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.

When summer is fading there are days that still look more like summer than autumn. The leaves haven’t started to change. Nonetheless, the cloud patterns change, the sun is lower, and air feels sharper. I like this photo because it captures some of the change-of-season, even though the subject is more snapshot than classic. Some work in Photoshop™ helps.

The sun is bright but low to the horizon, and that marks photos as being in the late fall or early winter. Here in California there are reasonably warm days into November and December, so people still go the beach on good days. The surf is picking up from distant storms, and sun, surf, and people are the ingredients of photos. A recent lunch hour visit turned out to be an exercise in timing and composition. Neither small children nor incoming waves take direction well.

Autumn is a time for visiting farm stands. There are pumpkins to be selected for Halloween, apples, and all manner of squash. So maybe not everyone thinks “panorama” at the farm stand, but, of course, I do. I like panoramic photos. Panoramas are well suited to scenes where there is a lot going on, as there was recently at Mike’s Truck Garden in Fulton, California.

We are fast approaching autumn, and with it many enjoyable walks in the woodlands with a camera at the ready. This past weekend we visited Pfieffer Big Sur State Park on the central California coast. It provided a warm up for autumn photography. One feature of forest scenes is the high range of light to dark tones. That prompted me to brush up on high dynamic range imagery (HDRI), a technique for combining multiple exposures into a single image.

It is, however, socially acceptable to take pictures of vegetables, even naked vegetables, so I was able to hold the camera and properly frame this photo of corn and pumpkins.