Her hair, sun-kissed—sometimes me-kissed—brown and blonde, with glints of gold in the setting sun. When I lean in to kiss the top of her head, she smells nice—or is it that nice smells like her? She frets about graying now and then, but to my eyes she's perfect, more so today than at sixteen, when we were young together. Some day we'll be old together, but together still, and when the sun sets from time to time it'll kiss her hair again, and so will I.

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.

Children acting like adults is cute and another huge photographic cliche. What strikes me about this picture is not the phone—well, not just the phone—but her gesture and expression and body language. She fits right in with her mom and aunt.

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.

We had a quick weekend away, back home to visit Juliette's family. It sure is pretty up there.

I've been feeling an urge to do something different lately. Well, this is different.

I'm actually very frustrated with this picture. For whatever reason, I can't get Lightroom to play nicely with it—it looks great in the Develop module but crappy in the Library module, and when I export it. In order to get it to look the way I wanted, I had to keep it in the Develop module and then take a screenshot, which looks OK on a screen but doesn't have enough resolution to print very large.

Ah well. So it goes.

I'm not sure Jason really understands basketball. Then again, neither do I.

I noticed this little trail in my back yard the other morning, just a few inches wide and ending in a thicket. I haven't seen so much as a squirrel in that part of the yard.