We came home from the beach and then it rained for two days straight.  During the second night the wind whipped.  When we woke up the storm was finally clearing.

I went out to survey the yard.  The wind had spread eucalyptus bark everywhere.  We already live in the ugliest house in Monterey.  The giant eucalyptus trees that surround our lot aren’t helping the situation.

It was my birthday so I skipped cleaning the yard and took Ella down to the wharf to watch the storm clear out.  My camera came too

We got to the wharf just in time to see this rainbow.  It was perfect… until…

The rain came back.  With no where to go Ella hid under a semi trailer.  I stuffed my camera inside my coat and carried Ella back to the car.

I loaded our fat boyz in my little Mazda and headed south out on the Cabrillo Highway, Highway 1.  There is a gravel road down in Big Sur where I jog with the dogs sometimes.  My dogs are pretty poorly trained and I like to have lots of space when I let them rip.

I park the car just off the highway on the north side of Bixby Bridge.  There is a gravel road here that follows the edge of the canyon for a ways before it drops down to Bixby Creek.  The above photo was taken from the side of the road high up on the canyon wall.  No, my dogs aren’t enjoying a stunning view of Bixby Bridge.  They are hunting for squirrels.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the region I found this video clip about Bixby Bridge.  Prepare yourself for overly dramatic narration…

I prefer my photo of the bridge to their cinematography.  Bixby Bridge is not always bathed in perfect light and it looks a lot more scrappy from its back side.

So we keep on hiking down the canyon.  My dogs are happy because there are many rabbits hiding in the brush.

There are houses at the bottom of the Canyon.  I’d always be worried about flooding if I lived here, but maybe the beauty of the area is enough to offset the risks.

Here the dogs are cooling off in Bixby Creek.  When they are done playing in the water we head back towards my car.

We get back on the highway and I realize I still have some time before I have to pick up Ella from school.  I decide to stop at Garrapata Beach.  It’s one of my favorite spots and maybe I’ll find some good photos.

The dogs approve of my decision to stop at the beach.  Because of the impending bad weather, the beach was deserted.  I probably shouldn’t have let the boyz off leash, but with no one around I couldn’t resist.

Here is Gatsby at the far northern edge of Garrapata.  You can see rain clouds looming over the ocean.

It’s time to go home.  Both dogs are asleep before I pull the car out onto the highway.

The air was clear as we flew over the Mississippi Delta.  I’ve been trying to get a shot of the Delta for a long time.  As you can imagine, the gulf coast is usually hidden under a layer of haze and billowing thunderheads.  Mid January provides the best odds for seeing the entire Delta in all its glory.

“The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National Guitar…”  Sometimes when I am bored on a long transcon I’ll get a song stuck in my head for several hundred miles.  All it took was a glance at the Delta and Paul Simon’s “Graceland” lodged itself in my brain.

I kinda like Paul Simon these days.  What’s happened to me?

Here we are steaming towards the west.  We’re now over the alligator infested coastal swampland near the Texas/Louisiana border.

I want to patent my visor-obscured-sun photo trick.  As soon as they see this every pilot is gonna post a rip off  photo on his facebook profile.  (Hey thief, if you”re not giving me photo credit at least do me this small favor:  the next time you make an online purchase use one of my amazon affiliate links.   Thanks.)

So now we’re over Austin, Texas.  The sun is down but a little glow remains in the sky.  Beyond Austin west Texas looks like a boundless black void.  Three more hours to go.

“There’s a girl in Austin Texas who calls herself the human trampoline…“  Oh no, Graceland is back in my head — only this time it’s the Willie Nelson cover.   What a dirty trick to play on this aviator.  Willie Nelson changes the lyric from “New York City” to “Austin Texas”.  That makes two hooks for this song in one leg!  My poor first officer has to listen to me hum Graceland all the way to Albuquerque.

Any parent that has taken their children to Disney is familiar with how stressful the day can become.  It’s easy to turn a happy event into a nightmare.  That’s why it is important not to stress about photos.  You guarantee yourself a lot of frustration and angry family members if you ask them stop and pose a bunch of times.  Let things happen naturally.  You are going to Disney after all.  There is no reason to worry about getting a great shot.  The odds are stacked in your favor.  You will see many good family photo ops throughout the day.  If you find that you’re getting tensed up about your photography you should read Tao of Photography: Seeing Beyond Seeing.  It will teach you to work with what’s in front of you and have faith that the universe will provide you with beautiful photos.

Here is an example of going with the flow.  We are getting ready to leave the hotel and Ella just put on her fancy princess dress.  She is so excited that she starts striking all kinds of poses.  The problem is she’s in the worst possible place in our hotel room to take a picture.  The background is super cluttered.  My brain tells me to move her somewhere else before trying a photo, but I feel if I move her the magic bubble will burst and Ella won’t be in the mood for posing anymore.  The answer:  work with what’s in front of my face.  The glare from the window makes a nice highlight and creates some separation between Ella and the background.  Also, if I zoom out far enough I can catch a nice silhouette of Maria working in the next room.  Perfect!

Here we are on the first ride of the day.  The conditions couldn’t be much worse for a photo.  We are in the shade and the background is soaked in bright California sunshine.  What do you do?  Do you say this scene won’t photograph well and give up?  Or, do you work with what’s right there and try to make the best of it?  A long time back I wrote an article about using over exposed white areas as part of the composition.  This merry-go-round scene was the perfect place to burn the background to pure white.  Turning the exposure up did me two favors;   the messing background disappeared and the dark area under the merry-go-round awning came out bright and colorful.

On our way out of the park we ran into Mickey Mouse.  In an instant Mickey grabbed Ella’s hand and started parading through the entrance gate.  I knew that this was a once in a lifetime photo event.  I made the switch from fine art photographer to reporter.  The goal here was simply to get a shot rather than get the perfect shot.  The light was really bad.  It was a few minutes past sunset.  I was walking backwards shooting pictures of a moving target.  I knew I’d need a fast shutter speed to keep everything from blurring.  I cranked the ISO up to 800 and dialed my aperture all the way down to f2.8.  There was a time in my photo life that I wouldn’t have even tried for this shot — technically it would look bad.  Since having a child I now worry more about capturing a memory instead of getting a technically flawless photo.  Now, I use my photography knowledge to make the nest out of a tough situation.  The results are surprisingly nice.  I shouldn’t have been such a stiff for all those years.

Here is my favorite photo of the day.  After promenading with Mickey, an excited all tells mom all about it.  I stood a ways back so that this moment would be between the two of them and there wouldn’t be a camera involved.

My personal favorite photo from this group is the back-lit bird soaring along the snow drift. They are all great in their own way though — a master class in the figure/ground relationship.