The other evening, I had a nice, early dinner in Balboa Park with a couple of close friends. After dinner, they had to take off to a Christmas party downtown, so I stayed in the park for awhile with my Canon S2 IS camera. It has a flash, of course, but I decided to take a few photos without using it; using just the natural available lighting, and this is what I got. The Christmas lights were there and beautiful, as you can see, but some of the best lighting came from some surprising sources. Take your camera out at night some time and forget the flash; there are a lot of other possibilities.

Again, as usual, these are straight from the camera, without any modification. You can also see the photos on my Yahoo Photo site here.













































Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.

Thought I'd put together a bit of color for any of you suffering from the winters lack of it. Hope you enjoy it.

Yesterday we had our first real rain of the season here in San Diego, and knowing that the red colors of the sandstone in Torrey Pines State Park are always richer and more vibrant when wet, I headed over for a late afternoon hike/photo session. I was treated to the park by myself. Not sure why everyone stayed home, as it was a really beautiful afternoon. The trails were wet, but passable and I got down to the hills above the coast just in time for the sunset, which was spectacular. Here’s a dump from my camera, untreated, just as they were photographed. I’ve uploaded a lot more to my photo site on Yahoo for anyone that wants to see the rest. They can be found here
N'Joy

<- Click the Topo for a larger map.

Spent a nice morning walking with a couple of close friends and a group from the San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club on a hike through the Boden Canyon Ecological Reserve, just east of the Wild Animal Park in eastern San Diego County. Probably timed it just about perfect, as the colors were near, if not at, their peak. The Sycamores along the dry river bed were lit up in all the light shades of yellow and orange. The total hike was about 8 miles long, with a few short stops along the way, and a nice lunch at the turn around point.

Photos of the hike can be viewed here or you can watch the video below made from photos and a short video of the hike ala J.R.R. Tolkien.

Well, I just saw another Kim Ki-duk movie last night and I’ve got to say that he is definitely my favorite director currently producing. But he’s not for everyone, and this movie was no exception. The English translation of the title is Bad Guy and was filmed in 2002, just before his best movie to date (in my opinion), Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, which came out a year later. In Bad Boy, Kim explores the dark world of gangsters and prostitutes. Sounds fun, huh? Well, it’s not for the light hearted, but this film will surely stick with me for a long time, something that few films today do. If you don’t mind delving into a mental landscape full of the pain and suffering of people unable to fit into Korea’s strict social hierarchy, then you might also find this a rare gem of a film. But don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

A few links to Kim Ki-Duk:

The Kim Ki-duk Page

Kim Ki-duk's Wiki page

Interview with Kim Ki-duk

The Bad Guy trailer:

Saturday morning in Bow Willow Canyon

Last Saturday, in an effort to get some exercise and enjoy getting off the coast, a friend and I drove out to the Anza Borrego Desert to get in an early morning hike. I'd looked at some topo maps at home the night before and thought a place called Bow Willow Canyon looked promising. But what I hadn't expected was to find so many beautiful palm canyons. Seeing these large, semi-tropical trees, that most people associate more with Hawaii than the desert, growing in such large numbers, was really nice. If you can imagine walking along a fairly barren, sandy landscape where most the plants would barely reach as high as your knee, and then coming upon a large grove of up to 40 or more of these stunning trees, you can start to see how nice this was. I couldn’t help but wonder what the early explorers of the area must have thought when they were first discovered. There were at least 5 or 6 separate groves, with maybe a hundred or more trees scattered here and there along the walk. Maybe the biggest surprise of all was that we didn’t see another person anywhere on our hike. Surprising, but maybe also a little sad. Living so close to nearly 2 million people (and another 10 million or so if you include Los Angeles) and no one was here to appriciate these beautiful palm groves But we got that solitude we were looking for. It was one of those ultra dry Santa Ana days with visibility up to 20 miles and considering how remote the place was, the silence was deafening.













It seemed the main theme for the hike was Palm groves surrounded by the sounds of silence. So I put together a short piece from the photos I took, along with a short video of some small, but busy friends we made along the trail. I hope you enjoy it.