WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that San Diego has been my home for a little over 15 years now. In a way, it feels like it wasn’t that long ago when I drove cross country from Connecticut to California. San Diego has grown on me as my new home over the years. Besides the worrisome wildfires, random earthquakes, and lack of greenery, there’s a lot to like about San Diego and its surroundings. San Diego is my home and here are a few things I enjoy about it. Remember you can click on each image to enjoy a larger view. San Diego is home to the big waves of the Pacific Ocean under a bright blue sky.

Beautiful waves at Coronado Beach, San Diego, California
Beautiful waves at Coronado Beach, San Diego, California

San Diego is home to a large agricultural community, including a lot of citrus (lemons and oranges, mostly).

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - oranges in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – oranges in San Diego

San Diego is home to not just one single season year round, but also Fall and its bold colors.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - changing seasons in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – changing seasons in San Diego

San Diego can even be home to frost in the winter, especially inland. This is as much cold as I can take!

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - frost in winter in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – frost in winter in San Diego

San Diego is home to beautiful sunrises, especially in the winter.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - beautiful sunrise in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – beautiful sunrise in San Diego

San Diego is also home to beautiful sunsets. This one is from Christmas evening 2012.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - beautiful sunset in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – beautiful sunset in San Diego

San Diego is home to hundreds, probably thousands of different species of animals and plants. It’s also home to the most amazing topiary I’ve ever seen (view more topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden here).

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - amazing topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – amazing topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden

And as of this week, San Diego is home to some beautiful pear blossoms in Balboa Park. You can view more photos of these pear blossoms in a post next week, so I invite you subscribe to this site if you haven’t already.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - pear blossoms at San Diego's Balboa Park
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – pear blossoms at San Diego’s Balboa Park

I’m happy to call San Diego home.

Busy bees on cactus flowers

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

A few days ago, I shared with you some photos of flowers I took recently. Today I’d like to share a few more photos I took that day, more specifically the ones with the busy bees on the yellow cactus flowers.

Remember you can click on each photo for a larger view. This is the photo I shared the other day.

Bee on yellow cactus flowers
Bee on yellow cactus flowers

I love how the sunlight reflects on the bee’s wings to show its intricate design on the photo below.

Bee collecting nectar on yellow cactus flowers
Bee collecting nectar on yellow cactus flowers

I wonder how much nectar the bees can collect from these tiny flowers, which are just the size of a bee. At least the bees were busy doing their job and I didn’t seem to disturb them with my camera.

Bee on cactus flowers
Bee on cactus flowers

I got lucky for this last shot and managed to get two bees in the frame, a different angle for each. Busy bees!

Two bees on yellow cactus flowers
Two bees on yellow cactus flowers

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

I’m participating in the online adventure travel and photography magazine LetsBeWild.com’s Wild Weekly Photo Challenge for bloggers. This week’s Challenge is: Flowers.

Yeah! Flowers are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I used quite a few photos of flowers in my 2013 12-month photo calendar, didn’t I?

Why do I love photographing flowers so much? First, they still mostly still, unlike my kids, so I can take my time and find the best angle to photograph them. Unless my kids are standing very impatiently by my side… Second, flowers come in tons of different colors. I love pink and purple (you’ll see one of my most favorite flowers below) but really, flowers look great in almost any color. Third, on top of their awesome colors, some flowers can even smell good. Ah, our world is such a wonderful place…

For this photo challenge on flowers, I’ll share a few photos I took during my most recent visit to the San Diego Botanic Garden. I have many more photos to share about this visit, including some of the most amazing topiary I’ve ever seen. So if you’d like to see them, make sure you subscribe to this blog (sign up in the left sidebar), or to my Facebook page.

It’s one thing to like flowers and take photos of them. It’s another to know the names of the flowers you photograph. Even when I visit the San Diego Botanic Garden, I manage to take photos of flowers that are not labeled, so several of the flowers below will remain nameless, unless you know their names and you’re kind enough to share in the Comments section.

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

Here’s one of my most favorite flower in San Diego. It starts blooming in large patches in January, for about two months – a beautiful way to celebrate winter here. I believe this is called a Pink Aster. And it’s my favorite color too!

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Pink asters
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Pink asters

What goes well with flowers? Bees! Here’s a bee on cactus flowers. Very cute, small, yellow flowers as you can see, smaller than a bee. Unfortunately I don’t know what type of cactus this is.

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Bee on cactus flowers
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Bee on cactus flowers

Many types of cactus are blooming at this time of year, and aloe is no exception. The one in the front is called Red Aloe, the one in the back Gold Aloe. Don’t they look great?

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Red Aloe and Gold Aloe
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Red Aloe and Gold Aloe

My last flower pick is some type of daisy. Unfortunately its petals are not in great shape but I really like the angle of this photo.

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Yellow daisy
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Yellow daisy

Stay tuned for a couple more posts on my visit to the San Diego Botanic Garden. I promise you won’t be disappointed, especially with the topiary I found throughout the garden.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: My 2012 in pictures

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

It’s been quite an eventful year for me but besides the bad and the ugly, lots of good things have happened, including the launch of this photography website, and the launch of my online Zazzle store to sell photo products.

I took a lot of great photos this year and I displayed some of them on this site. I still have quite a number of photos to go through on my various SD cards but are several of my favorite photos for 2012. You can click on each photo for a larger view and find each photo in individual posts on this site by using the search tool. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Bright and colorful wildflowers to warm you up on this cold December day

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

If you haven’t participated in my contest to win a free copy of my 2013 photo calendar yet, today is the last day, so hurry and let your friends know about it too!

I don’t know how cold it is where you live, but here in inland San Diego County, it’s freezing! And no, I’m not exaggerating, it actually froze last night when the outside temperature got below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Let’s just hope the cold weather doesn’t stay for too long, since it can do a lot of damage to the local avocado and citrus crops.

If it’s cold where you are, I have a few photos that will hopefully warm you up  bit. I took them last spring, when the warm sun laid its gentle rays on thousands of bright and colorful California wildflowers at a local park. Remember you can click on each photo for a larger view.

I used the first photo of wildflowers in my 2013 photo calendar, as it represents Southern California in the early spring perfectly.

California wildflowers - poppies
California wildflowers – poppies

Here’s a similar style of photo, but showing a different type of flowers.

Photo of colorful California wildflowers
Photo of colorful California wildflowers

Here’s another photo of the light pink wildflowers. I believe they are called Hungarian breadseed poppies. They’re very pretty with their delicate shades of pink!

Hungarian breadseed poppies - light pink poppies
Hungarian breadseed poppies – light pink poppies

Finally, here’s an assortment of colors for you: light pink, purple, orange and red. Somebody had fun throwing these seeds all over.

I hope you feel warmer inside, if not on the outside!

Pink, purple and red California wildflowers
Pink, purple and red California wildflowers