San Francisco!

So, as most of you know, I went on a trip to San Francisco this past week with my dad and brother. It has been an amazing trip. I can't say I've ever been on a trip like this in my entire life. San Francisco is just such a unique city. I've never been in a city like this before. Everything just has a completely different feel to it than in Minnesota.

On our way to San Fran we flew to Phoenix first, and then made our way from there to San Fran. Here are a few pics of our flight to Phoenix (I didn't get any pictures from our flight from Phoenix to San Fran because I didn't have a window seat, unfortunately).

Pretty crazy, huh? The airplane window made the photos all washed-out, but I tried to mak

e them look as close to how they looked in real-life by editing them a bit.

On our first, full day in San Fran we made our way to San Bruno Mountain State Park. It was a looooong walk. We had to walk from the train station all the way to the trailhead, and then hike up the mountain from there, and then walk all the way back to the train station. I mapped it out and we walked a total of 13 miles in total that day. We were almost ready to die! We left the hotel at 10:30am and didn't get back until 5:30pm. We were walking all that time too, only stopping for 15 minutes at the peak of the mountain. Here's some shots from our hike and from the summit of the mountain.

A trail-side flower.

There was an amazing view of San Francisco from the top! (I don't know why it wont maximize the photos when you click on them, but I have all of these on Facebook too, so if you want see them in a larger size, you can look at them there.)

The next day we went to the California Academy of Science. It wasn't phenomenal (it was just a typical museum), but it was still pretty cool! It was free admission day, so we had to wait in line for an hour to get in. There was plenty of time to take pictures while we were waiting in line.

The building we wished to enter.

There was a courtyard in front of the museum.

Seth in the courtyard. =D

Seagull!

Squirrel!

On our way back to the hotel from the museum, we decided to walk around a portion of downtown San Fran for a bit (without getting lost!). This is the City Hall. If you look closely, you can see Seth standing in front of it (center). ...Epic.

Now I am at the airport writing this, waiting to fly home. It's been a great experience. California is awesome, but I still love Minnesota. :-)

Distant, yet Near.

So. I just got a new Macbook Pro! It really is just an amazing machine. It has this program called Aperture that organizes your photos and such (it is also amazing). I've spent all day transferring my (literally) thousands of photos from my old PC onto my Mac and into this Aperture program. As I was doing that, I ran across this photo that caught my eye which I remember not liking that much when I took it. Even though I didn't like it before, I like it now. Sounds weird, I know. How can I suddenly like a photo I didn't like before? Well, it happens... as any photographer knows.

Looking past a pine tree, we see the moon (during the day!). ...So far, yet so close.

Nothing Major...

Nothing major today. Just two shots that I took while lounging on our back deck in summer-like warmth yesterday.

I thought this was an interesting shot. A silhouetted Black-capped Chickadee amidst a myriad of tree branches. It has an interesting feel to it... At least, to me.

I was too lazy to get up and get a proper shot of this guy. So, laying where I was, I just zoomed in, looking through the supporting bars of our deck. It worked... Kinda. :P

Look-alike?

A photo of my brother, Seth, that I took the other day.

Russell Crowe, anyone?

Maybe, maybe not.

SPRING!

Unbelievable, I know. After we've had what seems to have been two year's worth of winter this year, spring seems to have finally arrived. I'm not totally ahead of myself yet, even though I really want to be. We still average 3 inches of snow in April. Regardless, I still believe that winter is finally gone, for the most part. Here is some evidence that spring is on the way (or is already here?):

#1: Being able to drink ice tea on the back deck in shorts and a t-shirt comfortably. 'Comfortably', meaning, you're not doing it for "show", like some people do when it's -20 out and there's 2 feet of snow on the ground. It's for real this time.

#2: "sunbathing" with that glass of ice tea while being surrounded with, not only the sight of melting snow, but the surprisingly obstreperous sound of it as well.

#3: Being able to go outside and take pictures of the melting snow, again, in shorts and a t-shirt. I like the texture the melting snow/ice has in this picture with the trapped air bubbles.

As the snow melted, it created these cool cavern-like formations on our back deck. The snow is melting at an alarming rate right now. This snow formation existed yesterday. Today, it does not. This makes me happy. ...Aaannd I don't really have any more points to make that have a picture to go with them, so here are just some more pics that I took yesterday during the heatwave that is still continuing today! :P


Hope you're enjoying the weather!

More Snow...

It seems to be the story of the year so far. Don't get me wrong, I love Minnesota and its weather (it's part of what makes Minnesota, Minnesota!), but I am officially ready for spring/summer now... We're suppose to get another significant snowstorm this coming week, so you might see some more snow photos on here later, or you might not. To be honest, I'm ready to photograph something else for a change, even though snow can be a challenging and fun subject. It's just been around too long.

Another Snowstorm.

A decently sized snowstorm hit us over the latter part of this past weekend. I haven't taken any official measurements yet (it only really stopped snowing just now), but my guess would be 15+ inches. Yesterday, we went out on a hike on a backtrail in our neighborhood during the peak of the storm. It was snowing really, really hard. If you looked down the street, you couldn't see more than 50 yards in front of you. It was that heavy. It was so heavy in fact, that St. Paul (only 10 minutes away) recorded THUNDER snow (you can see it here). Unfortunately, I didn't (couldn't) bring my camera with me during the hike because of my memory card problem, but when we got home, I found out I could actually take 3 to 4 pictures from my camera's internal memory (happiness!). That's when I took these photos:

This photo reminds me of some 1940's Nazi general standing out in the snow. Just give him a machine gun, and the picture will be complete. :P