Back in the days of CRTs, screensavers were ever-changing images needed to prevent a pattern from being burned into the display phosphors. Modern flat screen displays don’t have that problem. Instead, we use background images to make the computer desktop more interesting. Here I have posted ten scenic images from California and Hawaii. Each is sized for a 1920 × 1200 pixel screen. These days, most computers will automatically adjust it to fit the screen to which the image is applied.

Cameras built into cellphones have improved substantially. My Droid X phone captures 8 megapixel images through it’s tiny lens. Since I almost always carry a pocket camera I haven’t used the cellphone camera very much, but recently I decided to give it a try. One advantage of the cellphone camera is that the pictures can be sent out as e-mail directly from the spot where you took the picture. We’ve all seen the blurry products of those attempts, but it seems the problem is not always with the camera. In good light, they can take respectable pictures.

My wife wonders why I keep take photos when we revisit places we have been to many times. I do have a certain number of photos that an insensitive person might claim are essentially the same.. However, many things change: the lighting, the clouds, the wind and fog, the seasons, the tides and the surf, the people, and human constructions. As you get old, you even start to notice the trees have grown and some have died and gone away, and the dunes shift and cliffs erode. And there are changing animals, birds, and plants. A case in point, recently, was a display of seaweed at Point Lobos.

Daffodil Hill is a private ranch in the California mountains near the town of Volcano, roughly two-and-half hours drive from the San Francisco area. (No, there is no volcano.) The McLaughlin family that’s owned the ranch since the 1880’s likes daffodils. They have about 300,000 bulbs, which is how I know they like daffodils, and they open the ranch to the public from late March through mid-April. If you want to photograph daffodils, this place is it.

When you travel somewhere, try to take a photo that sums up what the place was really like. The challenge is more difficult than it seems. If you are a photo enthusiast like me, you will probably take lots of photos taking in scenic views, unusual objects, and small slices of the life of the place. Collectively, the photos document the place. The challenge is to get one photo that captures much of the feeling of being there. Here is my attempt at Del Valle Regional Park, built around a reservoir south of Livermore, California.

According to bridgehunter.com I was photographing a through-truss bridge over the East Branch Delaware River on Fish Eddy-Sullivan Road, in Delaware County, New York. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, although perhaps I should have. I discovered that bridgehunter.com is a good way to find interesting subjects of the bridge species and to later understand what I’ve photographed.

Here are two panoramic images of Point Lobos. In one image there is a single person in the image, so tiny relative to the image size that it’s hard to see on the small version here. The figure is near the left edge, about half way up the frame. In a second image I’ve used Photoshop™ to erase the person. The question is which image is better. A person gives scale to the landscape, but many nature photographers seem to prefer images having no sign of humanity.

California’s Highway 1 has a reputation as one of America’s most scenic highways. It lives up to it. A week ago we drove on the highway with visiting friends, and I took this spliced panorama a few miles north of Jenner. Jenner is small town at the mouth of the Russian River, about two hours north of San Francisco. The bright violet flowers are from wild pea plants, and the trumpet-shaped yellow-orange ones are bush monkeyflowers. I think the latter flowers are supposed to resemble a monkey’s face, but in all the times I’ve looked at them I’ve never been aware of a monkey looking back.

You have a good chance of encountering bins of goods for sale when you’re traveling. They often make interesting subjects for a pocket camera photo. The photos are colorful, make interesting texture patterns, and provide something to ponder when you return home and have the time. There is more to see in the photos than you had time to contemplate on the spot.

Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. It spans the border between California and Nevada, southwest of Reno. One of the streams feeding the Lake forms Eagle Falls as it cascades into Emerald Bay on the California side. The top of the falls is only a few feet from the road, but I had driven by several times in the past without noticing it; waterfalls are not so exciting from the back. On a cold day in mid-May I took a two-frame panorama, looking towards Emerald Bay. The scene had interesting elements, but lacked punch. That is, until I unleashed the Topaz Labs Spicify Photoshop plug-in filter.