Tag: Conejo Valley
This is a tree that I visit every spring: the orchid flower tree, or orchid tree, or something like that. It is covered with these ridiculously luscious flowers, and seems as if it is from another world altogether.
Matilija (pronounced muh-till-i-hah) poppies are amazing flowers. They bloom all at once, have flowers about 5″ in diameter, and can stand over 6 feet tall. Impressive when you have vast swaths of them. This year’s crop is magnificent!.
The local botanical garden is filled with new growth. Vines, trees, shrubs, bulbs are in bloom. Birds and lizards and coyotes are to be seen, and the squirrels are fatter than fat. I was walking home from my visit when a rustling caught my ear . . . this guy was just bopping around within feet of me, and luckily I could get his portrait before he flew off to explore new territory. This is a Dark-eyed Junco.
Nothing like watching old westerns to inspire a title . . . this was taken with wonderful Olympus XA4 and Agfa Vista 200 film, scanned with my little own hands on my Pakon 135.
Last week I took five rolls of film for processing. This was taken with Kodak UltraMax 400 with an Olympus Trip 35. It was a dark and stormy day when I wandered out, but even with 400 iso film, the images came back extremely noisy. I had to do a bit of work to get the roll even somewhat acceptable, in my eyes, but some of the pictures were really nice.
My cheap “go to” films for 135 are Kodak UltraMax 400 and Agfa Vista 200, but I think I am going to use up the UltraMax to see how it works in different cameras. It could be that the Olympus was at fault as it died a bit later. I don’t want to just be done with it, but want to see if there are other issues involved.
This sycamore curves and twists over a steep fall into a barranca. How it hangs on is rather amazing! And when the leaves change, it is a stunningly beautiful tree.
In case you don’t know, I absolutely love trees.