For five years now I have been shooting almost exclusively with digital cameras. This works quite well for me. My various Digital Elphs have been compact, robust, and lightweight. They have also been relatively affordable, take many images per flight, and relieve me of expenses for film and developing. Were I to complain I [...]

We spent a pleasant Saturday afternoon at Pt. Reyes out toward Drakes Beach and Chimney Rock. A persistent marine haze was the major KAP story. My digital cameras really don’t do very well with haze under good conditions. So I worked on images that opposite the sun and took a large number of surf and [...]

Brooks Leffler and I have been stopping by Goldsmith Seeds in Gilroy over the last ten years hoping for the serendipitous confluence of wind and blossom. The Goldsmith is a large ornamental flower seed company. Their research operation is located on the western edge of Gilroy, snugged against a small set of hills. The winds [...]

In a general fit of optimism associated with the onset of Spring I have pledged to myself that I will start posting to this WWW site again. Over the weekend I stopped by the Lower Codornices Creek project and/or the adjacent University Village project. I had a chance to stop by again Saturday around [...]

During Spring Break 2006 we staged a trip down to Joshua Tree. In a most endearing move, Charlie’s Christmas present to the Old Man was a pair of sticky-bottomed rock climbing shoes. The Joshua Tree rendezvous was to be their, and my, debut in ‘trad crack climbing.’

Thomas on belay at Where Two Deserts Meet.

Our all-day Saturday faculty meeting last Saturday adjourned at 4 pm. Since I was down near the Berkeley/Albany border, I decided to use the remains of the day to photograph the Codornices Creek restoration project.

The creek project as seen from above its east end. The folks in the foreground are project volunteers.

My various blogs, this one included, have been a bit quiet of late. But behind the scenes I have been deeply immersed in learning more about the coupling of PHP with MySQL with a bit of CSS sprinkled on for good form. I am enjoying this greatly for the richness and challenge of its learning [...]

With a warm Pacific front bearing down on Berkeley I stepped out for a couple of hours to play around with the new Nkion 8400 fisheye rig. There was so little windsign in the top of the Scenic Avenue palm trees that I almost turned back home. I decided instead to fly my Bults Dopero [...]

I have long admired Scott Haefner’s series of aerial QTVR bubble panoramas. Scott built on a techinique first described by Philippe Hurbain. Over the Winter Break I started playing with a Nikon 8400 and its companion FC-E9 fisheye lens. This weekend marked the completion of a bracket to carry it below my kites. I made [...]