Tuesday, December 7, 2010

LA Trees on December Walk

And now it is December...and the acceleration to Christmas is in full swing. However, simultaneously the Fall is taking place here in little pockets among the evergreens. Being in Southern California, one does miss the total dramatic effect of the changing seasons, so one gets very excited by these vignettes...

This morning when I took my granddaughter Violet to the nearby Playground, there was an amazing blue, blue sky and the reds and yellows of the occasional Maple and London Plane trees were exhilarating. It is never that easy to concentrate on taking photos when looking after a baby, so in the late afternoon I went out alone with a camera. By now, of course, there was a totally different light and those particular trees were no longer exciting - but that's the wonderful thing about changing light, you always find that something else now looks exciting, the unexpected...

At the start of my walk, the evening sun's reflected "glow" was burnishing the leaves:






And now it was lighting up the limbs of the trees too:



Next, as I walked down onto the Eastern side of a hill, the glow was no longer on the trees, but was reflected on the Eastern sky, the trees becoming silhouettes:




I then turned South-Westwards, and here was another sky. I have photographed these Palm trees many times against a clear blue sky, so was elated to see them in this evening light:




My next excitement was seeing a tiny slither of upside-down (to us from the UK) new moon, behind the trees:



And then a shaggy, bird-like Palm:


Finally, a completely different visual experience:- side-walk trees turned into magical Christmas Trees:


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