I must say that I feel like a bad person. I went to Cal Poly Pomona for nearly three years, my major was Equine Science and I was on the
IHSA horse show team for crying out loud. Despite all that up until this past Sunday I had never seen the horse show that the
WK Kellogg Arabian Horse Center puts on the first Sunday of every month from October to May. It’s sad really, even after I left Cal Poly, a few years after Bryan graduated, we continued to live in Pomona so we could have gone anytime. We actually tried once but when we got there the show was canceled due to rain that had fallen days before. So now it’s a lot more inconvenient to make the drive but I finally planned to go. This particular show was the last of the season which won’t start up again until October. Because this is an Arabian horse farm all the horses in the show were Arabians performing various disciplines and wearing various tacks. They had Arabians in native costume, saddle seat, English, hunter, side saddle and Western. Each tack showed the versatility of the Arab breed in some form whether it be as trail horse, a jumper or pleasure horse. One Arabian mare was even taught to do tricks! For the finale of the show they brought out a mare and her foal, a plucky little chestnut colt. The horse center is a breeding farm for Arabians and many babies have been born in the past few months. The show was very entertaining and it was nice to finally see it and also do one of my other favorite things that Cal Poly has to offer; go to the
Farm Store!
To see more photos from the horse show check out the GALLERY. You can also click on the images below to see the larger version.
Last weekend my friend Sarah and I along with her family visited
Descanso Gardens which is located in La Cañada Flintridge. Descanso reminds me very much of the LA Arboretum and the Huntington Library which are both located in the surrounding cities. It has many different kinds of flora and fauna, including California natives, a rose garden and a Japanese garden. There is also a small train that runs through the facility. Don’t be fooled by it’s size, it may look like a toy but it is actually a fully functional train. If you walk to the far end of the gardens you will see the
Boddy House which is large and beautifully decorated. We didn’t visit every corner of the park but we did enjoy ourselves and got some pretty good pictures out of it too.
To see more photos from Descanso Gardens check out the
GALLERY. You can also click on the images below to see the larger version.
A couple days ago my friend and I went to the
Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary which is located in the middle of nowhere in Orange County. I know what you are probably saying, Orange County doesn’t have a middle of nowhere. Oh yes it does, it’s called Modjeska Canyon. The sanctuary is located at the end of Modjeska Canyon Road and takes up a very small area of land. It is free to enter but they gladly accept donations. The reason we went there in the first place was to photograph hummingbirds. Photographing these finicky little creatures is difficult; it mostly consists of waiting around quietly until they show up at their sugar water feeders. The other issue we found challenging about photographing these little guys is the location the sanctuary decided to place the feeders. Most of them were positioned under an overhang which meant all the birds were shaded most of the time. Convenient for the birds, inconvenient for the photographers. After exhausting ourselves with bird photos we walked into the Nature Center which held lots of kids activities, an array of taxidermy animals and some small reptiles in cages. Tucker’s is a nice place to visit if you are looking for something free to do, just make sure you don’t get lost trying to find it.
Click on the image to see the larger version.
Recently I have had some free time during the week and on Tuesday I took full advantage by signing up for a wildflower hike in Round Canyon with the the
Irvine Ranch Conservancy. I have been on hikes with them before such as the
fourth of July hike at Bommer Canyon, a photo hike at
Black Star Canyon and a terrifying beginners mountain bike ride (it was terrifying only because I don’t know how to ride a bike that well, plus I saw a tarantula). Anyway, I hadn’t been on a hike with the IRC in almost two years, mostly due to my job interfering with many the activities they have. This hike began at the Portola Staging Area just at the end of Portola Parkway in Irvine. Our group was very large, about 30 people, many volunteers for the IRC and our docent Kelly. After meeting at 9am we piled in our cars ( we could only take about 6-7 cars so we literally piled in) and drove up to the trail head for Round Canyon. This canyon is closed to the public and is only accessible by signing up for one of these hikes. The trail was overgrown with many native and non-native plants and there wasn’t an abundance of wildflowers, apparently they have had a slow wildflower season. So this was more of a plant and wildflower hike, Kelly pointed out all the various flora and fauna which she was very knowledgeable about. Although the IRC does offer cardio and fitness hikes this was not one of them. We only walked about a mile, at a slow pace and stopped every few feet to talk about a plant, flower or random animal scat. The pace was perfect for picture taking especially since I didn’t bring a very versatile lens. I chose to bring the Rebel T2i with the 50mm attached to it, this meant I really had to think about my shots and constantly move closer or further away to get a good composition. Even though the 50mm is not a macro lens it still has the ability to open up to an aperture of 1.8 which means really awesome
bokeh. We got back to our cars around 11:30am just in time for lunch. I highly recommend signing up for one of these hikes with the IRC, especially since most of them are free and you can learn something along the way.
To see more of my photos from Round Canyon check out the GALLERY.
Last Saturday Bryan and I visited the Flower Fields in Carlsbad for the first time. This is a surprisingly popular place, we got there about 2 hours after it opened and the main parking lot was full and the extra lot was filling up fast. When you go through the entrance the sheer amount of flowers is amazing. We luckily planned our trip when everything was in full bloom. All the flowers are beautiful but what this place is known for is the abundance of Ranunculus that are at the forefront of the field. This is the perfect place to do Macro Photography, in fact they even have a class in April dedicated to just that. Unfortunately I don’t own a macro lens yet but the lenses we used did pretty well. I brought my Gorilla Pod along so I could take a self portrait of the two of us but that didn’t really work out to well. I generally hate asking people to take our picture for us but I noticed another young couple walking ahead of us with a DSLR similar to ours. After stalking them for awhile, noticing the guy was taking photos of his lady in front of the flowers, I made my move. I offered to take their photo if they would take mine. It is very important to find someone who owns a high end DSLR since they probably know how to take a proper photo. Besides lots of photo opportunities the Flower Fields have a lot to offer; wagon rides, food, a sweet pea maze and lots of plants for sale. After we left the fields we went around the corner to the Karl Strauss Brewery which was worth the trip in of itself, especially if you get their bread pudding. If you plan on visiting this year make sure you go before May 15th which is when they close, you won’t regret it.
To see more photos from our trip to the Flower Fields check out the GALLERY.
Last weekend Bryan and I had the pleasure of photographing the Painted Rocks Half Marathon in San Diego. The race started at Rancho Bernardo Community Park and wound halfway around Lake Hodges. The race started at 7am but because we live in Orange County we left our house at 3:30am to make sure we had enough time to pick out our photo spots. We got there around 5am when it was still dark and cold. I consider myself a morning person, but not a pre-dawn person. I haven’t seen the sunrise in a long time but as a photographer I know that this is one of the best times to take photos. I felt grateful to the event that I had to drag myself out of bed so early as I would never do this on my own just to take photos. The time known as the Golden Hour is the first and last hour of sunlight each day. It is known for it’s long shadows and warm beautiful hues of light. The spot I chose to shoot from was at a suspension bridge that runs across the lake and leads to the rest of the trail. As I waited in the cold for the sun to rise I took a few shots from the bridge looking out to the 15 freeway. I generally don’t carry a tripod with me so in order to get a nice slow shutter speed shot I placed my camera on the bridge’s railing (while still wearing the neck strap), set my shutter speed to a couple of seconds and enabled the mirror lockup. This prevented camera movement from when I pressed the shutter button which is a good trick when you find yourself without a tripod. Once the sun started to rise I forgot how much I hated early mornings because the resulting shots came out so well. You can see more of my Golden Hour shots in the GALLERY.
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