attracting 500,000 spectators and participants, San Francisco whooped it up big-time for its 42nd. Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, Transgender "Pride Parade" this past Sunday.



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two of Marin's mountains

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Our beloved Mount Tamalpais (Tam-al-pie'-us) is our centerpiece and crown-jewell here in Marin County, California. We're located just North of the Golden Gate Bridge.



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Marin translates as "marine" in Spanish. The county roughly resembles a triangle, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and San Francisco Bay on another. Fog is our specialty!



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And who wouldn't love a shapely mountain named "Elephant"?

You see, there is Marin County, and then there is west Marin County with vast expanses of rolling hills and ranch-land. We have Oysters in fjord-like Tomales Bay. And we have Point Reyes, the Nation's first National Seashore. Marin County is a beautiful place. A "photographer's paradise", I'd call it!


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just ghostly, at China Camp on San Pablo Bay

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photo by Donald Kinney

There are trees, and then there are ghostly trees.



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Signs of life nearby...



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And then, more ghostly forms. These are volunteer oats, dry as a bone. Summer has definitely arrived.


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misty morning in Marin

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Misty



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morning



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in



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Marin.


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low tide at Rat Island, China Camp

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If it was solitude I was looking for,



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I definitely found vast quantities...



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of the precious commodity...



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Thursday morning...



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out at my beloved China Camp on San Pablo Bay, which is the northern "thumb" of San Francisco Bay.


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Webb Creek at Steep Ravine, Mt. Tamalpais

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Webb Creek flows year-around, although this time of year the flow is a fraction of the cascading torrents after a heavy Winter storm.



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snags and pointy forest things

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After completely "striking-out" with the sunrise on Monday I noticed that my beloved Mount Tamalpais was partially shrouded in fog.



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On my arrival the fog was thick. Drippy almost to the point of being rain.



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In muted light, the reflections on Alpine Lake were putting on a quiet show.


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a novel sunrise

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It was a dark and stormy night.



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Quite a struggle--making its way through a thick blanket of fog,
but, as if on some predetermined schedule, the sun finally arrived.



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Impromptu flags of celebration fluttered, wiggled, and flew in the breeze.


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a celestial morning with a sky-high ISO

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Nothing gets my "juices" flowing better than the arrival of a new piece of photographic equipment. My new tripod rolled in yesterday. It's time to retire "Old Sticky", which was the knock-off version of what I have now.



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"Old Sticky" had become SO uncooperative with age that I disliked using it. The temptation was just to brace the camera and boost the ISO "sky-high". End result is "noise" which is easy to fix in CameraRAW (Photoshop), but excessive noise-correction produces slightly "muddy" images, which is what you are seeing here. My professional photo buddy in Ohio, Jan Bell pointed this out in an email yesterday. A low ISO will require no noise-correction, keeping the tones bright.



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Okay, all you shutterbugs... No, I DIDN'T get one of those overpriced high-tech carbon-fiber lightweight p.o.s.'s that you see advertised. This Til-Tall tripod is the exact same model I had as a teenager, oh so many years ago. It's made of aircraft aluminum, but it is heavy-duty and will easily support the weight of a 4x5 view camera. It clamps down securely with precise control. Maximum height=74". In a windstorm it can be tied to the ground.

Oh, do I love my new tripod?   Yes.
Will I enjoy carrying it?   No.


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quiet morning on San Pablo Bay

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Beginning with the end; yes, the sun surfaced.



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But the real show, in my opinion, is in the minutes prior to its arrival.



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A photographer doesn't want to be late--even though at such an early hour being late might sound, to the uninitiated, slightly improbable. Yawn...


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edge of San Francisco Bay

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A peaceful scene on Richardson Bay just north of Sausalito. This location is directly beneath the busy Highway101 Richardson Bay Bridge.



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This is not a new image (I always indicate when they're not) but I snapped it almost 4 years ago in pre-dawn light from a vantage point at China Camp. That is Chevron's Richmond Refinery in the distance.



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Across San Francisco to the East and towards the Sacramento Delta, in the small town of Crockett is the C&H Sugar Company which has served as a cooperative processing plant for Hawaiian sugar growers since 1906.

In 2005 C&H went corporate and was purchased by Domino Sugar. Over 700,000 tons of pure cane sugar is refined yearly with a reportedly "unique" assemblage of aging and one-of-a-kind processing equipment. Factory tours are not given.


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