California Photos

Festival of leaves - week 4 - maple tree fall foliage

Festival of leaves – week 4 – rare maple tree sighting in San Diego

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Today I’m taking part in the photo challenge called Festival of Leaves (this is week 4). You can view my contribution to week 1 and week 2. You can click on each photo for a larger view. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe so you can enjoy the new photos I post a few times a week.

Unlike the East Coast, it’s a challenge to see some colorful fall foliage in the San Diego area. After all, most of our landscape is covered with chaparral, California sage brush, a variety of grasses and tons of cacti. So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I happened to drive right by this beautiful maple tree during a recent day trip to the mountain town of Julian, California, about an hour away from San Diego.

It was standing tall and proud in someone’s large front yard. I can’t imagine how ecstatic those people must be every fall when the leaves of their tree start turning. Here’s a closer look at these beautiful leaves. By the way, it was an absolutely beautiful day after the very windy Santa Ana winds died down.

Here are a few more maple leaves with the sunlight shining the other way. They almost look golden there.

October 23, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: California Photos, Tree PhotosTags: Festival of leaves - week 4, Julian California, maple tree fall foliage, maple tree golden leaves, maple tree red leaves, maple trees San Diego, nature photography, photography, photos, photos of trees 15 Comments

Sycamore tree leaves in the fall in San Diego

Festival of leaves – week 2 – Sycamore tree leaves

Today I’m taking part in the photo challenge called Festival of Leaves (this is week 2). You can view my contribution to week 1 here. You can click on each photo for a larger view. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe so you can enjoy the new photos I post a few times a week.

We have a lot of Sycamore trees in San Diego. And I mean, A LOT. They are quite resilient to our ongoing drought, as they let their leaves shrivel up when they run out of water in the heat of summer, preserving their energy for better times. The Sycamore tree leaves turn yellow then brown in the fall, not too exciting to photograph as is. But if you photograph the tree from underneath on a sunny day, you can play with the sunlight to get more interesting leaf colors. Here are a few shots of Sycamore tree leaves that are barely turning yellow and brown at this point.

Festival of leaves - week 2 - Sycamore tree — Festival of leaves – week 2 – Sycamore tree

Getting closer…

Festival of leaves - week 2 - Sycamore tree leaves — Festival of leaves – week 2 – Sycamore tree leaves

Bingo! Some nice yellow and brown Sycamore leaves for you.

October 9, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: California Photos, Photos of San Diego, Tree PhotosTags: fall foliage San Diego, fall in San Diego, Festival of leaves - week 2, nature photography, photos of trees, Sycamore fall leaves, Sycamore leaves in the fall, sycamore tree leaves, Sycamore yellow and brown leaves 6 Comments

“Capture The Colour 2013” photo contest

Fellow photography blogger Cee recommended me for the “Capture The Colour 2013” photo contest in her post yesterday. When I read the contest’s terms & conditions, I realized the contest was opened until October 9, 2013. That’s tomorrow, yikes! Since the contest holder is in the UK, I figured I had very little time to enter.

Here are my entries for each color theme: yellow, green, blue, red and white. I’m also supposed to recommend this contest to 5 fellow bloggers so here’s my pick. If I didn’t name you and still want to participate, you have a few more hours to do so.

Licht Years
Northwest Frame of Mind
The Beauty Along The Road
Travel and Trifles
Clicky Chick Creates (fellow San Diegan!)

Remember you can click on each photo for a larger view.

YELLOW – I took this photo of a beautiful sunflower just yesterday. This is my very first sunflower and I tried to fill my frame with it as much as I could, letting the great blue sky fill the rest.

Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest - yellow sunflower — Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest – yellow sunflower

GREEN – this photo of a raindrop on a grass blade seems to be a favorite so it was an easy choice for the green theme. I love the grass blade reflections in the raindrop.

Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest - green grass with raindrop — Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest – green grass with raindrop

BLUE – this was my very first dragonfly and it happened to be blue. Since then, I’ve photographed more dragonflies, all orange.

Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest - blue dragonfly — Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest – blue dragonfly

RED – I love bees and I love bottle brush tree flowers. This photo is the best of both worlds for me, and a brand new photo on this site.

Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest - red bottle brush flower with bee — Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest – red bottle brush flower with bee

WHITE – I photographed this beautiful great egret this past weekend. Such a proud bird owning the water’s edge.

Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest - white great egret — Capture The Colour 2013 photo contest – white great egret

October 8, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal Photos, Bird photos, Bloom Photos, California Photos, Flower Photos, Photography, Plant Photos, Water photosTags: "Capture The Colour 2013" blue, "Capture The Colour 2013" green, "Capture The Colour 2013" photo contest, "Capture The Colour 2013" red, "Capture The Colour 2013" white, "Capture The Colour 2013" yellow, bee on bottle brush flower, blue dragonfly, great egret, nature photography, raindrop on grass blade, red bottle brush flower, white great egret, yellow sunflower 23 Comments

A word a week - violet wildflowers with dew drops

Cee’s fun foto challenge: white and purple

Today I’m participating in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge to show photos featuring the color white and purple. You can click on the photos below for a larger view. If you like what you see, feel free to subscribe and receive nature photography updates a few times a week.

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Nature LOVES to put purple and white right next to each other, especially when it comes to flowers. These purple water lilies with white centers are just beautiful. You can view more photos of these purple waterlilies here.

Cee's fun foto challenge: white and purple water lilies — Cee’s fun foto challenge: white and purple water lilies

Here’s an amazing white and purple flower with long, thin petals that blooms on a shrub with almost white leaves. You can view more of these purple flowers here.

Cee's fun foto challenge: white and purple flower with skinny petals — Cee’s fun foto challenge: white and purple flower with skinny petals

Wisteria blooms are some of my favorite and their white and purple clusters dangling down the trellis are gorgeous.

Cee's fun foto challenge: white and purple White and purple wisteria flowers — Cee’s fun foto challenge: white and purple White and purple wisteria flowers

I love these tiny purple and white wildflowers I found on the side of a hiking trail this past spring.

Here is a different type of wildflowers, with some morning dew on them. They are still small, purple and white.

Tiny purple and white wildflowers with morning dew

These flowers are purple and white too but they grow on a large shrub.

Sometimes you find purple flowers right next to white flowers, like this assortment of spring wildflowers.

California lupine is another type of wildflower, this one much larger than the ones I shared above.

Purple and white California lupine at San Diego Mission Trails Regional Park

Finally, milkweed flowers are blue but the pod leaves they come out of are purple and white.

Cee's fun foto challenge: white and purple milkweed flower — Cee’s fun foto challenge: white and purple milkweed flower

September 11, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Bloom Photos, California Photos, Flower Photos, Plant PhotosTags: blooms, california lupine, Cee's fun foto challenge: white and purple, Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, flower with purple petals, morning dew, nature photography, photography, photos of blooms, photos of flowers, purple lupine, purple water lilies, purple wild flowers, purple wildflowers, wisteria blooms, wisteria flowers 7 Comments

WordPress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV

Today I’m participating in the WordPress weekly photo challenge and this week’s theme is “an unusual POV (point of view)”. You can click on the photos below for a larger view. If you like what you see, feel free to subscribe and receive nature photography updates a few times a week.

I think I tend to notice things around me that most people will walk by, and that’s what I like to photograph. Like this pine tree bark from up close, which looks a lot like a topographic map.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV - Patterns and colors on pine tree bark — WordPress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV – Patterns and colors on pine tree bark

Or this manzanita tree bark peeling off.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV - manzanita tree bark peeling off — WordPress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV – manzanita tree bark peeling off

Have you ever seen the spider webs that grass spiders make? When they get wet with the morning dew, they look very cool from up close.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV - grass spider webs — WordPress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV – grass spider webs

I like using the sky as a background and this gray but very bright sky was perfect to make this orange rose stand out and glow.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV - Orange rose at Balboa Park in San Diego — WordPress weekly photo challenge: an unusual POV – Orange rose at Balboa Park in San Diego

Living in San Diego, I get to see a lot of wildflowers in the spring, especially poppies. For this shot, I used the wooden fence as my main object, with the wildflowers bordering it.

When you live in San Diego, you get to enjoy quite a few things, like a very blue sky on lucky days, and a very blue Pacific ocean. In this last shot below, I used the grasses growing on the sand dunes at Coronado Beach as a foreground, with the Pacific ocean in the background.