Leon Turnbull Photography

Here’s a close-up of some wild sea lions sleeping on the rocks of the Farallon Islands. Oops, I forgot to clone out that board dock. Darn. Er, I mean these are sleeping sea lions on Pier 39 in San Francisco. That’s the truth. They are wild at least. But it’s pretty easy to get close to them and photograph them. In fact, they are the resident stars of Pier 39, and there is always a large crowd of on-lookers gawking at them. They are actually quite a hoot to watch and are quite entertaining. Some of them, such as the ones above, can sleep rather peacefully together. But others just don’t know how to share their dock with others, and are constantly pushing and shoving each other off the docks. I told my wife this would NOT be a good place to bring our kids. These guys just don’t know how to share nicely with each other. 😉

Pier 39 is a great place to visit in San Francisco if you are a tourist. We usually eat at Bubba Gump’s, but this day there was too much of a line-up there. So we ate at North Beach Pizza instead. I consider myself something of a pizza connoisseur, and North Beach Pizza just didn’t cut it for me. If you want great pizza, go to Chicago Fire in Folsom. That is the best tasting pizza I have had in the U.S., second only to Romeo’s in Victoria, British Columbia (man, do I ever miss that place).

Anyway, after dinner we wandered around, watching people, and sea lions, etc. We went into the gallery of Rodney Lough Jr., professional photographer. I’m not sure if his gallery on Pier 39 was permanent or just temporary, I suspect the latter, but I was rather impressed with his work. I hadn’t even heard of him before.

We also stopped to listen to a street musician named Lao Tizer, a contemporary pianist (cool name, too). I’m no expert on the matter, but he was an absolute magician on the keyboards. We were both spellbound as we watched him play for 20 minutes or so. So much so, that we bought one of his CDs. On the CD, you can’t really appreciate his talent so much, as he also incorporates other instruments. I like the CD, but if you ever have a chance to see this guy in person, he is truly an amazing artist.

After shooting my night shot from the top of Eagle Falls, I scooted on down to the bottom. It has been a long time since I’ve been to the bottom of Eagle Falls, and I wanted to get down there at sunrise to get some good shots. The sun hits this waterfall first thing in the morning, so I wanted to be down there at first light.

I was hoping to get some really good compositions of the falls from below. I brought my water shoes in case I needed to get in the water to do so. It was difficult to find a good comp though. I tried getting in the water, but it was completely freezing cold. Unbearably so. And I couldn’t get a good angle of the falls from in the water anyway. Good thing I got out, or my legs would have been literally frozen right off. There was, however, a big log sticking out over the water, so I tried climbing up on it. And this is where I shot this photo from. It is still not a perfect angle, as there is a lot of debris and branches around the base of the falls. But I think this shot works all right.

I wasn’t really planning on going to Eagle Lake this morning. But I always do seem to end up there. My plan was to climb up to a secret waterfall that I know about above Eagle Lake, but have yet to find a way to get to it. That plan got de-railed rather quickly because of too much snow on the trail. The snow was hard as ice, and in certain places along the trail, you are walking across the snow on a steep slope. It was extremely dangerous. If I had fallen, I would have slid down a hundred feet or more with no way to stop on the ice. I would have broken bones at the very least. So I wisely turned around, and headed back to Eagle Lake.

It was well past sunrise, but the reflection on the lake was stunning. So I took a photo of it, of course. I would really like to return here for a sunrise shot, before all this snow melts on the mountains.

And it will melt soon. I was actually rather shocked at the LACK of snow still left in the Tahoe area. You see a lot of snow still on the mountains, such as in this photo. But overall, there really wasn’t nearly as much snow as there SHOULD BE at this time of year. As of March 1, we had an above average snowpack in California, but we got extremely little precipitation in March and April, and ended up with a below average snowpack for the year. Couple that with the horrendous year we had last year, and we are now facing a moderate drought situation this summer in California. With the snow melting now, the waterfalls in the Sierra Nevada mountains are indeed flowing very well right now. Eagle Falls at Tahoe was flowing awesome. But this will all end pretty quickly this year. Once the snow all melts, the waterfalls also will stop flowing. It is a better year than last year, no doubt, but not nearly as good as it should be in California.

I woke up at the insane hour of 3AM on Saturday to get out to Lake Tahoe and Eagle Falls for sunrise. I arrived at the falls an hour before sunrise. My goal was *not* to shoot sunrise at the top of the falls (which I have done before), but instead, to shoot the falls in the dark. It didn’t really work out as I had envisioned the shot. I think I was really too late. It was dark, but there was too much light on the horizon. I think I really should have been there a couple hours earlier even (like that is ever going to happen). Nonetheless, this photo still turned out particularly well in the pre-dawn hour. It is a 30 second exposure. I am definitely very pleased with it.

I was not the only one at Eagle Falls this morning. In a way, this was surprising because I have never seen anyone else here at sunrise before. But on the other hand, it is really a popular and well known spot, made famous by the late photographer, Galen Rowell. So this other older lady from Nevada was there with her son, trying to find a spot alongside me. There are really not too many “good” spots to setup here, and they ended up walking right in front of my camera view while I was taking a night exposure. Ugh. But I was not planning to stay for the sunrise anyway, so after taking my night shots, I gave up my spot for them. And off I went to my desired location, down to the bottom of the falls. But this was not the last I heard from these two.

After shooting Eagle Falls from the bottom (those pics will be posted soon), I climbed back up to the top, well after sunrise, and I figured those two would’ve been long gone. But no, they were still there. They hollered me down, asking if they could use my cell phone. It seems that the lady had slipped and fallen in the creek above the falls, and lost her camera bag, which went over the falls! She managed to hold on to her camera around her neck without getting it wet, all the while holding onto a flimsy branch. I don’t know how close she came to going over the falls herself, but I do know many people have died here before. It can be very dangerous here, if you are not very careful. In the camera bag was her zoom lens, various camera accessories, and her car keys. They used my phone to call AAA to come get her car unlocked, as she said she had a spare key in the trunk. So if you are down at the bottom of Eagle Falls in the near future, and you find a camera bag with a water logged Nikon zoom lens in it, you now know how it got there.

We saw plenty of birds on our whale watching trip to the Farallon Islands. Tons of cormorants and common murres, in particular (and of course, gulls). But it is tough to take photos of birds, especially when they are moving. I kinda liked how this one turned out though. It is a pigeon guillemot. It is rather a pretty bird too, I like those red feet.