Photos of the Cities by the Bay

Friday evening: San Francisco skyline from the Oakland Estuary just south of Jack London Square. (click on photos for larger version)

Saturday morning:

Morning jogger.

A view of the estuary.

More shots of Lakeside Park, Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA

Walkers

Lots of birds!

I don’t know what is stuck to the one fella’s beak. At first I thought it was a bird, but it’s not. Appears to be some kind of large barnacle.

That’s all for now. I’ll post more of the lake and surrounding real estate later. Gotta get back to work. Lunch is over.

Day 162 – Black & White Doggie

Nina poses quite a challenge when being photographed, not the least of which is her propensity to bolt at a second’s notice. Her energy notwithstanding, the challenge is actually her black coat which can come out quite flat or as just a black blob if she isn’t lit well. And so, with a little help from my off-camera flash with soft box attachment, I set myself to the task.

At the front door . . .

Looking sweet on the sofa . . .

With her big dawg bone . . .

From above . . .

And one in color . . .

Day 161 – Lake Merritt

It’s been a long day and I’ve got a lot of photographs to go through, so I’m just going to post a few. The Congenital Heart Walk was at Lake Merritt in Oakland, CA. It was a picture perfect day and the temperature was great too.

Rowing Club:

Lake Merritt Bird Sanctuary:

Just a kid having a good time.

Day 159 – Out Front

Post cap on our sign at the foot of our driveway. I love what the weather and the elements have done to it.

This Desert Spiny Lizard lives under our front stairs. I think he may be a relative of a much older guy that’s been around since we moved in eleven years ago.

Day 158 – Dawgs

In the backyard this evening . . . playing with the dogs and off-camera flash.

Buddy can be such a silly boy.

And somehow I lucked out and caught both of them, at the same time, standing still.

Backyard Visitor

We put the dogs out in the backyard after supper to do their business and almost immediately both of them went off, barking the way they do when there is some kind of intruder onto the property. As we live out in the country, pedestrians are a rarity, and about the only vehicle that pulls into our driveway is the UPS truck, so when they bark like this we wonder what’s going on and we always investigate.

Here’s what had them going: a three-foot gopher snake under the roses. He was trying to make his get-away and at first crawled into the bush. I ran for my camera. Sorry, these are a bit blurry.

Brad got him out of the bush and the snake made a beeline toward the house, passing by the garage door and ultimately slithering under the foundation.

Knowing he isn’t venomous and is a predator of the pocket gophers and other rodents we’ve got around here soothes my initial shock at seeing the guy. Now, if he’ll just stay out of the backyard.

Day 154 – Playtime

I just played with my camera today, mostly shooting in the backyard.

Here’s a great one I got of Nina stalking the wild lizards in the backyard. They like to hang out in the lilac bushes and Nina walks her patrol hoping one will slip out.

Whee!!!

After supper I played with second-curtain sync on my flash. Nina again.

Day 153 – Discovery

I got my five-year service award bonus check in the mail today, and while perusing the reviews for the Speedlite 580EX II, I discovered that the EOS 7D pop-up flash can act as the master to my current 430 EX Speedlite. Actually, I know that many DSLRs have this capability, but I did not have it with my EOS T1i and so it slipped my mind that I should have it with the 7D.

So I played grabbed my flash manual and the 7D manual and did me some learnin’ tonight. I set the pop up flash to the lowest intensity so that if it were the only flash firing it did not expose anything. All I wanted was enough light to fire my off-camera 430 EX. It worked! And then I had to practice.

Once again, the cats were cooperative.

Jezebel lit with flash to camera right and bouncing off the ceiling.