Japanese Garden Part II

Most journeys start with a path, whether you make your own or follow one make by someone else. I'm thinking about doing a book about paths since I have so many photos of them.


Most of the photos here are detail shots of things that caught my eye with commentary on why I took the shot.

Clicking on the photos will open up larger images if you want to see more detail.


If you're joining this journey with Part II I'll give you a brief background for the shoot (if you saw Part I you can just skip this paragraph). In late May the Japanese Garden in the Sepulveda basin invited photographers and painters to come in for a few hours and take pictures/paint without the distraction of the general public wandering around. These photos (and the ones from Part I, which is about the wildlife I encountered there) are the result of that event.

This was just the perfect composition with the bridge, the tree and is reflection.

So many lily pads and flowers it was hard to choose which one to shoot. I liked this one hiding a little within the green.

There are so many interesting things about the water plants. This one looked like a bowl and I love the serrated edges. On the ones where they were laying flat the surface tension sculpted the water into pointy bits.

I was saddened that so much of the vegetation there seemed to be in distress - dead trees, blackened or otherwise infected lily pads. I think the plants there are not doing well.

Bamboo fountain. The water collects in the bottom one until it fills up and tips down to spill into the gravel below. Kind of mesmerizing.

As much as the garden is about plants, it's also about structures. This is the underside of the bridge that goes from the garden, across the maintenance access road to a platform overlooking the water treatment plant next door.

This is the only color of bougainvillea I ever saw until I went to Hawaii in the 80's and discovered that it actually has many colors - orange, yellow, pink, red.

Of course there is a lot of water in the garden - rivers and a lake. The "milky" look is from shooting moving water at a very slow shutter speed.

View from inside the tea house. That view could easily be a painting on a wall. I especially like the juxtaposition of the flowing willow tree against the straight lines of the tea house wall.

Surprising splashes of red in a sea of green lawns and trees. I believe this is Japanese Maple. I could be wrong, I don't know a lot about trees, but that's what I'm guessing from the color and the shape of the leaves.

Another splash of red. This is an Ornamental Plum tree. I love these trees! In the morning when I got to the gardens it was completely overcast and the leaves on these trees looked black. I had to look closely at them to make sure they were still alive. When the sun came out a couple of hours later the red became very visible.

I have no idea what kind of plant this is, but it reminded me of Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors". The ropy parts are actually part of the plant, not just trash left behind. This is one of those things that is much more interesting in person than in a photo.

I liked this for the different textures - water, wood, stones. I actually had to lay on my stomach in the grass on the other side of the lake to get this shot.

So many things in this picture that I like - the delicate, lace-like plants on the surface of the water with the lily stems coming up through it and the angular reflection of the plants. There's also the edge of a wooden box frame just under the surface of the water.

So, these a just a few of the hundreds of photos I took that day. I hope you enjoyed them. Please feel free to leave comments below. If you want to get email notification when I put up future posts you can enter your email address in the box just above the post. 

The Japanese Garden Part 1

The Japanese Garden in the Sepulveda basin held an event late in May where they invited photographers and painters to come into the gardens and do their thing without the general public wandering around. About 20 people were there to accept the invitation. Out of the 20 only about 4 were painters.

While I fully expected bamboo, a zen garden, a tea house, plants, trees and all the other things you would expect to see in a Japanese garden I was surprised at all the wildlife I saw there.

I have never seen a goose this color before! I saw it as I was coming into the garden (top photo) then again on the way out (bottom photo). I think it was sleeping in the bottom photo.

I'm more used to seeing Canadian geese in this area and boy are they usually noisy! This family was very quiet compared to other geese I've seen. They seemed to be completely unconcerned by the people in the garden, walking right past them to get to where they wanted to go.

I was lucky enough to get a photo of this crane in flight. It didn't stay in the area long.

I heard one of the docents say the name of this bird, but I don't remember what she called it. It didn't seem to be comfortable with the few of us who were taking it's photo. It took off shortly after I got this shot.

Mallard ducks are very common in this area. There are a lot of them in the wildlife reserve "next door" to the Japanese Garden. I startled this one and his mate (I think we startled each other). They were hanging out in the reeds beside a plank bridge I was walking over. They scrambled out of their cover just after I walked past them. Since I didn't make any effort to chase them they didn't go very far away so I was able to get lots of great shots with the water drops on his head.

There were LOTS of swallows (Barn Swallows in the bottom photo) there busily building houses under the concrete bridge at the edge of the lagoon (top photo). This must be exhausting work as they get a bit of mud on their beak then go add it to the nest - again and again and again...
They seem to make communal nests because I can see 3 of them in the nest in the photo and another one flew out while I was watching. Very busy little birds!

It wasn't only birds there in the garden. I came upon this bunny. It let me get fairly close before it decided to be somewhere else although it didn't run away as if it was afraid. It just sort of hopped a little further away.

This dragonfly landed on the "boardwalk" I was crossing when I startled the ducks.

There were plenty of fish in the lagoon. I mostly only saw little tiny ones, then when I went over by the reeds I saw these bigger ones. This one was very colorful - iridescent blue on the side!

And I found a sun bather. I didn't even notice it until it moved. There was another one already up on the ledge but it ran away when I walked by. This one was climbing up the wall - maybe it had a date with the other one and I messed it up! oops. It let me get pretty close.

 There were lots of bees in the water lilies!






We were only allowed to be in the garden for about 3 hours but it was a great time. I chatted with a couple of the other photographers. It was nice that the group was small enough that we weren't climbing over each other to get shots.

I've lived in the Valley all my life. I thought I had been to this garden many years ago, but after going inside I realized I've never been in there before. I'm glad my friend told me about this photo opportunity. It was a good day.

Part 2 (when I get it posted) will be more landscape and detail oriented. I take so many photos I have to break the blogs up into themes.

Wyoming Sky

I spent most of February this year in Wyoming. My mom had a bad fall and broke her arm. I went to help out while she recovered.

Northern Wyoming is beautiful - vast, wide open places, rivers, mountains and skies that are endless and constantly changing.

This was the view one morning from in front of my mom's house. Mornings were often like this while I was there. (if you click on the pictures they should open up to a larger image)

A few days later I saw the beginning of a beautiful sunset out her back window. I drove about 1/2 a mile north of her house, found some large, empty fields and captured this sunset.

I think I stayed there watching the awesome light show for about an hour.














Meanwhile, in the east this was happening...

 

My first trip up the North Fork was on a very cloudy day. Highway 14 from Cody leads to the east entrances of Yellowstone Park which, unfortunately, is closed in the winter. It was very cold and windy that day so I wasn't outside taking photos as much as I wanted to. On this drive I only got as far as Elephant Lodge before I decided to turn around. 

I could see these clouds were dropping snow and I have NO experience driving in the snow and it was moving toward me. Best to go back.

The snow followed me. There were light snow flurries around me by the time I got back here to the Buffalo Bill Reservoir.

I did go back up the North Fork at the end of the month, almost my last day there before I came home. This time I made it all the way to the park entrance. As you can see, this was a MUCH different day - nothing but blue skies.

Hopefully I'll be able to go back in the winter another year and take the snowcoach tour through the park. I think that would be pretty amazing.

And my mom has recovered nicely from her fall.

Beach Magick

 Beaches are magickal places. They're a place of transition between land and sea, between solid and liquid. The slow wearing down of the solid earth by the power of water.

The ocean is vast and powerful, always moving and churning. I love to watch the waves crashing on the rocks. The ever changing colors play across the surface.

I loved the textures in the sand under the water here as this tiny river makes it's short journey to the sea.

Glass Beach

Glass Beach, Fort Bragg, California.

A beach made of glass! For real - all of that is glass and rocks - and shells and seaweed and the usual stuff you see on a beach.

You see, not so long ago people thought it was ok to place dump sites at the ocean. Just dump your trash at the shore and the ocean will wash it away. It was more common than you might think.
This was a dump site as late as 1959.

Everything was dumped in this site - cars, bottles, pottery, etc. The interesting thing about this area is that the position of the rocks along the coastline prevented anything from being washed out to the sea. It just churned up in the tide and was deposited back on the shore.

According to the information I read at the Glass Beach Museum the white (not clear) glass was milk glass - usually dinnerware. Green was bottles. Clear (frosted) was bottles and dinnerware. Red and orange were car tail lights. Brown were bottles. Lavender were actually clear leaded glass exposed to sunlight.

Mostly there are only tiny bits of glass left on the beach now. Locals and visitors have taken away most of the larger pieces (to make into jewelry or to otherwise sell), Because so much glass has been carted off by people the Museum sells "seed glass" for $5/bag. It's recycled glass that has been tumbled enough to knock off the sharp edges. The idea is to throw this into the surf so that it will get tumbled and polished and wash back up onto the beach to "preserve" the Glass Beach.

During my wanderings on the beach I was impress by the tenacity of the plant life. Look at these plants that are growing on the side of a rock. There's no "soil" there. Do the roots of the plant get nourishment from the rock? It must, since there's nothing else there to feed it.

Something I never expected to see at the beach - squirrels. I was actually watching mother seals teaching their pups to swim when this squirrel comes within a foot of me. They must be used to being fed by people. When I didn't offer it any food it went back into the grass to eat the tops of the flowers. It wasn't the least bit afraid of me.

I don't think these crabs were too happy with the bright light that was illuminating their little hidey hole. There were a great many crabs on the beach if one had the patience to sit by tide pools or need crevices and be very still until they came out.

Chasing The Light

This is one of the reasons I love living in California! This is taken from Mt. Pinos in the Los Padres National Forest.

 We have such beautiful mountains and forests here! This was at the end of the day and there was a thin hazy cloud cover that day so it gave a sort of upside down, surreal look to the sky with the blue on the horizon and the pink over it.

Nature's banquet for the squirrels is abundant. Also, a soft, crunchy carpet to nourish and insulate new life under the snow that will come soon.

 Even at the end of the season Nature's patterns and shapes are beautiful.

Lighting is key in capturing interesting photos. This is the same tree just before the sun set below the ridge and again about a half an hour later.

I am awed by the tenacity of nature. Even a tiny seed in an impossible location can aspire to become a great tree.

 I love interesting colors, shapes and patterns. This rock had all of that going for it with it's natural coloring and patterns enhanced by the bright green moss.

I arrived on the mountain pretty late in the afternoon so my time for shooting was limited. I was trying to shoot some small clusters of tiny red flowers that were particularly bright in the setting sun and I could see the light fading as I was trying to focus on them. I never did get the image I wanted of them.

But it was a beautiful day - a little cool, but I fortunately thought to bring a jacket with me and I had on sturdy shoes (lessons learned from previous unprepared trips).

Even if I hadn't gotten any photos it would have been a good day!

I love being in the mountains, probably as much as I like being at the beach, which is why I love Southern California so much.

Conversations With My Navigator

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It does not inspire any sort of confidence in me when I’m driving down the freeway and my GPS navigator says “now turn left”.

I also think I need to wait until I am actually ON the freeway to turn on the navigation because it does not seem to know the best and closest way to the freeway on-ramp based on where I am.

There is a freeway on-ramp about 2 miles from where I live that will connect to pretty much any freeway I actually need to take. My navigator insists on taking me 4 miles of surface streets across the Valley to get on the freeway.

Directions from my home:

GPS: In .2 miles turn right

Me: No. I’m going straight. The entrance is right up here. I’m not driving all the way across the Valley to get to the other freeway.

GPS: Now turn right.

I ignore the direction and keep driving straight.

GPS: In .4 miles turn right.

I ignore the direction. This prompting continues for the entire 2 miles until I actually get ON the freeway.

I’m pretty sure one the day conversation is going to go like this:

GPS: In .2 miles turn right.

Me: No. I’m not getting on that freeway over there when there's a closer entrance up here.

GPS: Now turn right.

I ignore the direction and keep driving straight.

GPS: In .4 miles turn right.

I ignore the direction.

GPS: IF YOU’RE JUST GOING TO IGNORE MY DIRECTIONS WHY IN THE HELL DID YOU TURN ME ON IN THE FIRST PLACE?????