Daily Walks

Since I started this blog a few months ago I have become increasingly addicted to photo blogs. It absolutely amazes and humbles me how many extremely talented, mostly amateur, photographers there are out there...and many of them have blogs of one sort or another. One of my favorites is called Daily Walks by Diane Varner. She lives somewhere on the northern California coast and tells us that she does most of her photographing while walking her dog. All I can say is that she lives in an incredibly beautiful area but she also has a terrific eye for seeing the beauty in all things.

Now I live near the southern California coast which has a very different landscape than our northern neighbors. First of all, SoCal, as it is popularly nicknamed, has a much greater population. As I understand it, the three southernmost coastal counties, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties have a population of about 17,000,000 people. Finding subject matter for creating grand landscapes is a bit of a challenge. Therefore, one must look much more closely to find photo ops. My neighborhood consists of typical middle class homes built during the last 50 years. Lots of stucco, big driveways occupied by too many cars, RVs and boats (the Huntington Harbour marina is only a mile away)...and more often than not, poorly tended landscaping. So, it's a challenge, but I'm determined to find the beautiful things and photograph them. Here are a few of my first attempts...all taken withing one mile of where I live.

I came across this lovely vine in an alley.

These gorgeous roses are growing in the front yard
of a home that's been for sale for well over a year.
Maybe potential buyers just aren't looking for high maintenance yards.

Whether digital or film, I still love black and white.
Golden sepia tones are fun too.

But when a rose is this intensely yellow...only color will do.

Playing around some more with Photoshop,
I applied a vintage wash effect to this flowering tree.

I confess, this wasn't dew. The sprinklers were on in this yard.

Well, as you can see, I've so far only photographed flowers.
Hopefully someday I will find inspiration in other subject matter.