new lens, new city, new season

an unfolding fern over some freshly bloomed forget-me-nots, some kind of beetle and another heart shaped leaf from Bear Valley Trail out at incredible Pt. Reyes :D

the lady who sold this to me said it was some kind of fancy welsh snap pea and the morning light just loves it if you ask me. i purchased Nikon’s 1.8 prime for my Z6 a year or so ago to take pictures of houses, but wow is this a sweet combo? only a small crop :D

i swear i woke up the other day and all of a sudden my fence was covered in these things :V

My reinforcements against the mealybugs have finally arrived. Loving the depth of field on this new phone

no rain recently to bring the mushrooms out, but i have been taking photos around the yard. i’ve been fixing up this house for months now, slowly but surely. when i realized it was the perfect time of year to do a garden, it’s all i’ve been able to think about. i’ve always wanted to try, so i’m going hard on it. new patio too and lots of new landscaping. haven’t even bothered with the structural stuff yet. nice thing about being in real estate is that you meet a lot of people who can do the things you can’t, like home inspections. i’ve also got (literally) a small nursery’s worth of plants left over from all the properties i’ve sold over the years. buyers almost always want to replace the landscaping when there’s something as unique as a cactus growing previously. i’ve always loved plants, especially cacti, but now i have too many lol. one thing at a time. just the other day i almost stepped on this giant ant sitting on my front steps that i didn’t recognize. so random. somebody chopped off his antler, poor guy. probably why he held so still for the photo.

i’m getting organized, digitally. it’s fun finding folders of old, forgotten photos. i present: a shriveled serrano pepper from my garden last year?

some recent snapshots. i don’t think any of em came out well enough for my favorite local restaurant’s wall but c’est la vie amirite? this hideous spikey thing was watching me the whole time so i thought i’d include him too

i wanted to repost this one because it’s my favorite so far. i’m talking to a local restaurant about selling my mushroom photos on the walls, so i’m putting a portfolio together. if i edit i really try to keep it looking natural while making the details more noticeable. i actually reduced the saturation on the last one. any contrast makes it look like an oil painting. i think i toned down the highlights the last time too. thinking about selling your photos really makes you look at them closely. and holy crap do i have dust on my receptor :V

turns out it was a chocolate lily :D i made it out there in the early morning and scored a stellar shot with light just breaking over the hill

we had two goals. find a native dudleya and a calypso bulbosa, a native orchid. we succeeded and good times were had. i’ve never seen people nerd out so hard for looking at a plant before but then i realized i was doing it too LOL

some photos from today. i sell land as my primary occupation. today i went for a drive before the sun came up to a parcel i’ve been working on. recent rains are making the shrooms pop up. good times :)

morning light on tiny tree shrooms. happy new year :)

morning light through some tree shrooms