Shooting into the sun produces dramatic photos, if you are careful. The sun has to be partially blocked by something, usually a tree. Even so, the lens sometimes adds “interesting” optical effects. The star-like rays are a product of the lens diaphragm that controls the aperture, with a ray for every corner where the leaves of the diaphragm meet. That’s a nice effect. Prismatic effects produce odd splotches of color, and those are not so nice. A little Photoshop® retouching helps a lot in those cases. This photo of the dahlia garden in the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens shows the benefit.

California’s Highway 1 has a reputation as one of America’s most scenic highways. It lives up to it. A week ago we drove on the highway with visiting friends, and I took this spliced panorama a few miles north of Jenner. Jenner is small town at the mouth of the Russian River, about two hours north of San Francisco. The bright violet flowers are from wild pea plants, and the trumpet-shaped yellow-orange ones are bush monkeyflowers. I think the latter flowers are supposed to resemble a monkey’s face, but in all the times I’ve looked at them I’ve never been aware of a monkey looking back.

We turned off into in officially designated Scenic Vista near Sedona, Arizona. Sedona is well known for its magnificent red rock formations, and I dutifully took the 57 millionth photograph of the landscape from that spot. Poking around the edge of the parking area, I saw some pleasant small blue flowers. Later, I found out they were a poisonous weed called silverleaf nightshade. Weed or not, it’s a photograph.

You have a good chance of encountering bins of goods for sale when you’re traveling. They often make interesting subjects for a pocket camera photo. The photos are colorful, make interesting texture patterns, and provide something to ponder when you return home and have the time. There is more to see in the photos than you had time to contemplate on the spot.

Great scenes fly by when you can’t stop to photograph them. Parking in the fast lane on an Interstate is ill-advised, even for a potentially masterful shot. Other times the situation is marginal. This May a nice scene presented itself when we were returning to the Lake Tahoe region in the California mountains from the pleasant town of Minden, Nevada. I pulled barely off the road and grabbed two frames out of the car window, and somehow managed to splice them into a respectable panorama.

I have quite a few pictures of parking lots. They are are an overlooked resource for photographers. Perhaps someday I’ll convince a publisher to put them out as a coffee table book, America’s Most Scenic Parking Lots. I shall be the Ansel Adams of parking lots. Yes, for sure. For now, however, I’m still building inventory, and the other day I took one in a parking lot in Coyote Hills Regional Park near San Francisco Bay. It had the potential for high drama, at least as parking lots go.

Point Lobos is one of the world’s great scenic places. While the rocky shore and surf are reliable, sunshine there is not. We were lucky recently and had brilliant sun along with spring wild flowers. With all those things helping, it’s not too difficult to take good pictures. We drove to the Bird Rock area, at the end of the short park road. To make photography a more interesting problem, add some kids running near the edge of the ocean bluff.

Let’s admit that tripods are a pain to carry, set up, and use. The Quick Shot Artist principle is to avoid them whenever possible. Despite the pain, however, there are times when you just have to have one. They are like lawyers in that regard. I endured the trauma recently —picking a tripod, that is— and have some tips to pass along. I ended up with a three-part assembly from Manfrotto: an aluminum tripod, a ball leveler, and a pan-and-tilt head.

Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. It spans the border between California and Nevada, southwest of Reno. One of the streams feeding the Lake forms Eagle Falls as it cascades into Emerald Bay on the California side. The top of the falls is only a few feet from the road, but I had driven by several times in the past without noticing it; waterfalls are not so exciting from the back. On a cold day in mid-May I took a two-frame panorama, looking towards Emerald Bay. The scene had interesting elements, but lacked punch. That is, until I unleashed the Topaz Labs Spicify Photoshop plug-in filter.

Silver Lake is a small lake in the mountains near better-known Mono Lake. The Lakes are east of Yosemite National Park in California, and as of last week the pass through Yosemite was still closed by snow. We drove south from Tahoe on the east side of the Sierras. Apparently not many people do that, because things were, shall we say, quiet. There were a few signs of early spring, but the aspen trees still had no leaves. It must be around 8,000 feet at Silver Lake, because aspens don’t grow at much lower altitudes.