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.

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.

A viaduct is a long bridge consisting of a series of short spans supported on piers or towers. In the U.S. viaducts became popular in the era of railroad building to take the rails across wide valleys. Not long ago I had a two-viaduct day in northern Pennsylvania. The best photos are aerial shots with blue sky, fall foliage, and an historic locomotive traversing the span. I didn’t manage that, but viaducts are nonetheless interesting subjects worth capturing.

I found three aspects of viaducts I could treat on a cloudy winter’s day: the panorama of the setting, the craftsmanship of construction, and life under the bridge.

Starrucca Viaduct. Larger version here.

The city of Ithaca, New York, boasts having over a hundred waterfalls and gorges within ten miles. The web led me to one of the more noted, Ithaca Falls. My goal for photographing such sights is to answer the question: “What was it like?” To start with, it was cold. Beyond that, the falls were beautiful, the stream from the falls was in a gorge, and there were a few tourists enjoying the scenery.

I like wide angle shots, but I usually quit at splicing two frames horizontally or three frames vertically. Going to four our more frames spliced horizontally produces a long skinny picture. There are not many subjects well suited to such a long format, and when a good subject is found there are not many ways to effectively display the results. But sometimes, I just can’t resist.