Return to Steinbeck Country by Dave Wyman
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Sierra Nevada Eastside
Album-2021-01-19-2229
Foggy Night in Los Angeles
Coastal Bike Rides
Trek Émonda
Yosemite's Natural Fire Fall
Had Camera, Did Travel - 2015 in Review
Italy by Bike 2015
The Wildflower Century - Chico, California, 2015
Getting High on Haleakala
A Photograph On Occasion
Yosemite, Selected Images, 2014
Route 66 - 2015
Navajo Country - 2014
A Ride Up Stelvio Pass, Italy
The Un-Yellowstone/Teton Photography Tour, 2013
Clover Avenue Elementary School
The Swingin' 60s - An Eyewitness Account
Homage Galleries
It's Hip to Be Square
Indian Country Galleries
Holiday Festivals of Los Angeles
The Mother Road - The Route 66 Galleries
California Galleries
Mountain Home - Photography Amongst the Giant Sequ
The Oregon Galleries
An August Ascent of Mt. Sill
The Tidelands of South Carolina
Yellowstone Country - Autumn, 2007
The Magic of Autumn - Yosemite, 2006
Sierra Nevada East Side - Autumn, 2006
Zion, Bryce and Las Vegas - A Photography Tour
Death Valley Haikus - Winter, 2007
Yosemite in Winter - 2007
Emigrant Highways - San Joaquin Valley, California
The Glory of Yosemite - Spring, 2007
Winter in Yosemite - 2008
Death Valley 2008
Yellowstone Country - Autumn, 2008
Mono Lake, Bodie Ghost Town and Autumn Colors - Si
Autumn in Yosemite, 2008
Route 66, California - Barstow to Amboy - 2008
Route 66 - Barstow to Amboy, California - 2009
San Diego Natural History Museum - Death Valley -
Land of Fire and Ice - The Cascades and Northern C
Return to Steinbeck Country
Point Reyes National Seashore, California - Previe
Rapha Continental -The Navajo Nation Ride
Beyond the Snapshot: The Point Reyes Peninsula
Yellowstone Country 2009
Yosemite in Autumn - October, 2009
Sierra Nevada East Side - 2009
Indian Country and the Southwestern United States
The Southwest - Canyon Lands and Indian Country, 2
The Mother Road - Route 66, 2010
Family Camping Trip Galleries
The Fargo Street Hill Climb, Version 2010
California's Gold Rush Country
Yosemite's Waterworks, Spring, 2010
The Central Coast of California - 2010
Mule Pack to the High Sierra
Point Reyes, Tomales Bay, Petaluma - 2010
Sierra Nevada East Side - 2010
Winter in Yosemite - 2011
IPhonic Imagery
Death Valley - Spring, 2011
En Plein Air: The Central Coast of California
Steinbeck Country 2011
City of Angels - Photojournalism
Oregon Photo Tour/Ken Rockwell Homage - 2012


This year's Image Quest photography tour returned to the Central Coast regions of California, exploring with our cameras the literary landscape John Steinbeck wrote about in books such as "Pastures of Heaven," "The Red Pony," "Cannery Row" and "East of Eden."


The trip co-leaders were Ken Rockwell and Richard Nolthenius. Ken and I will conduct another trip together, this time to the Point Reyes/Marin County area, north of San Francisco, California, in early September - check here for updates and for information about two other trips this autumn, to Yosemite and the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, that Ken and I are conducting.


Richard Nothenius has photos posted here.


Follow me on twitter: davewyman


My cycling/photo blog is here: here.

The jellyfish exhibition at the Monterey Aquarium offers up an incredibly array of colorful subjects. They aren't that easy to photograph, though, because the jellyfish are constantly moving, swimming to and fro under low light conditions. High ISOs on today's digital cameras help. And I replaced my beloved 18-200mm lens with a faster 35mm f/2 lens.
The diver had to be a good 30 feet from where I sat in front of the massive kelp forrest tank at the aquarium. The glass behind which she swims wasn't designed with photography specifically in mind. The light was low, the diver and her friends were in constant movement. Technical details as below; to illuminate the diver's face, I employed the dodge tool with Aperture, the program from Apple I use most often use when tweaking my photographs.
Yes, yes - those pesky reflections. How to keep them out of our photographs when we don't want them.

Well, there are ways. But why always fight it? The photograph surely tells a story, perhaps one more interesting, than a straight shot of an otter could communicate to the viewer.
In the wild, I've come close - or close enough - to otters. Never this close, a chance afforded me by the thick plastic separating me from three otters at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The fur of the sea otter is the most dense of any animal in the world. Its fur can contain up to almost one million strands per inch. The fur is made up of longer waterproof guard hairs and a shorter underfur. The longer hairs keep the dense underfur dry. That combination keeps cold sea water away from the skin of an otter.
Over the years I've been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium several times. While I've come close to the otters in the aquarium, I've never come closer than this, and this time the light was even and the window almost clear of water droplets (I cloned out a few). The otter even opened it eyes for me, just long enough for one photograph; in an eye blink, the lid was down again and it stayed down.
The morning was wet and drizzly, the pelican not especially cooperative - not to me, anyway. It was simply time to turn the negatives into plusses, or at least stop fretting over what I could not change. Thus I concentrated on the non-standard shape of the bird, and made my photograph from a non-standard point of view. Then, after the photograph was in my computer, I drained the color from the image,
Inspired by participant Bruce Bisenz.
Looking down at this little headstone, or even photographing it at eye level would have meant including a fair amount of distracting details. Looking up at the market allowed me to remove most of the clutter. I cloned out a few tree branches, replacing them with the sky.
While my camera was set for vivid jpegs, I made no color manipulation with my computer, once the photograph was out of my camera. The colors, intense colors, were there for those who made an effort to look for them. A 300mm lens helped pull the colors within reach.
The colors were there, although they were fainter to my eye than they are on my computer monitor - I pumped up the colors via Aperture, the program I generally use to tweak my photographs.
A 6th of a second gives a bit of a blur to the fast-moving water.
The railing of the Bixby Bridge is all of one, homogenous component. Yet the weak sunlight on the interior of the bridge exhibits a warm color, while the light from the blue sky gives a markedly different cast.
Some of us were intent with photographing sunset east of Eden, over the agriculture fields and the Gabilan Mountains; luckily someone suggested we look behind us, where hell-fire lit the sky.
Although the vegetation is on the sparse side, the leading lines are not. I cut out the horizon line - whatever was there would have interferred with my purpose of leading the viewer into the field, not out of it.
This is another example showing that reflections can be anywhere. Bruce's dusty 200mm f/2 lens reflects the home where
John Steinbeck lived as a child and young man.
A grand home moved from the city of Salinas to a winery some miles out of town, the old house has stood for years, unused.
Sometimes it pays to wait around. The early spring evening in the Salnas Valley was without directly light, until the sun dropped below cloud deck blowing in from the coast. We had a few glorious minutes of light to make our photographs.
This is a photograph stitched together from two separate photographs, using the software embedded within Photoshop. The view looks east, with the still invisible Salinas Valley beyond.
While I'm not particularly religious, I can appreciate the desire to understand why we are here, and how we should act. Some of that is embodied in the simple gesture of this little statue.
A fog bank obscured the sun, dampening our hopes for continued light over the Bixby Bridge. Just before the sun dropped into the sea, it sent a few, dim shafts of light earthward. The angle of the hitting Highway 1 reflected a golden glow to those of us who happened to be looking away from the bridge, and outlined our "model" Eric, who suddenly, of his own volition, became a slightly menacing figure.
There are reflections everywhere - we just have to look for them. This clouds in this reflection lined up nicely with the clouds behind the photographer.
I almost always ask permission to make someone's photograph. Almost always.
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