Good Enough to Eat

A fungi along the trail that looked like a nicely toasted bread.

You probably liked this photo better than the baby rattlesnake.

Baby Rattlesnake

I was walking the trail when I came upon this little cutie sunning itself in between the patches of shade from the trees overhead.  It was less than a foot long (30cm).  It was stretched out straight when I first came upon it and didn't move at bit.  I thought it was dead, having been run over by a mountain biker.  I touched it with my walking stick and it then curled its head back around under the oak leaf.  The leaf will give you an idea as to how small its head was.  I then proceeded to break one of my own rules when it comes to wildlife photography - take a bunch of photos right away before you move for a better position, or in this case, try to move the subject out from beneath the leaf.  He would have none of my pestering him and immediately slithered off the trail into the leaf litter leaving me with this one and only picture.  I didn't get his tail in the picture where you could see his tiny little rattle buttons, too small to be of any use.  Nervertheless, a bite from a baby rattlesnake can be more toxic than from an adult for the venom is highly concentrated.  Lesson here: Take lots of pictures folks before you go messing around.  Have something in the camera before the critter gets fed up and takes off.

Excuse me, but there's a chicken on your head.

I came upon this scene on a remote trail during my hike last week.

Chicken love.

A Hiker Friendly Tree

I am able to walk beneath this limb without having to duck my head.

If I were 6 feet tall, it wouldn't work out so well.

Hidden Buck

I walked by less than 10 feet away from him before he jumped to his feet.  That was how well concealed he was in the brush.  Once he determined I was no threat he went about grazing.  

That's how long it took for me to get my camera out.

Then his girlfriend who I never saw either, she was just to the left behind that green shrub,

 jumped up and took off.  He watched where she went.

This was the moment before he dashed off after her, gone in a flash.

Discovering Lost Material

My new camera has this wi-fi capability and I was trying to learn how to use it.  This involved installing an app on my prehistoric iPhone, connecting the two and then images from my camera magically jumped over into the iPhone.  Wow!  So I wondered if I could then put the image onto my blog using the iPhone.  Well, yes I could.  This opens up a door of a whole new opportunity for me.  If I have a signal out in the wilderness during my travels, I could post camera pictures on my blog without having a computer.  I did a test post.  It worked!  I then clicked on "drafts" on my blog to check the test post out on the computer and discovered this draft post (gee, I had 18 of them in there) from something I was messing around with over six years ago!  So I am posting it now for your viewing pleasure.

This photo is from when I used a film camera long ago.  I wondered how prints would scan and if they could be used for the blog.  Not so well as can be seen.  Either I had a crappy camera back then, have a crappy scanner now, or just don't know what I am doing.  Probably a little of all three.

At any rate, moments like this don't happen often and I look forward to the day when I am presented with a rainbow shot like this again. Only this time having a digital camera I can make several tries to position myself directly beneath where the rainbow touches the ground. That would be a great image.

Problem with Blogger

I have this video to post and for some reason when I click on the "My You Tube Videos" link in the video upload window, it says "No Videos Found".  I've never had this problem before.  It must be some settings issue with Blogger, You Tube, Google Chrome, the NSA, CIA or something.  If anyone has any ideas or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

I found a way around the problem but the quality of the video suffered greatly.  Well to be honest, it wasn't that great to begin with what being zoomed in to the max and the heat waves shimmering in the meadow.  I'll leave it here anyway for some my enjoy seeing a coyote taking leave when I stumbled into his domain.

Still, if I could access my You Tube Channel through Blogger it would be much better to view.

Not a Good Place

to be parking your car.

This appears to be the top half of the main trunk that split away.  We had a tremendous wind storm a few days ago.  Made a mess of everything.  I suspect this happened then and it was evening when the wind storm hit so the park would have been closed and no cars in the parking lot.  Still, it did a number on that fence, and would have been kind of cool to have seen happen

...at a safe distance away of course.

Bee Action

The bees were happy and active because my big cactus bloomed again.

There were a lot more but evidently they are camera shy.  They'd scatter when I'd get close.

One For All

On the left is my hand-me-down iPhone 4 I inherited from my wife when she had to get the new model, which now happens to be an old model by two generations.  Surprisingly, Smartphones take really nice pictures.  But not when they are in my hands.  I cannot seem to hold the phone still enough while tapping the screen to make adjustments and "snap" the picture.

In the middle is my DSLR another hand-me-down from my wife when she had to have a newer model some years back.  It takes great pictures.  But I have grown tired of lugging it around on my hikes especially when I include two extra heavy lenses in the load.  So it has come time to say good-bye to the DSLR.  I sold my 70-300mm zoom and my 105mm macro lenses on eBay but will hang onto the camera itself, for after all it really is my wife's camera.

On the right is my trusty old point & shoot camera.  It used to take great pictures, but things have changed a lot since it was born and now it takes just okay pictures.  It is now in semi-retirement.

This is my new camera that will replace them all.  You cannot tell by the picture but it is the same size as the point & shoot up above, only a wee-bit fatter with that lens.  It has a 20.2 megapixel sensor. Now I am not all into counting megapixels as some people are.  But as it was explained to me by the guy at the camera store, the sensor on my old Canon was about a quarter inch square in size. This camera has a sensor the size of a large postage stamp.  Sony came out with their RX100 that has the same large sensor and this was Canon's response to it.

I compared both brands to each other reading all the "experts" reviews online and went with the Canon for I was already familiar with how they are set up (I didn't have to re-learn all that much), it had some qualities I was looking for and the Sony had some features that were not important to me. Also the Canon was cheaper.  I took my new camera out for a test ride on a hike yesterday.  I am not one that really notices all that much difference in pictures taken by one camera to another.  But even I could tell a whole world of difference, especially in the video I shot!  I like my new camera and so does my back.

Trail Courtesy

Horses reign King on the trails.  This lowly peasant has to walk through their poop.