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.

A sign points to Butano State Park from Highway 1, on the coast about 50 miles south of San Francisco. The coast there is grassy hills, but the road keeps going inland until you end up in a redwood forest. Redwood forests are wonderful to visit, but a pain to photograph. You can’t get back far enough to show whole trees, so you get photos of a forest of stumps. There is no telling whether they are big or small. One solution is to spoil the purity of the nature scene by including people, paths, and even cars to provide scale.

Early this month we traveled east to the California mountains for a few days. It was Spring in most of California, including the foothills where stayed. It was nice weather the first day, but it rained for the next two. Rain down slope means snow in the higher elevations. The best conditions for beautiful snow cover are temperatures not far below freezing with no wind. That lets the snow accumulate on the trees. With that prospect overnight and clear skies the next morning we drove to Calaveras Big Trees State Park.

Redwoods do tend to be tall, at least the old ones. One problem in making a redwood look tall in a photo is getting back far enough to get the whole tree in view. Other redwoods get in the way. If you get a view down a path that shows the whole tree, the scale is lost.