The early morning sunlight lit up the oysters that line the sea wall making the green growth on them look much brighter than usual.
Later we passed this gull enjoying a perch on the channel marker.
And we were spied by a sea lion.
It was a restorative morning in nature.
After trying to get back to sleep this morning at 4:15, I gave up and went out to take some pictures instead. There wasn’t such a heavy marine layer, the first time in a couple weeks, so the light was great. I took my DSLR and phone. I thought I preferred the DSLR photos, but after looking at my post, it was a case of liking some of each. I guess that means I’ll continue with both cameras and I do need to find my tripod.
The phone did take better pictures than the big camera with the Tamron lens:
The last one, which is not a very interesting picture, is better with the phone. I actually like the phone one. I managed to catch a bird in the frame which always helps.
I woke up too early but decided to take advantage of the light and get out for some photos. The first one I took is my favorite.
The sun was up, but we had fog to soften the light.
As I approached the village, signs informed me there was a special event, and I quickly discovered my ideas of where I would go would be thwarted. I was going to go take a picture of the bridge, but the roads were blocked. I parked where I could– this is always a nice bench to photograph.
There is no parking in Coronado Village at all…
…but since I was there so early, I was able to park for a few minutes to take pictures of the beach.
Someone defaced our beautiful benches. I marked out their message because that would just reward the behavior. I’m not impressed.
I was impressed by people already out with their tents to see the parade much later today. It’s nice to see people making a big effort to enjoy the celebration.
I’ve been to this park twice now. It’s very pretty. I used to think Northern California had a lock on the state’s beauty, but Southern California has a lot to offer. I’m glad we moved here and are getting to experience a completely different set of wonders.
This year we visited Torrey Pines in the middle of the day. The photos are not as dramatic as they would be with softer light. Still, I do like looking at them and hope you enjoy them too. They are richly saturated with the natural colors of the park and clear weather.
The second group is from our previous visit in 2021. I used my Panasonic camera for these, and I find the photos more exciting. The fog provides a natural filter, and having a dedicated camera with a view finder makes it easier to set up shots.
My favorite image is the next one, so I played around with it in Snapseed.
With the water recovered in the previous versions, I was able to get a black and white, which I wanted, but before I enhanced the image to recover the overexposed water, there was nothing behind the tree. I like this the most. It’s a trade-off for me because no color is a visual loss, but I like the emphasis on the shape of the tree that monochrome provides.
September 4 is National Wildlife Day, and I’m celebrating by sharing photos.
The first mosaic is photos offered free through WordPress, and with credit to the photographers, although I don’t know if the credits are showing. The photographers, from the top left clockwise are Felix Mittermeier, Pixabay, Pixabay, Pixabay, Frans Van Heerden, and Richard Segal, all on Pexels.com. The second mosaic has photos you might recognize from shots I’ve taken.
I hope you get to enjoy our wonderful world and any of the precious members of the wildlife world today (and every day), and if you don’t see any, I hope you enjoy these photos. Also, of course, it’s a great time to join the World Wildlife Fund, WWF. A final note, this day was created in memory of Steve Irwin, of The Crocodile Hunter.
Nicci Carrera
I put up the finch feeder again after taking it down for the summer because the finches it attracted were going after our veggie garden. Now we have too many veggies and no finches. I was wondering why we don’t have them…yes, they migrate. Well the sparrows (I think that’s what they are) are occasionally making use of the finch feeder, so that will help those of them who can eat that kind of thistle seed to do well this winter. Next summer I might let the finches have their way with our garden. There does seem to be enough to feed them and ourselves.
Actually now that I look at them, there are two kinds of birds here. The little black and white one was part of a small flock that was eating the bottle brush blossoms, the one on the feeder is a completely different kind.
I hope the fall is treating you well. Right now I’m sitting in a rain storm wishing it was a snow storm and reminding myself…hey, it’s water. We Californians want no-more-drought pleeeease, so this is awesome. And the skiers among us…it’s snowing on the upper mountain and Squaw Valley is opening Gold Coast tomorrow. Woot! (I’m not going. LOL. We wait quite some time for there to be a lot of runs open and no crowds.)
What have I been up to? Writing. I finished my Coming Soon book, well the first draft anyway, or maybe that would be the second or third, and sent it to my editor. I also went to the Seattle Indie UnCon. That’s an un-conference for independent authors. How is a conference an un-con? There are no workshops. You sit in a conference room and talk. A moderator sets the topic for the discussion based on what people said ahead of time they wanted to talk about. People talk about that topic and it’s an information fire-hose, in a good way.
This was my first conference as a romance writer. For years I used to go to a literary conference with my mom. We had fun. We were really wannabe authors and that was a cultural experience. I also learned lots of things about writing and met some amazing famous authors. But that was a long time ago, and I’ve been reluctant to get back into conferencing for a number of reasons. When I heard about this un-conference though, I immediately wanted to go. Turns out I was lucky to get in because it’s small. Now that I’m in I can keep going, yay.
I took a lot of notes and generally became excited about marketing and business. That’s huge, since I would say I was not very excited at all about those components of being an author. It was energizing for me to tap into this indie group, too. All these power writers, not all in my genre, it’s a big world.
I do have a few images to show you. These are from the Animal Ark in Sparks Nevada. All these animals are well-cared for rescued wild animals.
Images have become more difficult for me to process since I dropped my Lightroom subscription, so sometimes I really don’t want to take the time to open them in GIMP and shrink them to a reasonable size. I might end up buying the software for Lightroom though. It’s not too bad and then you don’t have that monthly fee that really adds up over the years!
Sorry for the long delay in getting more Australia photos posted. I had to concentrate to finish a novel. The cover is on the blog in the right frame (desktop and tablet) or in the cluster of images at the bottom (on mobile devices).
I worked on STOLEN when we were in Australia, but the setting of the book is another location I have traveled to twice, Monaco. Though it was so long ago I don’t even have pictures, Monaco is a glamorous place that left an indelible impression on me.
Of course the same can be said of Australia. Maybe not the glamour in the same way, but the indelible impression. On this trip we saw different parts, always scratching the surface you know, but pretty much blown away and left wanting more.
Broome, where Cable Beach is located, is an access point for the Kimberley wilderness in Western Australia. We arrived at the Cable Beach Resort, one of the places on my Must See lists, just before sunset. This was not accidental! Actually we were supposed to get there a few hours earlier, but our flight from Darwin was delayed. We were lucky not to miss the famous sunset.
Guests at the Cable Beach Resort were mostly Australians from the south having a beach vacation away from their winter. The Kimberley and Broome are way north, closer to the equator and have a wet and dry season. The season when people visit is Dry which runs, I believe, from May to August.
It was nice to be some of the very few Americans around. I’m not sure why we were, but it’s a long way, and there’s a lot to see in Australia (understatement). I think most foreigners hit Sydney, the Great Barrier Reef, and Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock). Friends of ours who emigrated from the US to Australia have settled in Western Australia, and they were the ones who told us about the Kimberley.
Anyway, I love tide pools, and I went crazy with my camera at Cable Beach. Here are a ton of photos if you want to see what it’s like. If you can go, I highly recommend it.
I looked for books while I was there and found one in a used bookstore in Fremantle, near Perth. It’s called Tracks by Robyn Davidson. She crossed a massive amount of Australia alone with three camels and her dog. It’s great, a tough non-romanticized view. Parts of it are sad, but I like the knowledge in the book. Our guide also recommended a couple books about the land, animals, and plants that I want to read as well. On this trip, the tours we took made me feel like I’d visited the Australia I imagine from reading my friend’s books about the outback. Australia will be in a book of mine soon, one co-authored with my friend John Holland who provides all the Australiana.
Some of the places we went.
Nicci Carrera 