photos of blooms

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Walking down the trail

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Walks, paths and trails

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This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge theme is indoor and outdoors walks – anything designed for walking. All my photos are of the outdoors because that’s where I like to be best.

Once you take a trail at the back of Dos Picos County Park and pass the enchanted stone steps I showcased last week, you find yourself walking on a path bordered with many Ramona lilacs. If you hike in the spring, when the lilacs are in bloom, this is what you get to see as you follow the trail:

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail in Dos Picos County Park — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail in Dos Picos County Park

And it only gets better as you walk along. Here’s a blast of green, purple and bright blue! I know, I still owe you a few close-ups of the Ramona lilacs, but at least you can see what the lilac trees look like full size. Aren’t they pretty?

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail bordered by Ramona lilacs — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail bordered by Ramona lilacs

Another favorite spot where we enjoy hiking in Louis Stelzer County Park. On the day I took the photos below, the sky was completely gray but everything on the ground looked very green. In a couple of months, most of it will turn to yellow or brown, and the green probably won’t return until next January.

Here’s the trail that follows the side of the hill. This trail is fun to walk on a cloudy day, but I avoid it like the plague in the heat of summer since there’s no shade.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail at Louis Stelzer County Park — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail at Louis Stelzer County Park

Fortunately, this park offers a lot of wooded areas by the small creek. This is a great trail to walk on any day of the year. This is as green as it gets in San Diego.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Green trail at Louis Stelzer County Park — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Green trail at Louis Stelzer County Park

Like many parks in San Diego County, this park is full of coast live oak trees, which tend to feature many thick, often contorted branches. Look how this large tree branch curves over the trail to create an arch.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail with coast live oak trees — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail with coast live oak trees

To me, there’s nothing more pleasant than walking down a shaded trail to make me feel in unison with nature. What about you?

April 24, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: California Photos, Landscape Photos, Photography, Photos of San Diego, Plant Photos, Tree PhotosTags: blooms, California pictures, Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, coast live oak tree, Dos Picos County Park, hiking trails San Diego, lilac blooms, Louis Stelzer County Park, nature photography, photography, photos, photos of blooms, ramona lilac, walking trails San Diego 10 Comments

Macro Monday: Tiny bugs in small purple wildflowers

Macro Monday: Bugs hiding in flowers

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Today I’m taking part in Macro Monday at Lisa’s Chaos. Remember you can click on each image to see it in a larger format.

While recently hiking at a local county park in San Diego, I found these tiny purple wildflowers bordering the trail on the hillside.

Each cluster of these purple flowers was no bigger than the size of my thumbprint.

After photographing the first two clusters, I thought I had enough, until I found the next set of wildflowers and saw several tiny bugs keeping busy inside the flowers. I felt I had been transported into Miniature Land for a minute.

April 22, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal Photos, Bloom Photos, California Photos, Flower Photos, PhotographyTags: bugs in wildflowers, California pictures, california wildflowers, Macro Monday, nature photography, photography, photos, photos of blooms, photos of flowers, small purple wildflowers, tiny purple wildflowers 4 Comments

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Sea - sea jellies

Travel theme: Contrast

Today I’m participating in Where’s My Backpack’s Travel Theme photo challenge. This week’s theme is contrast. Enjoy my photos and remember you can click on each photo for a larger view.

Sorry if you’ve seen this photo earlier this week, but I think it illustrates how you can compose a great photo by contrasting different colors.

Travel theme: Contrast - Orange protea pincushion and purple lavender — Travel theme: Contrast – Orange protea pincushion and purple lavender

Red and green contrast well to make this red hibiscus flower stand out.

Travel theme: Contrast - Red hibiscus flower — Travel theme: Contrast – Red hibiscus flower

The darkness of the water offers a nice contrast with the lit sea jellies.

Travel theme: Contrast - Sea jellies — Travel theme: Contrast – Sea jellies

Of course, there no bigger contrast than white on black. Here’s an almost white full moon on a dark blue sky. You can view a large full moon in a pitch black sky here.

Travel theme: Contrast - Moon rising beyond the trees — Travel theme: Contrast – Moon rising beyond the trees

April 20, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal Photos, Flower Photos, Photography, Sky PhotosTags: full moon rising, hibiscus flower, jelly fish, nature photography, photography, photos, photos of blooms, protea pin cushion, protea pincushion, red hibiscus, sea jellies, Travel theme: Contrast, Where's My Backpack's Travel Theme 7 Comments

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Focus - Orange protea pincushion flower

The colors of spring: orange protea pincushion and purple lavender

In today’s post, I’m featuring one of my favorite flowers: the protea pincushion flower. Originally from South Africa, they seem to like San Diego’s weather and they’re easy to spot in people’s yards and public places. What do I like most about them? They have some of the most cool looking shapes of petals I’ve ever seen.

I wanted to capture this peculiar curved shape of the petals by taking a close-up of this orange protea pincushion. You can click on this photo for a larger view.

After taking this photo, I noticed the large lavender flowers and decided to use them as the background for my photo, along with the blue sky.

Orange protea pincushion and purple lavender

For this last picture, I decided to change the depth of field so I could focus on the lavender blooms instead. I also changed my angle to avoid them hiding behind the protea pincushion.

So here you go, same flowers, three different angles and perspectives. Some people go bungee jumping, I play with my camera settings.

April 18, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Bloom Photos, California Photos, Flower Photos, PhotographyTags: lavender blooms, lavender flowers, nature photography, orange protea pincushion, photography, photos, photos of blooms, photos of flowers, protea pincushion flower, purple lavender 2 Comments

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Color

I’m participating in the WordPress weekly photo challenge and this week’s theme is color. The goal is to select photos that feature one color prominently in the frame. What a fun challenge!

For this specific challenge, I decided to share photos I took in a single day, while visiting the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. There sure is a lot of color there if you look closely.

Remember you can click on each photo to see a larger view. If you like what you see, I’d love for you to subscribe to this blog so you can see my new photos as I post them.

My first photo is of a busy bee on bright yellow flowers. I’ll share more photos of bees on these flowers in an upcoming post in the next week or so, so stay tuned.

I wanted to photograph this protea pin cushion up close and I used the purple flowers as a contrasting background. The bright blue sky helps too. If you like protea pin cushion flowers, you can view more here.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Color - orange protea pin cushion flower — WordPress weekly photo challenge: Color – orange protea pin cushion flower

Besides lilac blooms, I’m not sure there’s anything more beautiful than wisteria blooms. If you like wisteria, I’ll be posting more photos of it in the next week or two. Remember to subscribe to this blog if you haven’t already.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Color - purple wisteria — WordPress weekly photo challenge: Color – purple wisteria

If you follow this post, you just saw the photo below this morning, but I wanted to share it with the people who do the WordPress weekly photo challenge. I really like how the pink flowers stand out next to this amazing giant owl butterfly.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Color - pink flowers and giant owl butterfly — WordPress weekly photo challenge: Color – pink flowers and giant owl butterfly

I used the last photo in a post earlier this week but I thought it’d fit perfectly here too. These fluffy yellow blooms belong to a very large tree that was covered with thousands of them.