Same day, same storm as seen in my previous post. Summer-like weather ever since. This was the best spot I could find to capture these great heavy clouds against the fresh white snow.
The last couple of years, we've had one last bit of snow around Mother's Day, so we'll see what happens this year. All I know for sure is that we will NOT be planting the vegetable garden before June.. we made the mistake of putting the veggies in in May last year, and ended up starting all over again in June, because of a week of below-freezing nights that killed almost everything.
It's been a really unusual winter here in the San Jacinto Mountains.. the real winter months were mostly warm and dry; now that it's spring, we've had several pretty good snow storms. I usually don't expect to shoot scenes like this in mid-April, but here you go, this one is from last Saturday. Now, it's back into the 70° range and the snow is already gone... go figure. This, and a couple more from the same day, will probably be my last opportunity for snow scenes this year, but that's o.k., because I am actually quite happy with a few from this day.
My wife and I were out for a casual hike last Saturday, near home on a little nature loop trail I've never explored. Just up a bit beside the trail, I spotted this amazing and obviously really old manzanita skeleton. I've never come across one with this huge of a trunk; more like the size of a tree. With or without bark and leaves, I always love the shapes and texture of these bushes, especially the large ones. I definitely want to go back and reshoot this properly, when the light is less harsh, either late in the day or when there are some thin clouds in the sky to take the edge off. Monochrome tends to be more forgiving of less-than-ideal light than color, but even so, it never feels quite right unless the light is interesting to begin with.
Been "off the grid", at least blog-wise, for a few weeks...
Last Sunday was one of those once or twice a year "big wave" days down at the coast, so we decided to make a trip down there to see what was going on. The waves were pretty spectacular, but also very rough and broken up due to the strong winds, so we couldn't really see those big, glassy smooth breakers that are really photogenic. Not too good for surfing either, apparently... we didn't see anyone even attempting that.
All in all though, a beautiful day for a walk on the beach and enjoying the salt spray. (Had to clean the residue off my lens and my sunglasses when I got home.) I admit I didn't notice the pelican casually cruising above the action when I was shooting this one.
