That picture is part of the Japanese Garden section of the arboretum. There are several sections and well-paved roads and walking paths go all through the place... 1800 acres and over 5000 species of woody plants.

I took my Sunday morning ride as normal today. I was just planning to ride a couple miles because I had not ridden much in the last week and, truth be told, had not really felt that well. The city has opened up a new section of my favorite MUP and when I reached it, I was going to just turn around and head back. Instead, I took the new path. The addition is only about a mile but it was pretty nice. We do not have mountains or old growth forests in north Texas. We do have sunflowers.



For some reason, the photo loads sideways. Sorry about that. They are native and the city is starting to do some landscape work along the path so I don't really expect them to be there too long but they sure are pretty! This really set the tone of the rest of the ride.

Nice photo. Sometimes cameras save info about the orientation, and somehow some apps get confused interpreting that. Here it is fixed up:

This picture is crazyazz good! That would be framed up on my wall, no doubt.

Longfellow gardens at Minnehaha park. Longfellow house in the background. It is a 2/3 scale replica of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Mass.

20130824_111902 by tommyputz, on Flickr

I hope this isn't too big, but it looks bad small. I went to the mountains with a group of students and played with my Lumix GF2 micro 4/3 camera and an old 16mm movie camera lens. This is looking up just outside my tent. The trees are lighted by a cabin porch light that's a bit far away away.


Stars and trees in Wilseyville, CA by ccorlew, on Flickr

Curtis, what f-stop, ISO, and shutter speed? I'm guessing it's at least 2.8 lens? Nice photo by the way.

ISO 800, f somewhere between 2.8 and 4 at 25 seconds with a 10mm 1.8 Soligar lens from an old movie camera.
There's more noise than I'd like, but oh well.
Even at a "fast" 25 seconds you can see the Earth's rotation in the slight motion blur in the stars if you look at the highest resolution version on Fickr.

And thanks!

Curtis, that's a very, very nice picture. Ol' Mother Nature's pretty neat, isn't she?

Dave

PS How old are your students?

Thanks! They're Los Medanos College students. We had a wonderful group this year. We usually do, but this one is even better!

Garden of a Japanese house at the base of Mt Jimba, in the mountains west of Tokyo:

Thanks, you guys. Funny thing is that I snapped it on a whim. One of the cool things about digital cameras, I guess.

Love the result you got there. I've tried the same thing a number of times (camping ... late at night ... bored outta my skull) and it's never come out nearly as well.

There are some very talented people in here! Awesome photos, thank you.

One of these days I'd like to spend some time with one of you who are knowledgeable about digital photography and take a mini lesson

Showdown with a tough escapee:



Big logs on a small road. I don't know why he was on this road -- maybe he was over the weight limit, and was avoiding the authorities. Those are redwoods, perhaps old growth redwoods??

Atlanta Streets Alive shut down 3.75 miles of Peachtree Street to car traffic for four hours Sunday and 50,000 people showed up to walk, bike, skate etc. It was quite a sight!


Fox1 by BluesDawg, on Flickr

Climbing up to Craggy Gardens on the Blue Ridge Parkway last week..I took a rest stop a couple of miles before the visitors center.



At the visitors center, the fog was just rolling in.





The day before at the Linn Cove viaduct, note the usual Parkway traffic...not a car in sight for the first three hours of the day

Pelicans fishing next to the bike path today ... and seagulls trying to rip them off.

Seagulls, pick-pockets of the sky.

squirrels with feathers.

Used to get a kick out of watching the seagulls diving for new guys sack lunches in the shipyard right after they put them on the gangbox alongside the metal lunchboxes. They'd carry the stuff down to the ways and tear into it and have a meal. Don't know if anybody on their crews would warn them or not but they sure looked surprised looking down from the main deck at the seagulls tearing into their lunch.

Don't get me started on squirrels!

Squirrels = tree rats

Dang! That's another great photo. I really like the sepia tint.

Thanks! That sepia tone is actually natural ... the color of the morning looking into the sun when I zoom through the mist. My commute home has been pretty sweet the last couple of weeks. This time of year, I can usually catch the sunset. And of all those times, I've only seen the green flash ONCE! No green flash this day:

With my son last weekend in Montana..