One at the beginning:

One at the end:

Of the same run. No other explanation is needed.

Drink at Hand: Horizons Organic Chocolate Milk (love it after a bike ride!)

Another Thirsty Thursday here again…time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. This week we jump across Pacific to share a little Japanese festival fun!

Our West Coast readers have probably noticed a few signs or community advertisements for festivals in the nearby Japanese communities here in the US, so we decided to share our experience at the real deal in Japan. Summer time in Japan is full of festivals, and you can find a matsuri, or local festival, in small towns around Japan nearly every weekend during July and August. Just a few train stops from where we lived in Japan is a town called Hachioji. We usually went to Hachioji to hit up our favorite ramen and gyoza shop, but in late July they hosted the Hachioji Matsuri.

Early in the day, teams carry small shrines called mikoshi through the streets.

Then hundreds of women clad in kimonos and yukatas line up to do a tradition folk dance. Its more like a choreographed parade than a dance, but its beautiful to watch.  

There are old women…

And young girls…

And lots of paper lanterns…

Hope you have a great weekend!

Drink at Hand: Ventana Rubystone

Thirsty Thursday are usually a little post where we come up with a suggestion for weekend activities. This week we’re not making a suggestion. We’re telling you. . . if you are American, you must watch the US Women’s National Soccer Team as they play for the World Cup title on Sunday. Even if you aren’t American, you should still watch. USA vs Japan. . . only few people could have predicted these two teams in the 2011 World Cup Finals. We will be rooting for the good old USA, but we are also so happy to see the Japanese team in the finals after everything that has happened this year. Most of you probably know that we were both soccer players at one point in time. And, at some point, we considered ourselves decent players. Our experiences playing the beautiful game pretty much ended with college. However, we were both quite lucky to play for our military national teams. Terry played with the team in 2005 in Victoria, Canada and I played in 2004 in Virginia and in 2006 in the Netherlands. We can only imagine what it must be like for the USA women. The games this year have been awesome—watching the upsets, feeling the joy, and feeling the pain. The final has the makings of a great match. Best of luck to both teams, we hope the match is as well played as the others we’ve seen. But make no mistake, this household is all USA. Go USA!

Drink at Hand: 2008 Ventana Pinot Noir

Last Friday morning I got up super early to make the 50-minute drive to Pinnacles National Monument. I wanted to be there for sunrise, just to see what the early morning light was like in the west side of the park. Its never hard for me to pop out of bed when I’m headed out to shoot a sunrise, especially when I program the coffee pot to grind a fresh cup for me as I wake up. Out the door, down the 101 and right on time for arrival at the west entrance about 20 minutes before the 5:58 am sunrise. As I’m making the final turn toward the park, a waiting CHP car in the intersection flashes its lights. The officer tells me there’s a wildfire up the road and the route to the park is closed. Grrr!

After getting up that early and driving all the way down there, I wasn’t about to just turn around and go home. I needed a Plan B. I knew I wasn’t too far from Arroyo Seco Road, and from my 6-hour bike rides out there, I vaguely remembered some pretty trees in some pretty fields. So off I went, racing to find something interesting as the sky continued to brighten.

I found this spot along Arroyo Seco Road. The trees and the open pasture looked interesting. I paced up and down the side of the road looking for a good composition, but it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t get the tree completely isolated from the busy scrub brush-covered hills in the background. I enjoyed the challenge though…there is something therapeutic about being out in the chilly morning air, peering through a viewfinder, searching for something inspiring. I love mornings with my camera.

Of course my attention always turns from the wide landscapes to the little details close-by.

The cloudless sky continued to brighten so I headed back down the road toward home…but not before I spotted this old barn in a field down below the road.

I knew I had to make one last stop on the way home. Several times a week I ride my bike out River Road, and recently there has been a beautiful display of yellow and purple wildflowers in a pasture beside the road.

So the morning didn’t work out the way I expected, but I still found some nice scenes. More importantly, I still got to explore with my camera. And that makes me happy.

Get out there and explore this weekend!

Drink at Hand: TJ’s 2009 Petit Reserve Tempranillo

Terry and I used to shoot a lot of waterfalls. When we lived in Japan we actually had a book the listed locations of hundreds of waterfalls. Of course, the book was in Japanese so I had to play a little game of trying to match the thumbnail map included with the directions to our bilingual road map, but we still found quite a few of the waterfalls. When we went on vacations we’d continue our hunt for tumbling water, leading to hundreds of blurred water images from all over the world–or at least all over Asia and the US.

I don’t know why we don’t hunt for waterfalls anymore. I know there are a few not far away along the Central Coast and spring is always a great time to go find a fall with fresh snowmelt and spring showers fueling the flow. Perhaps we just need to make time. Or perhaps we just need a little reminder…and that’s what Thirsty Thursdays are for…a little reminder to go out and doing something or find something cool this weekend.

Enjoy the waterfalls. I tried to include a name or location, but some of them I don’t know or don’t remember.

Little Missouri River, Ouachita National Forest, Arkansas.

Another view of the Little Missouri River, Ouachita National Forest, Arkansas.

Somewhere in northern Japan.

Tucked away in the rainforest near Cairns, Australia.

Close-up of water gushing into Milford Sound in New Zealand. Terry shot this with the 100-400mm lens from a boat.

Stream emptying into Lake Superior along Pictured Rocks National Seashore, Upper Peninsula, Michigan.

Somewhere near Marquette, Michigan.

Another waterfall somewhere near Marquette, Michigan.

We spent a whole weekend scouting falls in north central Japan and found these two images along the way.

Close-up of a rushing stream near Nikko, Japan.

Get out there and explore this weekend!

Drink at Hand: Naked Grape Pinot Noir (yeah, I bought it because of the name…don’t judge me!)

Something a little different this Thursday…not so much about a cool place to go shoot, but rather about an attempt at shooting some film! About a month ago I walked into the local camera shop with 3 rolls of exposed Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film in my hands. I bought this film when we lived in Japan…yep, that’s right, purchased 2006 most likely. It was well past the expiration date! I found one roll already exposed when I was organizing some camera stuff when we moved into the new house. The other two rolls I took recently. Actually, that’s not even true…I found my film camera with a 1/2 exposed roll in it. So I had a roll and a half of mystery images (I had no idea what that old stuff might be) and a roll and a half that I had shot within the last few weeks. I waited the requisite week to get the processed film back from the lab and then had to wait a few more days for Terry to scan the film with our Nikon CoolScan film scanner before I actually got to see what I had.

It turns out that the old “mystery roll” was pretty old…from 2008! That also means it was exposed, tossed in a box, moved Lousyana, endured the heat of that place, moved back here to California, and finally shown some chemical bath love. Back in ’08 a friend was considering buying a digital camera, so I loaned him my digital camera when he went out to shoot with us at Point Pinos one evening, and I shot film with an old Nikon full manual camera. Here are a few from that evening.

I played around with the blur tool in Aperture and made this one look a little bit like a tilt shift. Best I can do since Terry won’t let me get an actual tilt-shift lens.

A few months later we went to Yosemite. I guess I took the camera with me to finish that roll from the summer evening at the beach. I don’t even remember having it with me. But of course I took a Tunnel View photo in black and white–because no one has ever done that before!

Fast forward to 2011…I decided to try a roll in my Canon Elan 7E on our way north along the coast to Pescadero. I used the Photodiox adapter with the Nikon 50mm manual lens. It was pouring down rain, but I couldn’t let this bike go without a quick photo. Terry kept making fun of me because I kept looking at the back of the camera after snapping the shutter–but there’s no instant feedback in the form of a LCD screen on the back of a film camera.

To finish off that roll I took the camera along on a quick hike with the dog in Ft Ord and shot a few here at home.

With all the bike riding / racing I’m doing these days, its not easy to get away to shoot for a whole day, much less an entire weekend. But changing up the routine in familiar locations proved fun. I got something different than my normal images and that makes me happy.

Get out and try something new or different this weekend. You might be surprised by the results!

Drink at Hand: 2008 Yosemite View Chardonnay…well that worked out rather fortuitously!

The last 2 weeks have been anything but “springlike” around California. Here on the coast we’ve had some serious rain and a some wind to go along with it, while the Sierra is getting pounded with storm after storm, each dumping feet of snow up there. This week has been so bad in the high country that all the roads to Yosemite are closed from snow, ice, flooding, rockslides, downed trees/power lines, or a combination there of (though I just heard that the main highways will be open again tomorrow). All this talk of a snowy Yosemite Valley made us think back to our own snow-venture we had up there back in 2008. Terry’s parents came out to visit for Christmas, and on Christmas day we headed up to the national park, dragging a lovely winter storm along with us that dumped roughly 18″ of snow over the course of 2 days.

The great thing about visiting Yosemite in a snow storm on Christmas is that you pretty much have the place to yourself. Unfortunately all the snow made a lot of spots inaccessible, but we were still treated to some fantastic scenery. We all wished we had snowshoes to get off the roads and out of the parking lots for a bit, but it was still beautiful. The snow stuck on the trees for the duration of the three days we were there, which accordingly to locals, is a rarity…it normally falls off or blows off as soon as the sun comes out. Blue skies and snowy trees…doesn’t get much better. Enjoy this mix of photos from both of us.

Our first hike shortly after arrival (and chaining up!)

See how hard its snowing?!

Trees and snow…made for black and white.

This is one of my favorite shots ever. Deer butts!!!

It was so cold that Bridal Veil Falls was just barely flowing.

But the Merced River still had plenty of water running.

The next day the sun came out and made everything spectacular. Terry was on fire capturing some dramatic light throughout the Valley.

Two photographers = two perspectives on the same subject.

Clearing storm.

Unfortunately we won’t be making it to Yosemite any time soon. I can only imagine how incredible the park must look with all that fresh snow. Perhaps next winter. And next time we are taking snow shoes!!