Tag: Photo on Flickr

The last of the seasonal wetlands at Madrona Marsh…

Photo taken at: Madrona Marsh Preserve and Nature Center

The last of the seasonal wetlands at Madrona Marsh, a nature preserve surrounded by suburban Torrance, California. These pools spread over the grounds each winter and spring with storm water, and dry out each summer.

And it really is surrounded by the city. Housing tracts on two sides, retail on the third, and a Target on the fourth, just a few dozen yards to the right of this spot.

#marsh #trees #nature #madrona #madronamarsh #torrance #whpmyoasis #water #california #southbay

Note: check description on Flickr

Liftoff!

Liftoff!

I slowly crept up toward the seagull hoping to get a photo of it perched on that pole, but it calmly turned around and flew off. I thought I’d missed it when I snapped the photo, but it turns out that I’d caught it just unfurling its wings.

And yes, the water really is that green. Ew.

Flickr (full)
iNat (square)

If it’s not a door, what is it?

This Is Not A Door

Yeah, I know, it’s not quite what the prompt was going for, but sometimes a photo fits the name of the prompt so perfectly that you just have to use it.

This photo inspired a lot of discussion back in the day when someone grabbed it from my website and submitted it to one of the Cheezburger sites without my permission. Sadly, it was dominated by people who were convinced the photo had to have been faked, and cited a terrible misunderstanding of how JPEGs work as their “proof.” Even after I showed up to point to the original, high-res source, they were arguing that the compression artifacts in the small version were somehow proof that it had been manipulated.

Yes, compression artifacts. In the small version. *facepalm*

From that, I learned that people are cynical, but don’t actually know how to detect real fakery.

Alas, the sign’s been painted over with plain brown, so this paradox is now a thing of the past.

Seasonal wetlands at Madrona Marsh…

Seasonal wetlands at Madrona Marsh. Winter and spring rains fill up these shallow pools, which become home to birds, frogs, insects and more during spring and summer. By the end of summer, the pools dry up until the next year. #madronamarsh #trees #water #california #torrance #southbay #marsh #nature

Photo taken at: Madrona Marsh Preserve and Nature Center

Seasonal wetlands at Madrona Marsh. Winter and spring rains fill up these shallow pools, which become home to birds, frogs, insects and more during spring and summer. By the end of summer, the pools dry up until the next year.

Jacaranda debris

Jacaranda debris. #flowers #jacaranda #purple

They are one of my favorite trees, though apparently there are people who absolutely hate them. From what I can tell it comes down to whether you have to deal with cleanup, because the flowers can get really sticky and messy after they fall, and there’s always a lot of them.

There’s a residential street near where I used to live that’s completely lined with jacarandas for most of a block. I loved driving or walking along there in April. I wouldn’t want to park there, though!

Orange: Sky, Flames, Balloon…

The first thing I noticed when going through my photos for the orange challenge is that I take a lot of sunset pictures! I made a point to mix it up and narrowed it down to twelve shots, then checked out how they looked together and settled on six. Then I realized I’d forgotten to upload one, and couldn’t bear to leave it out, bringing the gallery up to seven.

Ragged clouds in a blue sky, lit up yellow-orange just like a Maxfield Parrish painting…a bird of paradise flower…a cosplayer at Comic-Con dressed in a jumpsuit, wielding a Portal gun…ocean waves reflecting another sunset, made even deeper orange than usual by smoke from a wildfire….visiting the big orange balloon at Orange County’s Great Park…torches lighting the gateway to Adventureland at night…and finally a sunset shot, silhouetting the Manhattan Beach Pier…

Sunset in the Corner

Sunset Silhouette

When I have time to compose a scenic photo, the rule of thirds is usually on my mind. Even if I’m not putting an object off-center, I’m trying to line up visual borders with the 3×3 grid — a horizon, or the top or side of a building, or a treeline. Sometimes symmetry works better, though…and sometimes I’m just trying to get a snapshot of someone or something.

In this case, I stopped by a store after work and arrived just as the sun was about to set, at the top of a hill, giving me a clear view to the west. When that happens, you don’t go inside, you stop and watch!

(What I really wanted was to catch a nearby farm-style windmill silhouetted against the sun, but unfortunately the best place for that was in the middle of a crosswalk across a busy street, and I wasn’t going to trust in my ability to stop, aim, take a few photos, and get back to the side.)

Photo challenge (WordPress): Rule of Thirds

What a glorious feeling…

What a glorious feeling...

So I had this big plan to set up a still life with J’s tap shoes for the Singing In The Rain theme. Let’s just say that didn’t work out.

Then it started to rain, and of course four-year-olds love walking in the rain, so we went out, and on the way back I noticed he was twirling his umbrella, totally unprompted, so I pulled out my phone.

Sometimes the off-the-cuff moments trump the planned ones.

One-color version

Symmetry: Eye of the…Mall?

Eye

In downtown San Francisco, there’s a multi-level shopping mall with an atrium and a skylight. If you stand in the dead center of the atrium and look up, it resembles an eye, looking down at you through a giant microscope.

A response to the Symmetry photo challenge.

Icy Hot?

Icy?

It’s hard for me to really pick a photo that says “warmth.” Perspective on cold is different in Southern California, where winters approach but rarely drop below freezing, and the winter rains make December through April the greenest months of the year. So we don’t use fires much, and flowers and greenery make me think of the cool winter/spring weather instead of the hot, dry, brown summers. Even beaches make me think of late afternoon ocean breezes.

So I thought I’d pull out a shot for irony: An “Icy” warning sign somewhere in the San Gabriel Mountains, seen during the warmth of spring…when it most definitely isn’t icy!

Carpet of Yellow Flowers

Blanket of yellow flowers

There are a lot of jacaranda trees near where I work, lining the walkways through the business and hotel parks and lining the sidewalks along the street. There are also a lot of these trees, which look so similar that I assumed they were more jacarandas until the first spring I was here, when they bloomed bright yellow instead of light purple. From what I can tell, they’re Tipuana trees, also known as Pride of Bolivia trees, and despite the similarities, they aren’t closely related.

The flowers act the same, though, dropping in thick blankets as spring turns to summer.

This particular tree, sadly, is no longer there. It was ripped out this fall, as part of a massive landscaping project to convert one of the office buildings into a hotel.