Who can resist the Beauty of Trees?

There's a lot of gorgeous Trees in western New York....  heck, I've seen a lot of gorgeous Trees in my travels but still, Trees are a sight to see! 

Do you love Trees too? I just can't hug a Tree....  my many allergies causing me to be sneezing year-round, plus I despise insects and ants!

All of these fabulous Trees can be enjoyed on the grounds of the fabulous Niagara Falls State Park! Really! In some of the pictures, you can see parts of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada in the background!

Thinking of a Tree not Dancing in the High WNY Winds

Still digging through memories of a past walk, and found yet another portrait of a Tree! I might not be able to hug a Tree [aChooooooo] but I can appreciate their Beauty!

As you walk slowly through my memories, IF you'd like to see something else, please let me know!

 

Loving the Beauty of Trees

WHO wouldn't love admiring the Beauty of our lovely Trees that surround us everyday and just about everywhere we venture? All I know is that we get out when we can, and whenever we are out to snap something else, our cameras always eventually turn to see Nature's textures! How can we NOT be awed by Trees and always end up snapping the Trees we love seeing!

 

The Beauty of Trees

WHO in their right mind who wouldn't or won't love the Beauty of Trees? Whenever we are out to enjoy Nature's textures, we are in awe by the Trees that we see and end up snapping those Trees!

Road Trip Snowscapes Memories

This isn't recent but I can imagine this would be a good example of how some roads of the area would appear right about now. Just returned from testing a [yet again] new camera at the Falls, and will post a few later. A surprisingly nice sunny day with rainbows at the Falls and warm sunlight! No worries; I hear later during the week it'll be high winds again and cold. Tell me something new....

It's Saturday morning outside

......and there's about an inch or so of the white stuff on the ground after a few hours of snowfall during the night. The Fall colors are still very apparent in some spots, and we are hoping these scenes will still be available by time we get out on the streets later today, or tomorrow. I usually do not get these chances of seeing such wondrous scenes, and now that we are here, we might as well try to see the sights, when not surrounded by the grandchildren! The change in the hour now puts the time of sunset as we are still with the kids, so we are missing a lot of sunsets since the time-change last weekend!

On the other hand, while in Michigan, I have been continuously checking for online sightings of Snowy Owls! Last winter, though we departed for two months in Spain, before we departed in December 2017, and after returning from Spain in late February 2018, we were darn lucky to see and snap a few pictures of Snowy Owls! Last winter's record was in seeing a total of eight Snowys!!!

Please click to see a collection of my Snowy Owl images posted at ebird

Interestingly enough, according to ebird.com, there have been Snowys reported all this summer throughout the Great Lakes areas! I am also surprised to see there have already been sightings of this gorgeous snow-white Arctic bird recently, both in western New York (WNY) area we call home, and within a few miles of where we are in SW Michigan!

We have been very fortunate recently in seeing Bald Eagles too!! Granted, those grand birds have been more than a mile usually, but we have been lucky to see some seemingly just a hair closer! As always in these situations, even though you think you have the longest lens around, oftentimes while shooting wildlife, it seems that even with what we have is way too short and inadequate! We are still hoping to see more of these majestic birds, and our last sighting was a week ago in a local park! 

Here's two memories from months previous when we were at a favorite WNY spot, and suddenly the perched eagles we were observing, suddenly went active and passed much closer! These images are cropped, but it still is a great moment for us!!!

Honey from the Heavens....

It's such a pity.... like grass mowed from the lawns of many, it's not effectively used for anything... even though grass is grown for sale to customers in the NorthWest, in general it's a wasted commodity that nobody uses or properly recycles so that it's used for the future.... our future.

What am I referring to? The Honey that falls from the skies and makes us crazy, makes us hide under umbrellas and what makes us wet.... water, or as we know it: rainwater. When I first lived in southern Spain, I was amazed that many would put out their houseplants into their patios or even in the street if there were room, to use the falling precious liquid. I remember even seeing buckets out to gather the raindrops! But in most of the "civilized" world, it's wasted. It runs into storm drains, into sewers, and otherwise washed away.

The Bay Area was flooded with recent rainstorms and where did most of that water go? Into the ground, into the sewers, and into a process called needless water waste. Why do I think of it as millions of people leaving their water faucets open and running for an hour a day every year? Why can't we gather all that blue water, filter it and use it for farming, washing the streets, or other "gray-water" use? Everyone's complaining about the weather but nobody is doing anything... grrrrrr
As I splashed through the wet streets, I thought about the rain but I couldn't do anything about it. I stopped for a car leaving a downtown gas station. The driver sat inside staring at me through the wet glass of his vehicle, surprised someone ~ anyone ~ would stop for him. I flashed my lights and he moved out slowly into traffic.... 20 feet ahead, he also stopped for someone else leaving the same gas station..... friendliness creates more friendliness. Courtesy encourages more courtesy. Peace promotes more peace, so on and so on. I've always had this idea since my teen years and practice it often and everywhere I've lived since. Like a contagious moment of laughter, a smile works wonders.... We never have time for it but we all want that random act of kindness. I was told when I first arrived to the City that drivers here are mean, but I've experienced anything but that. People are generous in their time and have often allowed me to enter traffic or to change lanes... I always acknowledge by holding up my hand to show my gratefulness at their thoughtful consideration. What if everyone would do this?? What a scary thought of a major stateside City full of thoughtful, considerate, friendly people who do random acts of kindness only because it was necessary and with no thought of "what's in it for me".

So started also this "week" my first day of civil duty and obligation... grrrrr I went early after dropping off my sister at her downtown workplace. Not knowing any better, I parked a block away to avoid the crowds and to find a good parking space, but enroute the court building, noticed many available spots I could've used but..... someone else could use them. I'm not greedy. The building at 400 McAllister was closed to visitors at this early hour so I waited with a small handful of others awaiting entry at 8am. It wasn't raining yet though gray clouds loomed overhead, and I waited watching the passing people.... I noticed one man off the sidewalk in the street looking down. He stooped to pick up a tossed-off cigarette butt, looked again for more and not finding any, stepped onto the sidewalk and walked up to me and started waiting behind me! I glanced over my shoulder and saw a jury summons in his hand and thought: one can't get a more accurate representation of this city population!! Minutes later we entered the building and after going through the metal detectors, saw the signs directing jurors downstairs. I followed the signs down the white marble stairwell to a very modern, clean and gorgeous jury room filled with chairs, benches, tables and hanging television monitors (of all the monitors there, later only two on multimedia stands were used).

I was shocked at the size and appearance of the room; though I had been advised the room was very modern, I still expected something more.... ghetto and run-down. It was far form that! A line formed as prospective jurors arrived and checked in with summons in hand; I had brought a book and I must confess this is probably the first book I've even attempted to read since I changed from film to digital imagery almost a decade ago... Looking at the entering people and still reading the hardcover book, I noted a lot of little details: the women were in general, better dressed than the men, though in some cases, some older women actually looked as if they could be street bag-women. At first everyone sat at least a discreet two seat-positions away from the other, until as time passed and seats filled, people started sitting next to others. I saw a very few who plain slept while others worked on puzzles (the young woman next to me), read a newspaper, or even read a book. There were quite a few carrying laptops. They filled quickly the wall seats where table lights allowed comfortable laptop use. Looking about, there was truly a wide range of ages, social and racial backgrounds, and education and social status, as displayed in dress and choice of clothing. Hours later I was dismissed after filling out the juror questionnaire - as I walked past the ornate City Hall, I saw workers on scaffolding at the trees in front of the City Hall and asked what they were doing.... apparently artist Patrick Dougherty with two assistants was in the process of building an natural exhibit atop the branch-less trees by placing trimmed thin branches atop the tree-tops and arranging them in such a way that it looked interesting when I passed by earlier, and now even as it rained, looked ever more delicate and unique...
Rainy days in San Francisco were to be over in a few days, but the rest of the day brought pouring rain, but I like the rain! sigh....

NOTE: All of the above images were captured with my Motorola RZR 1,3mp cell camera :-D

aaaaah, the FOG

...was so very gorgeous... and I love fog and rain!! I cannot believe the number of times I stopped by the roadside while seeing a foggy scene, then slamming on the brakes. As usual I departed Eugene at 6:05 with thick fog everywhere and I needed to use the GPS to find my way to the interstate 5 on-ramp.
Visibility was reduced to about 100feet from my front car car seats but by the time I passed Cottage Grove (35mins later) it was already thinning out. The rest of the three-hour trip to Medford was just a beautiful and moody nature painting, highlighted by brushed color and gray/white dense strips fog that wrapped around the trees and smooth tree-covered slopes bordering the interstate. Can't recall the many times I stopped to grab the magic-box but eventually I did get to my destination though almost an hour late!!!
I won't even mention the times I used the camera again and zoomed in while driving ~ hahahahaahaaa

Again I had a slight problem, other than a very leaky and steamy radiator.... the camera lens decided yet another to jump when I opened the car door resulting in a HUGE dent from the last Eugene trip in August, and now has a whitish dent just as big. I was very fortunate enough as on both times the lens or camera impacted upon the lens filter and not the heavy camera body. With these two dents on the lense, though the camera itself isn't damaged, the filter glass piece is about to fall out now, spinning freely within the filter case ~ another great reason to buy a filter for your lens!!! Protect it! The foto book of Capture Lane County looks gorgeous and you should check it out at Borders.... though none of my images selected were included in the book, the book is a sweet memory of a fantastic place where I lived for almost a year upon my first return to live in the states after being away for over 20 years!! These fond memories of Eugene add to the superb imagery within the book pages.

With time quickly running away from me, I hardly had any time to do a lot of things ~ not even eat. If a three-meal day were part of my daily routine ~ it's not ~ then this weekend was an example of my normal eating habits, eating just enough to just barely satisfy the hunger of a tiny mouse. The weekend trip of three days started Friday at 6:15am with the trip starting at 7:32am, and finally ending in SF at about 1:25am Monday morning after driving half-blind with my corrected eyes (still healing from the PRK wavefront procedure) all night Sunday upon finishing shooting with a lovely model in Medford, OR. I have determined that with all the driving on scenic highways, lovely interstates and tree-lined streets, my time on all of these throrough-ways to be approximately 23 non-continuous hours within these three days. Actually, I enjoy "dieting" while in Eugene to burn off all the fat and mass accumulated in SF!!

I'm continuing to download my images, the normal amount of resulting images whenever on the road to Oregon, with the total being over 1500 image files and about 4,6GIGs of photography! Unfortunately for me this means I'll be spending more time of the computer to download everything which of course this means I have a LOT of additional DVDs to burn!!