Details. If you have read a few (or many) of our stories here on our Journal you will probably notice we love to photograph details and textures. With 7 million planted bulbs at Keukenhof garden in Holland, there are lots of opportunities for beautiful details. The late April flowers are incredible. Making interesting images wasn’t the hard part. Winnowing down the choices to a manageable number was. Here are some of our favorite, more detailed images. Like a broader scene? Then don’t miss Part 1. Didn’t view Part 1? Have a thing for looking at things in the “proper” order? Just scroll down to Part 1. Or you can look at Part 2 first. Dip your toe in for a feel of either one, just be sure to make it all the way through. We hope you enjoy a tiptoe through the tulips of Keukenhof.
Holland, 7 million bulbs, and a spring day. Must be Keukenhof. Their brochure says they are “the most beautiful spring garden in the world.” That’s a pretty high bar. But it is a spectacular place. In the first of two stories, join us as we saunter, maybe even tiptoe, through the tulips.
Thanks for taking a stroll through the garden of Keukenhof with us. If the pictures don’t fit your device try clicking on them and they will open in individual “lightbox” versions where you can see the whole image at once (even on a phone, although bigger screens ARE better.) Check back soon for part two of a Spring Saunter in Keukenhof.
People go to Death Valley for a variety of reasons.
Unsurprisingly, we find the landscape spectacular.
But one of the things we are always fascinated with here are the textures.
And the colors of the rock, well, forgive us, but, we are rocked by the colors.
And of course there is the night sky… Add a warm invigorating breeze and wonderful company, and the valley should be re-named Life Valley.
Snow is in the forecast, the sky is gray, it’s still a winter’s day in Central Oregon. But a few hundred miles to our south, spring has arrived. So we went for a walk, on such a winter’s day, in a place where the grass is green, the leaves are starting to appear, the birds are singing and the flowers appear. We hope, your heart soars as the dream of the California spring in the oak savannah on Mount Diablo comes to our cameras and to you. Let’s take a walk on such a spring day.
Hope you enjoyed the stroll. Time for a glass of Yorba Wines’ Tempranillo. Remember clicking on our images in the journal will open the image in its own window.
Winter on the Oregon Coast can be gray and wet. It may be windy and powerful. Or it can be a time of calm and serenity. A time, perhaps, to abandon ones thoughts of the rest of the world. And if you find yourself at a famous central Oregon coast beach, it may be a Bandon evening.
The power of the Pacific Ocean is often on display along the Oregon coast. Mariners used to refer to these latitudes as the ‘Roaring Forties.’ High winds create large swells. Most of the time the Oregon coast is swaddled in fog too. But occasionally the sun comes out, the wind blows, the swell rises, the full moon pulls the ocean a little higher and photographers rejoice. We recently found reason to rejoice in the power of the Pacific. We hope you will find enjoyment in these images too.
We spend a lot of time thinking about our photography. And this time of year we like to look over what we have done in the last year and what we hope to do and improve on in the next year. The photo educators often suggest this type of exercise as being beneficial to one’s growth. We don’t know about that but it is interesting to look over our images and work through the task of picking “favorites”. Below you will find Kathy’s 10 favorites from 2024. Boyd’s favorites are in an adjacent story in this journal. We hope you enjoy these images as much as we do.
Here are 10 images Boyd likes best from 2024 as of early January 2025. Yet on any given day some other images slide into the top 10 while some of these drop out. Which ones drop out? Boyd isn’t saying. Kathy isn’t saying either because she says she would have picked a set of Boyd’s that were different. (Hmmm, maybe a future journal story where we pick our favorites of the other person’s images? Guess you will have to come back again to see what that might look like.)
Hope you enjoyed this set from 2024. All these images are “light boxed” so if you click on an individual image you can see it full frame. This works well both on phones to see an entire image at once, and on large monitors to see a bigger version of the image. Thanks for having a look.
This is the fifth story in this journal about portals. And yes, we have a thing about, in this case, Doors. Doors to where? What waits behind these openings? Who has walked through these? What was their purpose in putting a hole in this place? Why are they in the condition they are in? What changed? Why do you have so many questions?
The small market stall seems to be one of the common features of European cities. Sometimes the stalls are inside a large building and sometimes along streets. The small booth from which a vendor sells to the public can only contain so much. But it often contains so much delicious joy. Want a grocery store like here in the US with 27 kinds of condiments? You can find those too. But the stalls in the markets are much more interesting to us. From flowers to fish, there are many interesting contrasts and lots of interesting colors and textures to be seen in the European Common Market.
Hmmm, Ham it’s what’s for dinner!
Hope you enjoyed this taste of the common market. Come back soon as we are working on another taste of Europe for here on the journal.