Leon Turnbull Photography

After walking around Bodie, we found Neal and Luke finally. They came up to Bodie later and we did not see them until the end. Neal wanted to go to Virginia Lakes. I’m not sure why. I knew it would not be good there. But he heard from somewhere that the colors were better up there. So that is where we went, and when we got there, there was nothing at all to photograph. Strike one. I suggested we drive down Dunderberg Meadow road. Nothing there. Strike two. Now it was starting to get late, and we had nowhere to photograph. We should have probably gone to Mono Lake, but I followed them to Lundy Lake instead. There was some nice color along there. Neal and Luke were a bit picky though. My wife kept saying, why don’t you stop there. It’s nice here, stop now. Hey, I’m just following the other guys. At the end of Lundy Lake, Neal and Luke didn’t like what was there, so they drove back down the road. I walked down to the lake though, looking for something here. And I found a nice enough spot at the end of the lake. As I walked there though, I noticed things getting a bit muddy. I stood at the end of the lake to photograph, and I started sinking deep into the mud. It was like quicksand! My boots were totally soaked in mud by the time I finished making this photograph. Oh well, it was a small price to pay.

Last Saturday was a pretty busy day for us. Firstly, I got up to do yard work, then we took the kids to the pumpkin patch at Zittel Farms, which we do every year. The Zittels are friends of ours, they used to go to the same church as us in Orangevale, and they have a nice place where we can get pics of the kids with pumpkins, and they can go on a hay ride, and pony rides (which of course, Nekoda loves). This year our kids are dressing up as a Clone Trooper (Jadon), and Little Bo Peep (Nekoda), a sheep (Tara), a lady bug (Kaya), and nothing (Leon).

After the pumpkin patch, we drove out to Yolo Wildlife Area in Davis, a place where we can drive around and see plenty of birds and such. We saw quite a few birds, including a peregrine falcon, and egrets, and many other small birds as well. The birds seemed quite skitterish out there, especially the egrets. I may post some shots a bit later.

Anyway, we stayed out there for the sunset, and this was the result. It was a rather pretty sunset with some nice pink clouds. I admit I was hoping for the wild, red colors I had in SF a week earlier. I must be spoiled, because we were rather fortunate to have any nice clouds at all.

After sunset, we went to dinner back in Davis, then drove home, put the kids to bed, and watched the Vancouver Canucks win their hockey game against Toronto. It was a great day.

Back to our Lee Vining trip a couple weeks ago. We spent most of the afternoon on Saturday in Bodie ghost town along with tons of other people. It was probably one of the busiest days there of the year. It is definitely an incredibly interesting ghost town, and there are tons of things to see and photograph there. But personally, I have a very hard time photographing Bodie. Mostly, I think because it is not where my main interests lie, photographically speaking. I prefer natural (not man-made) landscapes. Plus, the light was very harsh, and there were too many other people around. So for these reasons, I find Bodie very challenging to photograph. I do want to do better here though, and return when conditions are more favourable.

The first place we went is the cemetary, because we missed it when we were here last time. The cemetary is out of the way from the main section of Bodie, and not as many people venture out to it. I found this angel rather interesting. It is on the grave of a 3 year old girl that was killed accidentally from a miner’s ax.

After the sun had set and I made my (wet) way back up the beach towards the Sutro Baths ruins, I found that there was still a beautiful glow in the sky. Most everyone had left, so I was alone and decided to take a night exposure of the ruins. This was the composition I was originally planning to do for sunset, but there were too many people around. After sunset, no one. This is a 60 second exposure.

This past weekend my sister flew down from Canada to San Francisco to run in the Nike Women’s Marathon (she did the half marathon). On Saturday, I drove down to the big city to meet up with her and spend the afternoon with her.

She wanted to go to the King Tutankhamun exhibit at the De Young Museum, so that is what we did. It was crazy busy there, and they herded us through the exhibit like cows. I also was carrying my big heavy camera bag with me (I brought it in hopes of catching a sunset later), and they made me carry it in my hands down below my waist. Crikey, that was tiring walking through the exhibit like that. All in all, the exhibit was fairly interesting, but we were both quite disappointed that they did not have any of the major burial items from his tomb; mostly, it was just small items that were found in the tomb.

Afterwards, we drove over to the Sutro Baths ruins, which were nearby. These are the ruins of an old bath house along the ocean front. We saw a great blue heron fishing along the water. My sister thought it was dead (or stuffed) because it did not move a muscle for five minutes or more. Even when I went down close to it with my camera, it did not budge an inch (usually, those things fly away if you get too close to them). Finally, it did move and she believed me that it was alive (I was wondering myself for awhile there).

It was still early, but Tania wanted to get back to the hotel for an early dinner and rest for the big race the next day. So I dropped her back at the hotel, then drove back to the Sutro Baths for sunset. There were plenty of people around the ruins so I could not find a good place to set up my camera. I walked down the beach, up on some rocks, and found a place all to myself where I could enjoy the view. And it was a glorious sunset, probably the most incredible sunset I have ever seen at the coast (and I thought I had used up all my sunset quota for the year with that Bonsai Rock sunset a couple months ago – I guess not, thanks God!). The reds were amazingly intense, this shot is not enhanced in any way. I just wish I had used my wider lens for this shot, which I didn’t think about until afterwards. Argh. Anyway, after enjoying the show, I climbed down off the slippery rocks, then got completely drenched by a big wave. Fortunately, I had a change of clothes in the car for the long drive back to Folsom.