Canada Jay taking flight on Rattlesnake Ledge, Seattle (jby)
Occurred to me this morning that I haven’t done a retrospective of the past year’s Flickr photostream as I did last year for plants, and birds, and mammals, and landmarks — and while I’m not going to manage that for 2024, at this point, I can and should still post my favorites. I’m getting a bit more comfortable with the camera, and the processing options in Adobe Lightroom, and I think I got some mighty nice results.
C in the waves at Second Beach, Quillayute Needles National Wildlife Refuge, Washington. (jby)
To bring this photographic retrospective to a close, we come to images I took of the landscapes in which I found birds, plants, mammals, and other critters. These include lots of mountains and forest trails, but the most dramatic ones might be views from Second Beach at Quillayute Needles National Wildlife Refuge. The beach is shadowed by rocky prominences that loom dramatically out of the tidal spray, some big enough to host patches of coastal forest.
A black-throated sparrow perches on the dried-out inflorescence stalk of a Joshua tree. (Flickr, jby)
A couple weeks ago I realized I’d neglected to post photos from the tail end of summer, and updated my Flickr page with the best of August and September — and then failed to post here, on what’s meant to be my online home. Oops. You can go browse the whole set on my Flickr photostream, but here’s a few highlights from the only real camping trip C and I managed this summer, an afternoon at the Getty Center, and (at the top of this post) a September trip to Joshua Tree National Park for a planning event.
All of these are taken with an Olympus E-M10 Mark IV, the first “real” camera I’ve used in strange ages — I bought it for the Alaska trip, and I’m still getting the hang of it, but it’s a major upgrade from what my smartphone can capture, especially for wildlife.
A juvenile western bluebird in North Hollywood Park (Flickr, jby)Wading in Goat Lake (Flickr, jby)Mountain views on the hike down from Goat Lake (Flickr, jby)C on the trail down from Goat Lake (Flickr, jby)The Getty Center gardens (Flickr, jby)