I've set up five pages of "My Favorites" so the loading time is not so long. So each page will have 20 pictures on it. This is page two.

I love animals!!! When this dragonfly landed on me, I couldn't take a picture of it because a) I didn't have the camera, and b) I couldn't move or it might leave. Instead I had to talk by DW (devoted wife) into doing that - not an easy task!

As I was waiting I flashed back in time to my days as a youngster - one time my Dad took us out in a row boat on a lake in upstate New York. As we were just drifting along enjoying the day, this huge (to my small eyes) dragonfly landed on my Dad's hand. He showed it off to us, slowly moving his hand....we all thought he was going to die if it bit him and we'd drift forever! He explained to us that they were harmless and then we enjoyed it.

I often take pictures of animals but it's not often I'm in the picture also.

I call this picture "The Nose". On a backpacking trip to Escalante National Monument (also see the BLM site) we went into country where there were no trails in place - you made your own trail. Our guide led us to this location so we could get down into the canyons.

Here we are looking at this and thinking "Are you kidding? No way we'll make it down that!"

In this picture it doesn't look so bad but it was steep! Once you overcame your fear, it was actually easy as it turns out. The slickrock has good traction when it's dry. We all made it down just fine, other than the lumps in our throats.

What kind of trail is this?

When hiking in the Escalante National Monument, the trail was the river at times. Certainly it was often easier to walk in the river than to try to bushwhack thru all the brush on the sides.

Uuuummm, with one small catch.... the river had quicksand areas! Now that isn't all that bad, given that the popular media makes quicksand out to be far worse than it is. First of all, you usually don't sink too far into it if you know what you are doing, and second, you can usually get out of it fairly easily.

Shortly after this picture was taken, our guide and the first three members of our group got stuck pretty well. It took us fifteen minutes to pull them all out by using a human chain.

We did kid our guide about this for the next few days!

A postcard picture! This lovely green church was along an isolated road in Hawaii. It was too good a photo opportunity to pass up.

I like the green colors and the symmetry of the architecture. Plus it just seemed to be such a peaceful place.

I'm sure you all volunteer when the dancers go into the audience and pick people to try to mimic the Polynesian dancers - you know, the girls hip swaying and the men's knee knocking.....

Of course it's embarrassing! That's what is so much fun about it!

So this gentle soul is picked by the chief on Hiva Oa, a small island in the Marquesas, where the community (population about 2,015 souls) throws a dance for the ship's tourists...for free. This is after these fierce warriors yell and shout right in your face to see if you are intimidated... I guess we weren't.

The dancers all do their great stuff and the chief shows her how to dance.... When it's all over, everyone claps.

THEN he tells her it's tradition for visitors to offer a gift and that this was a wedding dance and guess who she just married?

Lassen Volcanic National Park is one of our favorite camping spots - and the first one that I took my DW to....her very first camping trip ever! It is always quiet and peaceful there with a nice blend of things to do and relaxing time.

This is a sunset with a reflection of Mt Lassen, a volcano which last erupted in 1917 and is still live. Manzanita lake is great for taking pictures like this and for fishing.

I like reflection pictures where it's hard to tell which is the right side up. This one is just a bit too easy.

This is a sunset at Lassen Volcanic National Park at Manzanita Lake. When we visit, we always see people out on the lake, fishing, canoeing, and floating in inner tubes or rafts.

It's got a nice trail around it for easy walks. Even better, when the sun goes down, you can get some good sunset pictures and sometimes wonderful reflection pictures.

This was one of those nights where it was so peaceful to sit there in the quiet watching this beautiful scene develop.

Another sunset at Lassen Volcanic National Park at Manzanita Lake with a reflection.

I like the duplicated trees in the lake, and the patch of red sky caught between the top and bottom of the trees. The dark sky has a nice texture to it and reading the clouds lets you know the weather is changing.

In this picture I find my eyes moving around to try to take in all the different pieces of the picture.

This is a Virtual Reality movie in Quicktime of Manzanita Lake. It gives you a 360 degree view of the lake in summertime.

Lately we have been going to Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast for a winter time break. One of the places we stay has a neat view of the ocean and the bluffs right from our room, so when a winter storm rolls in, it is a great place to snuggle up, do puzzles, and watch the huges waves.

In fact, we like it if we catch it when a storm is coming it...it is so dramatic then.

On this trip, there was a layer of clouds with rain coming down in batches - if you look almost dead center in the picture, you can see two downpours.

It had been darker and grey earlier, but when the sun dipped down below the clouds, just above the horizon, it suddenly lit everything up in this wonderful red light. It only lasted a short time, so I was busy taking as many pictures as I could.

In a short while the sun dipped down below the horizon and everything went dark.

There was a winter storm rolling through Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast. It had been raining in spurts all day long. Near evening it stopped for a while, so a lot of people who had been cooped up int their rooms, went out to the beach.

Suddenly the sun dipped between the clouds and the horizon and lit everything up in this beautiful red color. It was stunning!!!!!

This picture is untouched and no filter was involved - everything did have this red color, just as you are seeing it.

Another reason I like this picture is because I like playing on the beach.

During a winter storm in Mendocino, the sun dipped between the clouds and the horizon and lit everything up in this beautiful red color. People were out playing on the beach when a raincloud swept through.

The rain we'd been having had been sudden cloud bursts with HUGE drops...you'd get soaked in seconds when the came through. This one was no exception.

Within a couple of minutes everyone fled for shelter, but I had captured the rain falling. It looks like streaks on the film (look in the dark land area), but those are big raindrops coming down.

Mono Lake on the Eastern side of the Sierra Mountain Range is an interesting place to vist. Kinda strange....

It is extremely salty, so it has a unique ecological environment with uniquely adapted life.

These are tufa, a form of limestone. These formed underwater from springs but have been exposed due to the drop in the lake level. They form all sorts of fantastic shapes, so you can let your imagination go wild.

The dark island you can see in the distance just to the right of the center of the picture is a volcano that last erupted about 250 years ago..it is a huge seagull nesting area... something you wouldn't expect because this lake is hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean.

I have to confess that I did not take this picture. I wish I had! It's a very pretty composition of a flute and piano, flowers, and music - things that are dear to my wife's heart.

Besides the composition, I like it because it reminds me of her and how beautiful and talented she is.

She plays music, I take pictures......

This was taken at Mystic Seaport, one of the leading maritime museums in the country, though I'm biased toward's San Francisco's wonderful Maritime Museum. Mystic Seaport is set up as a re-created 19th-century coastal village harbor with working ships of various kinds. While there you can watch a working preservation shipyard in action. The employees dress in period costume and play the part they represent. This is just the sort of think I like.

What makes this even more wonderful, was that a hurricane was on the way in - some high winds were already hitting, and it was raining as clouds passed overhead. So almost all the tourist people were gone, and the workers were busy battening everything down.

I was able to get some fantastic shots of ships and boats as they might have looked when they were in real life, without any "out-of-period" people around.

I like the look of the water on the deck and the way the picture pulls your eyes along the length of the ship and up the rigging lines.

This is the Charles W. Morgan , a whaling ship.

A peacock! What beautiful feathers it has!!!

What a pain it was to try to get a good picture! This darn bird would just not stay still - always moving it's head, or else deciding to stroll off somewhere else. I finally got this picture when some other people tried to get close to it and distracted it long enough for me to get in front of it.

We were on vacation in Puerto Rico and the hotel we stayed at had this fenced garden with all sorts of birds and small animals in it. It was a nice quiet place to stroll....until the peacocks let out with their loud cries!

The triangle shape of this flower from Tahiti is so neat! This was pretty small - only a couple of inches wide as I recall. Quite delicate. The purple color catches my eye too.

On the way out of San Francisco, I photographed this waiter as they began to serve drinks to the passengers on the first day of their cruise. Everyone was happy and excited, but the body language he had was great.

Your can see other waiters as reflections in the glass - there were a whole crowd of them coming out just at the same time.

For some reason, this picture seems to capture the "happiness" experience you get from going on a cruise.

Not this picture, but a similar one, is a favorite of more than just myself - this Red Tailed Hawk is featured in an article by a local columnist, Gary Bogue (and Gary Bogue's Blog), in the Contra Costa Times.

Yup, I'm published!!!!

We often see the Red Tailed Hawks in this tree on our back hill - they are looking for a morning meal of the critters that live on the hillside. It's neat to watch them like this out our dining room window or the deck.

It's neat to see the wild animals we do here in the midst of suburbia.

Another beautiful sunset from our house - wintertime in this case.

I like the waviness of the clouds and the change in colors from the reds to the greys.

I zoomed in to get this picture, but these sunset displays often extend over the whole western view that we have.