Oops!

I'm so excited about my blog this week. Last weekend I took some of my best pictures ever, and I'm really excited about sharing them with everyone. Only one problem, I accidentally erased them last night. Oops.

Don't worry, I've got backups. But I've got to redo the file preparation again, which means I couldn't have them ready for you this morning. So I'll tell you about it now and tonight (hopefully) I'll post a link to a slideshow.

As I said, I think these are some of my best pictures. I've gotten better as a photographer, and I'm also learning to use my camera and processing software better. But it's exciting to see the fruition of those efforts. Plus, it helps to have a gorgeous day on which to shoot. On that count I got a little lucky. See, it all started when I separated my shoulder. Wait, let me back up.

Kat was gone this weekend to her annual Drosophila conference, this year in San Diego. She was SOOO busy, going from talk to talk from dawn to midnight. I've been planning on doing something big this weekend since Christmas, and as the weekend approached, I decided the weather would cooperate enough to allow me to go backpacking.

But while playing basketball at lunch, I decided it would be fun to run into the wall at full speed and separate my shoulder. Well, it might be separated. The doctor couldn't tell whether it was a mild separation or just a deep bruise. But he said either way they wouldn't treat it any differently, so he offered me a sling and sent me on my way. Point being that I wasn't going to carry a 40 pound pack.

Which was kind of fortuitous in a sick sort of way. I might have missed on a fantastic day at Pt. Reyes National Seashore. A quick note about skies in photography. The perfect sky is a clear blue sky with crisp white puffy clouds. But it's also a very difficult sky to find. In California, we get perfect blue sky for 250 days a year, but no clouds whatsoever. 100 days we get yucky overcast blah. And maybe 15 days we get white poofy. Saturday was one of those days...well, from 9-11 am anyway, and while the sky wasn't perfect, it was good. Missouri actually has excellent clouds, especially in the Spring and early summer, but it tends to get very hazy which makes the sky behind the clouds gray rather than blue.

But I digress (this seems to be a regular occurence). Now that I've talked up my pictures so much that you'll all be disappointed, I'll tell you about my hike. I set off for Pt. Reyes at 7 am, and hit the trail at 8:30, trying out my new hiking boots for the first time. They did beautifully navigating me through the mud and up and down rocks. A little mud is worth it though as the wet brings out the wildflowers.

I set off working my way along the sides of hills past patches of wild irises, through a patch of trees and down to a huge estuary. I paused for pictures often, setting up my tripod and taking it down over and again. It was nice to be able to take my time. Anyway, I got bored with the estuary, mainly because it was so large and pretty much the same all around, and decided to head back. Passing the dozen hikers on my way out made me glad I had gotten an early start. Before leaving, I drove down to the to Point and stopped the car every mile or so to take a picture of wildlife, wildflowers or pretty meadows.

As with everything, success is hit and miss, but especially photography. I took about 150 shots Saturday, and I'll probably show you 5-10. To be honest, I'm doing much better than I used to. I took 300+ on my honeymoon and got less than 5 that I loved. In this case, I've had to try desperately to weed out my favorites, as I got 30-40 that I thought were good. Check back tomorrow and I'll share them with you.

One last point of note. The database that I've been working on in one form or another for about a year now was launched last week. It's still going to be improved, but it feels really nice to have that big step out of the way!