When summer is fading there are days that still look more like summer than autumn. The leaves haven’t started to change. Nonetheless, the cloud patterns change, the sun is lower, and air feels sharper. I like this photo because it captures some of the change-of-season, even though the subject is more snapshot than classic. Some work in Photoshop™ helps.

Last week it was problems with uncooperative seagulls. This week a different problem, and with a flighty hawk. At our local Coyote Hills Regional Park I saw the hawk perched in a distant walnut tree and zoomed the lens on my pocket camera (a Nikon P7000) in time to get a picture of him taking flight. After taking the picture I realized I had zoomed too much and just gotten the tree top. A misty landscape is not to be overlooked, so I took a second image to splice into a an odd-sort of panorama — there are not too many panoramas taken with a telephoto. The splicing turned out to present challenges.

Even in California there is some dead time in winter. After the long dry season it takes time for winter rains to spur new greenery. A compulsive photographer must make do with the equivalent of dried flower arrangements. On one day recently, a patch of dried fennel stems presented itself, with interesting patterns. I ended up making a faux charcoal sketch from the photo. The larger version shows the charcoal effect to better advantage. The tiny dots are not blurred out to gray.

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.

Suppose that you were on safari when a rare white rhino appeared. How would you feel if you didn’t have a camera with you? I had that happen, but I was prepared. Well, I wasn’t on safari, I was walking the local park, and it wasn’t actually a rhinoceros, it was a flock of pelicans. But those are details. The important point is to have a camera for unexpected photo opportunities.