Natural symmetry in the detail of a tulip.

The flower was placed on a flatbed scanner with black felt draped over it.

I was inspired by an exhibit at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens of Joanne Koltnow’s incredible work. She uses a backlit scanner (usually used for scanning transparencies) and prints on a special combination of paper and ink. Oh, and she has an artist’s eye. Her end results are stunning.

This image is nothing like the work Joanne does, but it is fun to try new techniques!

I took the source image for this at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. The image was squared off, flipped, flopped, and copied about.

The plant is a Spiral Aloe (or Aloe polyphylla) – it is quite a beautiful plant with five way symmetry.

This image is at 2k resolution, I recommend checking it out at full res.

37°24′1.07″N 122° 6′39.21″W
I don’t know the process that causes this to happen, but there were a series of beautiful and near prefect leaf prints stained into the sidewalk.

One of the last remaining leaves on a Japanese Maple tree in our front yard after the most recent rainstorm went through.

37°27′ 08.02″ N, 122°6′ 15.69″ W
Happy New Year!
We went for a walk in Byxbee Park in the Palo Alto Baylands this morning. This Anna’s Hummingbird perched patiently while I approached it and took pictures.

Orchids in our living room.

The flowers are in front of a large mantle over our fireplace. The view here is from a low angle with the ceiling reflected behind them. I used the on-camera flash bounced off folded wax paper and my hand to hit the ceiling and not the orchids. The vignette behind the flowers is the hot spot on the ceiling from the flash reflected in the mirror. The light on the orchids is primarily bounced.

37°24′43.22″N 122°19′10.99″W

I rode my bike in the El Corte De Madera Creek Open Space Preserve this morning. This is the first time I’ve been there. The biggest obstacle on the trails were the banana slugs, out for strolls in the cool morning air. If you’ve never seen one before, they’re about 6″ long and bright yellow – pretty hard to miss (especially with a bike).

For the whole rest of the day I’ve had Raffi’s “Banana Phone” song playing in my head, except replace ‘phone’ with ’slug’.

37°23′3.45″N 122°10′32.84″W
While hiking with Sarah this morning in Arastradero Preserve we came across this deer carcass. It was surprisingly complete – missing only the front legs and lower jaw. One of the missing legs was about ten feet away.

It has been there at least a month, as I found another picture of it on Flickr taken on October 27th, in about the same state.

37°22′58.09″N 122°10′45.62″W
Okay, so there really isn’t such a thing as a pigeon vulture, but this flock was in the Arastradero Preserve observing the fields from the top of a dead tree. They seemed very out of place.

The tree itself is a popular photo subject. If you search on Flickr for public pictures tagged with “arastradero” you’ll see the lone trunk show up quite often.