Photography is supposed to teach one to be a keen observer. I was embarrassed to have have taken the picture of Onekahakaha Beach, below, and not to have noticed the turtle at the time. Viewing the world through a wide angle lens discourages looking for smaller features of the broad vista. Putting the pictures through Photoshop ® I finally noticed the sea beast in repose. In some respects being on the spot is better than looking at a photo, but not in every respect.

Back in the days of CRTs, screensavers were ever-changing images needed to prevent a pattern from being burned into the display phosphors. Modern flat screen displays don’t have that problem. Instead, we use background images to make the computer desktop more interesting. Here I have posted ten scenic images from California and Hawaii. Each is sized for a 1920 × 1200 pixel screen. These days, most computers will automatically adjust it to fit the screen to which the image is applied.

An elfscape is a natural scene on a small scale. They contain a number of miniature plants and usually a piece of wood or a tree trunk. While having an actual elf in the scene is desirable, it isn’t mandatory. However, the scene must appear to be compatible with the appearance of some such wee being. There are more elfscapes in the world than one might think. Look for them in forests and above the normal high tide mark on beaches.

Vermont autumn forest, c. 1975

I take quite a few pictures of wildflowers, but I haven’t had much success finding out the names of the flowers. It gets awkward referring to the “yellow flower at the beach,” and it definitely undercuts one’s air of expertise. Looking up the names poses challenges. … Everyone in California knows what ice plant it is, because it is a striking ground cover with yellow or purple flowers, and is common near the coast. Even though I’ve never heard it called anything but ice plant, it is not ice plant. It is really an import from South Africa called Hottentot Fig.

Multilevel indoor shopping malls provide good subject matter for spliced panoramas that use four images in a 2 × 2 array. Activities on the levels provide a doll house effect, with many small “rooms” in the scene to view. I took this panorama at the Newpark Mall in Newark, California recently:

I noticed that in addition to playing video, the Playstation 3 claims to be able to display jpg image files. To try it out, I copied a bunch of jpgs onto the DVD burner in my PC. A bunch turned out to be 339 images, all left at full resolution and including vertical images and skinny panoramas.