Mount Diablo's Hairy Inhabitants

-
A view from the summit of Mount Diablo
I went for a walk around the summit of Mount Diablo in California at the weekend. We can see the peak across the bay on the East side from our apartment, and it had been beckoning for quite a while now. It was a cloudy day in San Francisco. The cloud seemed to be quite low. So it made sense to assume that if we went up to the top of the mountain we could still enjoy the sun over the weekend. And off we went.
A break in the cloud
As we entered the National Parks area we started driving along the five miles of road that would take us up to 3000 feet. It wasn't long before the cloud thinned enough for us to realize that we were approaching the top of the cloud layer. Aah, sunshine!

But what was that! True that up till now the rather nonchalant squirrel population had been mandating that I drive around them as they frolic in the road, but this creature was a totally different shape. It was also a little smaller, though not by much. It was hairy yes, but it was also black and had eight legs - a tarantula!

With a smooth instinctive Jedi movement I was crouched in the road with my camera already raised to my eye focused and on the target. The sun went behind some clouds at the same time and I hadn't taken a flash with me this day. I hung around for a while but we just got more and more engulfed by the cloud that was caressing the mountain. Appearing tarantulas seem to be a regular phenomenon here so I will be going back specifically to take some detailed shots and maybe use some for stock submissions too. 

The sun did burn the cloud of quite quickly so by the time we were at the summit we were bathed in the afternoon sun. By the time we decided to leave, another wave of cloud was coming in but as we drove down the mountain toward the valley we were able to continue to enjoy the sunshine of the late afternoon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Size Matters

-
Image
Viewing prints digitally on a screen can be enjoyable but viewing a physical print adds to the experience. And when that's the case, sometimes bigger is better. I have a whole range of prints that I currently print onto canvas and have them available for sale. I’ve also been receiving order for larger format prints. My largest so far included 2 prints that are 9 feet by 3.5 feet each in size. These larger canvases were for 2 bedrooms in a resort.  The majority of my work is currently Belize based. The canvas prints are printed for me in Belize City and the wooden frames are made to custom sizes by  Kelvin  Baizar   in Belmopan. (Kelvin is also an accomplished artist so check out his work). Finally I mount and stretch the canvases myself. I have a searchable collection of my Belize photography and you can see my photos  here . If you'd like to see my range of photography subjects and styles, browse  here .
Read more

Creating May The Fourth

-
Image
Emma called me, "Hey, I have this really cool idea for a shot for May the 4th. I'm dressed in motorcycle gear but I'm riding an Eopie ". Well it sounded a little off the wall so how could I not say yes! Emma owns and runs Motorbike Rentals & Alternative Adventures - Hopkins, Belize , and I often collaborate with her on photoshoots. Emma would be the model — not a problem. The shoot would be on a beach location — not a problem. And we need a full-sized Eopie from Star Wars — hmm. After scouring the inter-webs we found that good old eBay had a supply of the creatures, but they were only 3 inches tall. If you've worked with me on anything creative you'll know immediately that size really doesn't matter. What was concerning though was getting the Eopie delivered to Belize in time for me to shoot it and have the image ready to go live on May 4th. Again, Emma reached out through her business connections and found someone who would be in Belize on May 1st, a
Read more

AI AI, Oh!

-
Image
Whenever I’m asked to do a photoshoot with any sort of complexity, I like to produce a visual to give the client some idea of where my head is going. Sometimes I sketch the visuals with markers onto paper, other times I will draw and paint electronically on my computer. And at other times I’ll do a combination of photos and digital drawing to create the visuals. A couple of days ago, Adobe put up a Beta version of ©Photoshop that has an AI engine at the heart of the release. So I signed up and downloaded it today and played around with it for a while. It’s still in Beta but really amazing and the potential is undeniable. In its current beta release it doesn’t handle large high resolution images but for day to day visuals and for some social media need or smaller hi-res images it is usable. To give you an idea of what the AI part of the software can currently deliver, I’ve included this image that I made in less than ten minutes. To create this, I started with a blank workspace on my
Read more