Sea Anemone

I spent the late afternoon at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve near Half Moon Bay, CA. The tidepools are locally famous, and there was a very low tide at 5:30pm today – right about sunset. I thought I could get some nice tidepool creature shots and a Pacific Ocean sunset all in one trip. The sunset was a bust – low clouds kept any red from reaching us, so it just gradually got darker. But low light is a great time to be shooting in tidepools with a flash – when the sun is shining the glare from the water is a big problem, particularly on cloudy days. But with just a flash you can control the angle and get some dramatic light angles and colors.

Shot using my flash hand held off to the side, and the camera mounted on a tripod. The anemone was just below the water line.

Sea Anemone

Anemone Tentacles macro shot

Tentacle Macro

Tentacles Cluster

Snow Ranch with low power launch under way

For Eric’s day we went to the LUNAR monthly high-power rocket launch at Snow Ranch in the Sierra foothills. By being so far away from civilization they can get clearance to go to 15,000 feet. Today had a low ceiling, so there were only a few opportunities for the high-power engines.

The rocket in the image below disappeared into the clouds after an impressive lift off, and had a successful recovery (eventually). Another of the high power rockets wasn’t quite as lucky – after screaming up into the clouds a small bang was heard, and instead of floating down under a parachute it just rained parts.

High-power launch

It was also a beautiful day for exploring the hillsides. You don’t realize how relentless the wind can be until you see trees like this one.

Wind blown tree

The USS Hornet

Every year between Christmas and New Years we do ‘Family Days’ where each member of the family is responsible for a day’s schedule. For my day we went to the USS Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier moored in Alameda. We spent about four hours on board touring the ship – which wasn’t enough to see it.

In addition to three deployments to Vietnam, the USS Hornet was the recovery ship for Apollo 11 and 12.

F14 on Deck of USS Hornet

Eric and Kevin

Eric turned 21 in early November and we went back east to celebrate with him for a weekend. We took a road trip up to Maine to collect another state for everyone, and stopped at the lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, by Portland, ME.

This picture of the boys is being used on our Christmas card this year.

The lighthouse

Palm Trees

Taken at Santa Clara University in the late afternoon.