Photo of the Day: Christmas 1986

The technical quality of this composite of two iPhone photos is about as poor as anything I'll ever post, but I love it. These two Christmas tree ornaments with photos of Chris (top) and Dean (bottom) are from 1986, when they were six and three and one-half years old. Those were good times!

I have lot of friends with young kids and it's a treat to watch them experience the joys of parenthood. I tell them to savor every moment, because one day their kids will be grown up and gone and they'll ask themselves, "Where did the time go?"

During the past few years, it's been a challenge to get the family together during the holidays with the boys living out of state. Some years, Deena and I haven't bothered to get a Christmas tree. One year, I bought a foot-tall rosemary plant shaped like a tree for the coffee table (it's now taking over my garden). This year, we went full tilt because we'll be blessed to have both of the boys home for more than a week! Not only will we get to enjoy Christmas with them, but we get to celebrate Dean's birthday, too. I can't wait.

[Full disclosure: I say, "we" went full tilt, but Deena did the decorating. I put the tree in the stand and helped string the lights.]

Every year when the boys were young, I would set up a cassette recorder in the living room and turn it on when they came into the room on Christmas morning. Last year, I got the tapes out of their dusty drawer and converted them to digital audio files. I love the sense of wonder in their young voices as they see that Santa opened the fireplace screen to get in, consumed the cookies and milk and left a note, and--most importantly--deposited a pile of gifts under the tree.

I'll be listening to those recordings during the holidays, and wiping the tears. They may be grown men, but they will always be my boys.

Photo of the Day: Stand for Peace

I thought it would be appropriate to take a photo of this rock during my lunch-time run to the "C" at UCR today. To me, it says, "Stand for Peace," which is what I heard Richard Holbrooke say about the United States in a taped interview on NPR this morning.

A career diplomat, Holbrooke died yesterday. He was a regular on Charlie Rose's interview program and always impressed me with the depth of his understanding of nations, their leaders and what motivated them. He was the consummate negotiator because he was able to get in the head of everyone at the table and understand their viewpoint. The world would be a better place if we could all do a little of that every day.

At the time of his death, he was serving President Obama as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, but his best-known achievement was brokering the agreement that ended the war in Bosnia -- the Dayton Peace Accords. In the NPR interview, he said the U.S. always stands for peace. I'm not sure Dwight D. Eisenhower would agree, given the way the military-industrial complex (a term he coined) has grown into a powerful economic engine, but I admire Holbrooke for saying it. I would like to think it's true.

Photo of the Day: Chemical Sciences

Chemical Sciences Building, University of California, Riverside

Photo of the Day: End of Day

This is a quick iPhone shot I grabbed while on my way back to my mom's house in Calimesa after doing her grocery shopping yesterday. I would have posted it yesterday, but I spent most of the afternoon and evening installing a new garbage disposal at her house, which was a colossal fail.

This location in Calimesa provides a great evening view to the west and I've shot a lot of pics from here on Sunday evenings over the years. Technically, it's not a very good photo, but I love this time of day, when the sky turns into a full spectrum of color, as if someone shined a light into a prism and aimed it at the horizon.

Help Save Jeté

Meet Jeté, the subject of today's Photo of the Day. It was taken by her owner and my good friend Andrea. Sadly, Jeté is sick. Very sick. With cancer.

Andrea moved from Redlands to Portland a few months ago and learned the bad news shortly after she got there: Jeté has vaccine-associated sarcoma. And the treatment is very costly. Thousands of dollars costly. You can read the saga of Jeté and how painful it's been for her and for Andrea on her blog, Crazy With a Side of Awesome Sauce.


If you're a cat lover like me and want to help, Andrea has a PayPal link on the blog where you can donate money for Jeté's treatment. She also has links to her Etsy shop, where she has handmade jewelry and accessories for sale, and to redbubble.com, where she has photos for sale (she is an amazing photographer, among her many talents). All the proceeds go to Jeté's treatment.

Here's one more way you can help: beginning today and until Jeté gets better, I will donate all of the proceeds from sales of photos or photo merchandise from my SmugMug gallery to Jeté's treatment fund. If you're looking for a gift for the holidays or something to decorate your home or office with, I hope you'll consider it. You can order prints, coffee cups, kitchen aprons -- just about anything you can imagine putting a photo on.

Jeté and Andrea will appreciate it. I will, too.

Photo of the Day: UCR Sunset

Here's another iPhone photo, taken about an hour ago from the landing on the fourth floor of my building at the Bourns College of Engineering at UC Riverside. My Facebook friends will recognize this view because I've posted many shots from this location. The "smoke stacks" are vents for the fume hoods in the labs in adjacent Bourns Hall.

This photo was processed with Pro HDR, an outstanding iPhone app for creating high dynamic range images. I bought Photomatix HDR ($99.00) for my iMac at home and use it for processing images from my Nikon D300, but I find this $1.99 app for the iPhone is just as good, if not better. I'm looking forward to my AT&T contract coming around so I can upgrade to the iPhone 4 and gain the two additional megapixels in resolution.

This photo also means the work day is done, so I'm out of here...

Photo of the Day: View from the "C"

My Facebook friends have seen plenty of images similar to this on my wall. It was taken with my iPhone from the trail to the concrete letter "C" on the mountainside east of UC Riverside's campus, where I work. I've been trying to run there at least twice a week during my lunch hour. It's a great workout, and today was no exception. I broke in my new Brooks Cascadia trail running shoes and they were awesome.

This image was processed with a cool iPhone app called Hipstamatic that my good friend and fellow "Brookie" Larissa Schwartz turned me on to. She's created some amazing images with it. It offers eight different "lenses" and 10 different types of "film," for a ton of interesting effects. (Well, not a ton, I guess. More like 80, but that's a lot!) For the record, this was taken with the Robo Glitter lens and Kodot XGrizzled film. The view is to the northwest, with the western end of the San Gabriel mountains in the distance, where Mount Baldy rises to more than 10,000 feet.

Photo of the Day: Mantitude

I'm back. We'll see for how long -- it's been a year since my last post. I've been thinking it would be cool to commit to shooting and posting one good photo every day. That would make for a pretty nice body of work -- and an interesting look back at the places and events of a year. So...here is a prelude to my New Year's resolution for '11.

I first saw this praying mantis on the message board we have on the wall in our kitchen. It apparently crawled or flew in and when I heard my cat Gracie making her stalking-prey sounds and creeping toward the chair that would give her access to this creature, I grabbed her and shut her in the bedroom with her sister Suzy.

With a large Tupperware container and a piece of paper, I captured this amazing insect, set it free in the grass of my back yard and went back inside for my Nikon...

Photo of the Day: Barking Up a Tree

This shot of peeling orange tree bark was taken in an abandoned, dying grove in northeast Redlands. It reminds me of a time when we had seeming endless groves of citrus trees in this town. Now, we have Citrus Plaza -- a giant shopping complex with seemingly endless blacktop and concrete. I much prefer the trees. You can view the original image at SmugMug.

Photo of the Day: Door Decor

Actually, Photo of Day for tomorrow, but since I won't have time then, I'm posting it today. The full-size image can be seen at SmugMug.

Photo of the Day: Rays of Hope

This image speaks to me about hope. You can see the original at SmugMug.

Photo of the Day: Gatortude

I haven't posted anything here for quite a while, and rather than subject my friends to my usual "croc" of useless drivel, I'm stealing an idea from my good friend Andrea Anthony -- Photo of the Day. Hopefully, it will inspire me to expand and improve my SmugMug gallery. Thanks for the inspiration, Andrea!