California Sampler by Dave Wyman by Dave Wyman

California Sampler by Dave Wyman by Dave Wyman

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Pano (Scroll across the monitor to see the entire image, rather than using one of the other sizing options.
The view is from the parking area near the Natural Bridge. Telescope Peak, standing 11,049 feet in elevation above sea level, and the snow-covered summits of the Panamint Mountains are to the west. The temporary lake, well below sea level, was created by some of that melting snow, plus a record winter rainfall in Death Valley in 2005.)

April 2, 2005 (Desert Wildflowers along Route 66, in the Mojave Desert between the communities of Newberry Springs and Ludlow. The flowers are growing, somewhat incongruously, in and around a vast lava field that flowed out of the nearby Pisgah Crater.)

Flora (Death Valley)

April 5, 2005 (Two Temples of God:
Yosemite National Park and the Yosemite Chapel)

Mud Flats - West (Sunset over mud flats along the West End Road, a few moments before the sun dropped behind the Panamint Mountains.)

April 10, 2005 (This weekend I conducted a photography tour to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the Carrizo Plain National Monument, and the remote Cuyama and Lockwood Valleys. We enjoyed photographing two kinds of fields: enormous oil fields near the town of Taft - where we spent two nights - and spectacular fields of wildflowers. We also saw and even photographred some elusive wildlife.
This photograph was made this morning in the hills that rise south of Taft. The mountains in the background are part of the Transverse Range of California.)

April 11, 2005 (Our photography caravan ground to a halt when someone spotted these pronghorn antelope, at the Carrizo Plain National Monument. Though shy, the animals allowed us a little time to photograph them as they cavorted in the grass, before charging away.)

April 12, 2005 - Jesus Shaves ("His Barber Shop" is in old downtown Taft, California. One of the photographers in our group spotted the sign in the window, while another gave this picture its somewhat sacreligious title.)

April 14, 2005 (An old Airstream trailer sits along Route 66 in the Mojave Desert.
More Route 66 photographs are at: http://www.pbase.com/davewyman/route6605)

April 15, 2005 (In a good year, like this one, the wildflowers are spectacular in the upper reaches along Klipstein Road, in the San Emigdio Mountains.)

April 16, 2005 (Expansion pipe in the oil fields near Taft, California. The insulated pipes will expand - less than an inch - to keep natural gas, oil and steam heated to different temperatures from damaging the system of pipes that run throughout the oild field.)

April 17, 2005 - Black Gold (California pumps a lot of oil - only Texas, Alaska and Lousiana produce more. This well is located near the town of Taft, in Kern County, which produces 10% of the petroleum production in the United States. It is, therefore, not surprsing that this rainbow, which I photographed in early April, ends in an oil field.)

April 18, 2005 (Wildflowers along Klipstein Road, south of Maricopa, California.)

April 19, 2005 - Carrizo Plain (The wild Carrizo Plain is now a national monument. Home to many rare and endangered species, including sand hill cranes, tule elk, and antelopes, Carrizo can put on a showy display of wildflowers during the spring.)

April 20, 2005 (Thistle at the Carrizo Plain National Monument.)

April 21, 2005 (Along Klipstein Road, in the San Emigdio Mountains.)

April 22, 2005 (My new friend sits in front of the Old West bar at the truly remote and old Scheidek Resort, in Los Padres National Forest, on the fringe of the Cuyama Valley.
Photo note - I used Photoshop to blur out the background, not easy to do in-camera when using a 21mm lens.)

April 23, 2005 (Two days ago I rode my bike up into the Santa Monica Mountains, north of my home in the flatlands of Los Angeles. The sun was about to set over the city, and the wild mustard stood out against the dark background of the next ridge. While much of the mountain scenery has been developed in Los Angeles, there are still many places from which to take in fine views. This photo was made on Astral Drive, above Nichols Canyon.)

April 24, 2005 (Recent bike riding paid off for me, as I completed the Chico Wildflower Century today, a one-day, 100 mile bike ride in northern California. It was a long drive - almost 500 miles from my home in Los Angeles to the city of Chico. This is a picture of my friend Sam Chin, age 20, who came up with me to participate on his first century ride; he proved to be a very strong rider. Sam is my age when I first attended college at Chico State, 36 years ago.)

April 25, 2005 (The Chico Wildflower Century is a one-day, 100 mile bike ride in northern California. A generous winter and spring rainfall meant there were indeed plenty of wildflowers.
This is the top of volcanic Table Mesa, which my friends Sam and Silas and I, along with several thousand other riders, gained after some serious pedaling that took us up 1,200 feet above the floor of the Sacramento Valley. It was a mostly cool day, with overcast, but it didn't rain the finish of the ride.
All that is left is the almost 500 mile drive back to my home in Los Angeles, in the southern half of the Golden State.
)

April 26, 2005 (Wild mustard edges an irrigation canal, while flooded rice fields are visible in the distance, viewed along the back roads of the vast Sacramento Valley of northern California.)

April 27, 2005 - Have You Driven a Ford, Lately? (Old car, Taft, California)

April 28, 2005 (These wildflowers - goldfields - covered the landscape in the southern Cuyama Valley.)

April 29, 2005 (You find them all over the back roads - guard dogs, like this scary looking brute. The reality: he's a pussycat! Photographed alon Old HIghway 58, Barstow, in the Mojave Desert.)

May 2, 2005 (A rancher and the owner of the Schideck bar, near the Cuyama Badlands.)

May 4, 2005 (Red Rocks State Park, with its colorful and deeply eroded mudhills, is off of Highway 14, north of the desert town of Mojave. Dawn from the campground can be a very beautiful time to experience the park. This was quite a switch from my trip the prior weekend to the green and leafy hinterlands of northern California.)

May 5, 2005 - Scroll It! (Don't shrink down this pano - four photographs stiched together - of Red Rock Canyon State Park to fill the monitor. Instead, use the "large" or "original" setting, so that this photograph can be scrolled across the monitor. Red Rocks is a strange place - these muhills, fossil beds, and amazing, blazing colors (however, the more colorful portions of the park are not visible in this photograph).)

May 7, 2005 (Red Rock Canyon State Park)

May 8, 2005 (Family-owned farms and ranches are supposedly dying out. It's not happening on this 600+ acre spread in northern California, where three generations of ranchers - and their sheep dogs - have worked the land.)

May 9, 2005 (This is a view of sunset over flooded rice fields along a backroad in the Sacramento Valley, in northern Califorina (between the towns of Chico and Willows). California grows and exports high-quality, medium grain japonica, a type of rice that is favored in Northeast Asia and in parts of the Middle East and Mediterranean region.)

May 10, 2005 (San Gabriel Mountains - Mount Baldy photographed from a pull-out along State Highway 2. This photograph appears in my book, Backroads of Southern California.)

May 12, 2005 - Condor! (This is a California condor, one of the largest flying creatures on earth; the Andean condor is reputedly slightly larger. Adults can weigh up to 25 pounds and their wings can span almost 10 feet. State and federal programs have saved the condor - once down to about 15 birds in the wild - from extinction. Today, there are about 200 condors, many of them in rugged locations in California.
This is a somewhat special condor. From his markings, I could see that he was AC9, which stands for Adult Condor #9. He was the last condor to be taken from the wild.
After siring several chicks, he was returned to the wild. Condors have been significant to many American American groups, so AC9's release was celebrated with a Chumash Indian blessing.
I photographed AC9 in the beautiful Topa Topa mountains north of the little town of Filmore, and this portrait of him appears in my book about the backroads of Southern California.)

May 13, 2005 (Pano Experiment - I removed the background - hazy blue skies - from downtown Los Angeles, and in fact if it had been clear, the photo would have shown our local mountains topped with a fair amount of snow!)

May 20, 2005 - Flood! (After warm weather followed by heavy rain, Yosemite Valley was innundated with snow-melted water on May 15. The sun came out on the morning of May 16. The Merced River, which runs through Yosemite Valley, became Yosemite Lake. The water here appears placid because it is so spread out, but the main body of the river was moving with some force. Thundering Yosemite Falls appears in the background and in reflection.
I have been in Yosemite Valley the last three times it saw major flooding. The first was the May, 1996 flood, and I was in the Valley the day it flooded on January 1, 1997 (we had two hours to spare before we would have been trapped for the next few days). This is the one flood I've been able to enjoy and photograph.)

May 21, 2005 - Yosemite Lake (Another photograph showing the effect of the heavy snowpack, heavy spring rainfall, and unusually warm temperatures on Yosemite Valley. Instead of a ribbon of river running through the valley, there is a calm looking lake.)

May 22, 2005 - Mmmm, Strawberries (The Central Valley of California provides much of the food for the United States. At this time of year, fruit stands in the Central Valley are ubiquitous, like this one near Sangor. We had a great time purchasing strawberries from the nice woman behind the counter and then we ate the wonderfully fresh strawberries as we made our way down the Central Valley.)

May 23, 2005 (Tamarack Creek, Yosemite, runs wild during heavy spring run-off.)

May 24, 2005 (Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite - with the verdant vegetation and mist, the old hotel looks a bit like a castle lost in time.)

May 25, 2005 - Cover Shot? (Potential cover shot for the second printing of my book, the Backroads of Southern California.
The photograph looks north and takes in a slice of Highway 1 between Malibu and Oxnard, as viewed from Deer Creek Road, in the Santa Monica Mountains.
(To me, this brings together several elements emblemataic to the southern half of the state: the coastline on a sunny day, mountains, desert vegetation (the blooming agave or century plant) and spring wildflowers.
)

May 26, 2005 (Cascade Creek, Highway 120, Yosemite.)

May 27, 2005 - shroom (I found this little mushroom growing not far from mighty Yosemite Falls.)

May 27, 2005 (At the Pioneer Cemetery, Yosemite)

May 31, 2005 (At Happy Isles, Yosemite - an Incense Cedar resists the encroachment of the Merced River.)

June 2, 2005 (Seaweed - Montana de Oro State Park)

June 3, 2005 - What Are You Looking At? (The Tram Tour, Yosemite)

June 4, 2005 - Watch the First Step (Launching point for hang gliders in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.)

June 5, 2005 (A hang glider finds a rising column of warm air, soaring above the Ownes Lake after launching from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Photo from my book, Backroads of Southern California.
)

June 6, 2005 (The wildflower season in the desert, even the high desert, is over - but the image of the wildflowers in Joshua Tree National Park this year are staying with me.)

June 9, 2005 (A. K. Smiley Public Library, city of Redlands, in Southern California.
Built with generous donations of land and money by brothers Alfred and Albert Smiley - prominent residents from the eastern U.S. who fell in love with Redlands - the library was dedicated on April 29th, 1898.)

Mystery Spider (Every few years or so, little yellow flowers - gold poppies (Eschscholtzia glyptosperma) bloom in Death Valley. A tiny, yellow spider - less than a quarter inch across - lives beneath the petals. A macro lens and a supine positon are necessary to see these creatures. What happens to the spider when the petals drop? Does the arachnid change colors, like a chameleon? Or does it burrow into the earth to hide from predators that might otherwise spot its yellow body? No one knows.
)

June 12, 2005 (Another image from the Backroads of Southern California, my pictorial guidebook.
This tiger lily, one of the more beautiful flowers in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, bobbed gently in a forest breeze, at the base of a remote grove of giant sequoias.
)

June 14, 2005 - Schnozz at the End of the Rainbow (Elephant Seal, Rainbow, Piedras Blancas Lighthouse)

June 15, 2005 (Sunrise, Mojave Desert)

June 16, 2005 (Mount Whitney viewed beneath a granite arch in the Alabama Hills, off of Movie Road.)

June 17, 2005 (A bee sleeps in the cool of early morning in Quaking Aspen Meadow; the first rays of the sun will warm and rouse the bee to another busy day in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.)

June 18, 2005 (Flags at the Route 66 Motel, Barstow.)

June 19, 2005 (Wildflower, Quaking Aspen Meadow, Sierra Nevada Mountains)

June 20, 2005 (Tufa Towers rising at dawn from the waters of Mono Lake.)

June 21, 2005 (Dawn over Mono Lake, look east from the south shore, toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains.)

June 22, 2005 (Bristlecone Pines: these trees are in the Patriarch Grove, more than 11,000 feet above sea level, in the White Mountains of California. Nearby White Mountain is 14,246 feet - 4,342 meters - in elevation. Some of the trees are more than 4,000 years old. Many of them have only a narrow strip of living bark to sustain them in this otherwise rather barren landscape, but this beautifully weathered specimen is definitely dead.)

June 24, 2005 - All Memories Fade. (Fading marker at the Pala Mission Cemetery, in the mountains northeast of San Diego.)

June 25, 2005 - Pronghorn (Sighted at dusk along the Parkfield - Coalinga Road, just north of Highway 41.)

June 26 - Road Closed (The road to Mount Whitney - photographed in late spring.
)

June 28, 2005 (The San Andreas earthquake fault runs right through the town of Parkfield, in the Coast Range Mountains of California. This is where the North American Plate slides against the Pacific Plate.)

June 30, 2005 (Kayaker in the Kern River, paddling through the little community of Kernville, in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains.)

Route 66 CD Cover Art (Cover art for a new CD - my photo is on the left, the Route 66 motel in Barstow, CA, along historic Route 66. Three of my Route 66 photographs appear on the CD.
How did my photographs become part of the CD? The art director found them in my Route 66 pbase galleries (pbase is such a fine service)!)

July 18, 2005 (Dew-covered Shooting Star in Quaking Aspen Meadow, Sierra Nevada Mountains, perhaps an hour before the sun cleared the pines.)

July 20, 2005 (Tiger Lilly near Quaking Asplen Meadow, in Sequoia National Forest.)

July 21-24, 2005 (I'll be off to Yosemite National Park not long after I upload this photograph, so it will have to do for several PaDs, at least until Sunday. This is my daughter at Quaking Aspen Meadow, in Sequoia National Forest.)

July 25, 2005 (Ferns dip along the edge of a stream in Sequoia National Forest.)

July 26, 2005 (Red peppers growing along Highway 184, near Arvin, California.)

July 27, 2005 (Backlit leaf and shadows, Quaking Aspen, Sequoia National Forest)

July 28, 2005 (Bigalow Sneezeweed, Sequoia National Forest)

July 29, 2005 (Another Pepper Pic - near Arvin, CA, in the Central (San Joaquin) Valley.)

July 30, 2005 (I have been privileged to know Carlos Gamez for nine years. He stands here near the top of Lembert Dome, 9,400 feet above sea level in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park.)

The Night Spirit of Anza-Borrego (Sam Chin evokes the desert spirit of Anza-Borrego State Park in a night time photograph straight out of my camera - no trick photography.)

Fauna (Pocket Mouse)

Hawk, Los Coyotes Indian Reservation - October 18, 2005 (The hawk had just launched itself from a telephone pole, a few miles from Anza-Borrego State Park.)

Outside My Front Door

Spider, Elderado Nature Center, Long Beach

Franklin Canyon Pano (Ten minutes north of downtown Beverly Hills.)

The Aliens Have Landed - Or: Rain Drops on a Yucca Leaf (Rain fell in Los Angeles last night. In the morning, when I stepped outside to walk with our dog, the sky was blue but the rain drops lingered on some long leaves in the front of our house. The drops were still there when Beau and I returned from our walk, prompting me to pull my camera out of the closet.
Technical details: to come this close to my little subjects, I used an old 50mm lens, reversed it, and simply held it against the front of the camera. Yes, it sounds crazy but it makes a superb macro lens.
PaD:
)

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