I wonder how many hands have touched that bark. The tree is right beside the trail, so maybe a lot. But then, there are a lot of redwoods in the park, and the trail is wide, so maybe not so many.

Looking up into a tree and taking pictures may be one of the most canonical photographic cliches. It's fun to engage in cliches sometimes, though.

It was cold in the shade of the trees as we walked, even though it was a bright and sunny day. I miss forests sometimes.

We took a walk in the state park on Sunday. Jason asked me to take a picture of him and his uncle standing inside the shell of a burned-out redwood. There was something striking about the contrast of vibrant youth in the foreground and blackened ash in the background. Plus it was very cute. This isn't that picture.

The day after my niece's wedding, there was a brunch at the lodge where we were staying, during which I mostly ate, or chatted with family, or kept an eye on my kids. At one point, though, I found myself standing out on the deck, looking out at the ocean and watching the waves ripple through the water on their way to the beach. Letting my eye rest on one spot and watching each swell pass by like the ocean taking a breath, it felt like every little hill in the surface was something coming into being. Something familiar but somehow alien, lonely and yet comforting. Something short-lived but eternal. Something mysterious.

I stood there, transfixed. And then I turned away and went back to the party.

I'm not sure I can think of a more mundane, cliched thing to take a picture of than a cloud, but here we are. Sometimes it's OK to just take a picture of something because it's pretty, even if there is no deeper message.

Bright sun on a bright, sunny, Big Sur morning, and me lucky enough to catch it.

The morning before my father-in-law's birthday found a big group of us walking along the beach near his house. I miss being up there sometimes, with so much beauty being so easy to find. Sometimes, though, the obvious stuff--the cliffs, the ocean, the hills, the trees--makes us forget to look for the things that need to be found. Things like the sky and the rocks making stripes on the surface of a rippling lagoon.

I decided recently to try my hand at a different way of shooting--what photographer and printer Ctein calls "stochastic photography." I suppose I should rather say that I decided to try getting back into it, or perhaps further into it, since this sort of intuitive, catch-as-catch-can shooting is something I did a lot of when I was first getting into photography. In any case, I'm fairly pleased with some of the results.

The wildflowers in my aunt's garden have apparently loved all the rain they've been getting lately.