use real butter

Thanks for teaching me to sail when I was 9 years old.

Thanks for taking so long to explain math theorems to me that I got impatient asking you for help and learned the material myself.

dad as graduate student

Thanks for being the silliest one of us all.

Thanks for making me sit and watch all of those NOVA series with you so we could learn about science together.

Thanks for those 3am fishing trips in which we caught the BIG striped bass!

Thanks for teaching me not to take BS from anyone.

Thanks for bringing home those Mars Viking Lander photos from work for me to daydream about space exploration.

dad makes his specialty lion’s head meatballs

Thanks for cooking all of those special meals whenever I come home to visit.

Thanks for outfitting me with fly fishing gear when I moved to Colorado.

Thanks for being my moral support when that company didn’t have any ethics.

Thanks for raising me to stand on my own two feet.

thanks for being my dad

My friends back home reported several inches of snow that fell a few days ago in Colorado. I might have felt that I was missing out except we got snow in Yosemite early this week. It melted out quickly enough, but spring is a little behind schedule as the blooms in the valley aren’t nearly as far along as they were this time last year. Regardless, the dogwood blossoms are starting to peak, the waterfalls thunder as the high volume of runoff cascades in feathery sheets down the granite cliffs of Yosemite valley, and there are delights at every turn.

dogwoods dotting the forests

blooms

jeremy walking in the woods

pinks (these weren’t in the wild, but i can’t resist pink dogwoods)

morning mist along the banks of the merced river

some sort of berry flower (not salmonberry)

stellar’s jay

among the pines

new lupine in a burn zone

snacking streamside

The western foothills are starting to transition from green to gold. Driving west from the Sierra Nevada through California’s central valley we passed fruit stand after fruit stand. Each one entices with hand-painted signs boasting juicy, fresh-picked strawberries and cherries. We rejoiced in a taqueria that served solid Mexican food and partook of some wine tastings. It’s been a good trip, but I’m looking forward to getting home soon. See you on the flip side. Have a great weekend!

oaks in the foothills

perfect weather

the zin bin

roses adorn the rows of grape vines

Hey, how was your weekend? Did you do anything fun? Get work done? Sleep in? Enjoy the weather? Learn something new?

I did all of that and more except for the sleeping in part (of course). A few weeks ago, Jason invited me and others along for a photo road trip down to the San Luis Valley to catch the Sandhill Crane migration. As an extra (and boy do I mean extra) bonus, we brought lenses provided by Pro Photo Rental (one of our sponsors for the food photography workshop in June!) like the Nikon 200-400mm f4 and the Nikon 500mm f4. We had similarly intimidating and amazing lenses for the Canon shooters (Stepan and his dad Oleg). So none – NONE – of my fellow photog pals were able to come! That’s really too bad because they missed out on stuff like this:

sunset over the sangre de cristo mountains and the great sand dunes (at base of mountains)

a pair of sandhill cranes squaring off

The trip wasn’t all rainbows and lollipops. It’s work. We woke up at 4:30 am (the guys got up at 5am) to scope out and shoot before morning twilight. We stood in 4°F temperatures for hours waiting for the sun, waiting for the birds, waiting… There is no running around to warm yourself up – you’ll scare all the birds away! I probably sent about 2 dozen flying off prematurely as I took 10 minutes to slowly walk 20 feet in the snow toward my setup point. Did I mention that I can’t operate my camera with gloved fingers and that the bodies and lenses are all metal – in 4°F weather? And then there was the bland Mexican food. Seriously, we weren’t that far from the border with New Mexico, but yeah – something is fundamentally flawed with the Mexican food in Colorado.

jason looks on as the sun lights up the distant mountains

flying to feed in the rye fields at sunrise

**Jump for more butter**