Century Plants Bloom

I'm not quite sure what triggers such things, but nearly all century plants in the area bloomed this year. These plants only bloom once every 25 to 50 years (despite their name "century plant") and then die. I guess they have to have some means of coordination so they can cross-pollinate, but I don't know what it is.

The humming birds go wild. I could see around a dozen or so interested in this one pair of blooming plants.

The plant at the bottom of our hill fell over and broke before it could finish blooming. Perhaps a bit of survival of the fittest. The one at the top of our hill was a little behind these, but still pretty much good for cross-pollinization.

Click the link to see the album of various Century plant shots, some with the hummingbirds.

Coronado Evening

Our photo club ventured down to Coronado in the evening to shoot a nice sunset -- should one actually happen. It is hard to plan these things, and as an example, no real great sunset actually happened. Besides the fact that whoever thought of Coronado as a good vantage point for watching the sun set on the ocean was not aware of the geography -- because from Coronado, the sun sets behind Point Loma. Needless to say, we didn't get any quality sunset shots. The clouds were not agreeable to a good sunset anyway. We did manage to get some shots of folks on the beach, the Hotel del Coronado itself, and then we ventured across the island to the other side to shoot night shots of the San Diego skyline.

This is one of the trademark -- domes(?) of the Hotel del Coronado.

Another perspective on the hotel, still a little up close, but you gotta know, the hotel is quite big.

From a distance you can see the hol Wholetel -- um, whole Hotel. The blur on the sidewalk is people walking. This timed exposure kind of blurs them out of existence. They sort of look like ghosts -- funny particularly because the Hotel is known for a few ghosts that supposedly haunt some of the rooms.

This night shot of the San Diego skyline didn't turn out too bad. After having several turn out blurry, I finally remembered to turn off my image stabilization for this timed exposure tripod shot. I was already using mirror-lockup to reduce the shake and couldn't figure out why the images were so blurry -- until the epiphany of the stabilization.

The link above takes you to a album of photos from this event, but not just my photos -- a choice selection of photos from the club members who submitted photos.

Disneyland with the Gang

The photo above was my attempt at the Tinkerbell shot. Disney photographers will take your photo and build such a shot for you and sell you their photo for a price. I just thought I'd give it a try. Darby bought the Disney photos anyway, but we also have THIS version.

11 of us descended (ascended?) on Disneyland this Friday. We got there extra early to beat the crowds to the updated Pirates of the Caribbean ride. We were there when they opened parking. We were there when they opened the park. We went right to the Pirates ride -- which was closed due to technical difficulties, but was to open "later, TBD." Sadly, we wandered off it search of other rides and whatnot.

With Darby and John not doing the "fun rides," they volunteered to wander around to all the fast passes and get us all passes for all the harder to get on rides, as our fast pass opportunities arose. We would go on a less crowded ride, then use a fast pass, and we did all the cool rides at Disneyland by around noon. We never waited in a line longer than 15 minutes. It was great.

After lunch we headed over to Disney's California Adventure and did the fun rides there as well. Again, no hassle and no wait, using the "fast pass agents" Darby and John to retrieve everyone's fast passes while we waited in one of the shorter lines for another good ride.

Julie-Ana and Sheri staked out a great place to watch the fireworks at 5:30, and then just played cards and whatnot, holding our spots until fireworks time. We brought them their dinner so they never had to leave the spot. It was the best view of the fireworks I've ever had.

The photos from the day are linked to this blog, but there is a password in place and will be in place until such time as I open the album up to the public. This should be in a couple weeks, so check back then, if you care to see our day, and especially our great vantage point for the fireworks show.

4th of July Fireworks Over Poway

For the 4th, I climbed to the top of our hill and watched the Poway fireworks, which are launched from Poway High School. The view was spectacular, and I was able to set my tripod up in an isolated area and shoot to my hearts content. This exposure was about 4 seconds long -- pretty much what I used all night long except the finale.

Padres Fireworks

Perhaps it is just me, or perhaps it was our location, or maybe this year's fireworks at PetCo park weren't very spectacular after all. Of course, we're watching the show through the right field foul pole, and most of the show is behind the right field bleachers, but still, all in all, not that great if you ask me. I mean, I expect lackluster fireworks for a typical "fireworks" type show, and especially lame when it's to celebrate a home run. I mean, you're not going to fire off $15K worth of fireworks every time someone knocks a tater. These fireworks, however, were the Padres Independence Day celebration fireworks -- a few days early since they would be out of town for the 4th. One should expect a great show. Perhaps with all the buildings around, they can no longer put on a good show. I just remember fireworks shows from Qualcomm stadium in years gone by that were pretty spectacular. This, was not that.

Take a look. What do you think?

All these shots were taken with about .6 second exposures, hand held. I still think it is against the rules to bring a tripod or monopod into the ballpark, so one must come up with creative ideas on shooting fireworks.

Of course I shot 60 or 70 images, but these were the best ones (more or less) -- and as you can tell, these aren't that great. I can do better...provided the show is better... and I'm not shooting through a foul pole while looking over my right shoulder.