“Escaping from it all” may be difficult in the Bay Area, but an evening picnic in the Berkeley Hills gets pretty close.
Tag: photography
Scenes from the Kentucky Horse Park in Spring
Though “one day, one photograph” is my typical style, the images from my springtime trip to the Kentucky Horse Park (mostly taken while hanging around at the warm-up ring) make a charming slice-of-life set.
Let’s start things off with The Plaid Horse‘s publisher, Dr. Piper Klemm, with Sundae.
While the warm-up ring is ostensibly a place to practice prior to showing, it also often the location of impromptu meetings and morning strolls.
Piper Klemm on Sundae in the warm-up ring.
The warm-up is also a place for horses to shake out some energy and get any necessary attitude adjustment.
Dapples mean a healthy horse.
That preparation time made for positive results in the ring. Trainer Emily Elek congratulations Reuben.
It’s bath time for a sweaty horse done with showing.
Compress-air-powered airbag vests are increasingly common on younger riders.
Early in the morning, the golf carts waited in lines outside the barns—mimicking the positions of nearby horses in their stalls in the barns.
Cell phone videos of warm-up make an exceptionally valuable tool for improvement.
Reuben very occasionally sticks out his tongue and I find it funnier than I should.
A close overlap between conversation-walk and warm-up-canter in the warm-up ring.
Piper on Reuben.
The pattern of planting boxes reminded me of the pacing of strides riders seek to find approaching a jump.
Junior rider Lexi Miller relaxes between rounds.
Dusty and Polarized Lenses
Walking through the Great Smoky Mountains, I was astonished at the clarity of the water… Until I remembered that I was wearing polarized sunglasses that eliminated most of the surface light reflection.
Trees and City
The East Bay’s tree-lined streets make for a calming juxtaposition with “cloud city” wall of buildings and marine layer across the water.
Waiting for the Big Fireworks Show
Spending Independence Day in Traverse City, Michigan meant experiencing the TC Boom Boom Club’s (yes, really) annual fireworks display from the beach of the Grand Traverse Bay. Before they began, however, the families on the beach were making their own shows.
Island Reflection
We’re hitting maximum summer and (in the east) a bonkers explosion of photosynthesizing surfaces; the small, new leaves of spring seem sort of tasteful, by comparison.
July 4th Special
An Independence Day special: Fireworks in San Francisco, seen from across the Bay in Berkeley.
Marina and Marine Layer
Something about the iconic combination of the Golden Gate Bridge, the marine layer, and Berkeley Marina, all bathed in sunset colors, makes me think of before-dinner drinks and cool summer breezes.
Sather Tower and San Francisco
In the United States, the ubiquitous Neo-Gothic architecture of college campuses is an intentional throwback to far more ancient campuses in Europe. From a present-day perspective, of course, the “new” campuses of the east coast have existed for long enough that the anachronistic campuses now blur into a single time period called “old”. On the west coast, however, structures like Berkeley’s Sather Tower (a.k.a. the Campanile) are clearly artificial additions in the otherwise-contemporary landscape.
Camping in Town
“Camping” usually means being far from civilization, to me, but flying over Heritage Park in Canton revealed this tent pitched in the middle of town.
Horses Walking, Left to Right
Horse shows are these magical intergenerational spaces where equestrians of all ages come to compete. In the three images below, I found a trio of similar images in which riders at different points in their careers traverse the frame from left to right.
Watching from Grizzly Peak
One of my favorite images, taken in 2017, captures a person watching the Bay Area sunset from Grizzly Peak. When Photoshop’s new Super Resolution processing brought me back to some of my images from the same vantage in 2013, I was surprised to realized that I had already captured a very similar image. The difference between the burned-out foreground of 2013 and the lush grasses on 2017 is particularly interesting.
Afternoon Horse Park Walk
Kentucky Horse Park has a bit of a “Jurassic Park” vibe, but going for a stroll on a spring afternoon is far less likely to result in being devoured by a velociraptor.
Off the Track
The world of English riding has a history of recruiting Thoroughbred horses rejected from the race track to be hunters and jumpers. Though the preference for warmbloods has made this practice a bit less common than it used to be, Thoroughbreds continue to make it into the hunter world. This particular horse was just a few weeks away from time on the track.
California Hills, Framed
The hills south of Berkeley, California just keep rolling—hill after hill after hill.
Decaseconds 