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 three.

Another gorgeous sunset from our back deck! I like the gradual color change with the puffy clouds in the middle. The land on the left side has an upward tilt, while the clouds in the sky have a similar upward tilt, but on the right side.

Yet another gorgeous sunset from our back deck! I like it when the whole sky is lit up. This is taken somewhat earlier in the evening so you can see some of the town.

The smoke drifting upwards on the far left and the diagonal line of clouds add some interest to the sky.

We post on a jewelery board where people want to see pictures of the ladies rings...then they ooohhh and aaahh over them. I found that it is somewhat hard taking a good picture of a diamond, especially outdoors in the sunlight.

I decided to try combining the beautiful diamonds with a beautiful Hibiscus flower from our backyard. It turned out pretty nice IMHO.

The macro setting on the camera let me get in nice and close, so you can see the details of both the rings and the flower.

There are photos to be taken while at the Grand Canyon, that are NOT of the Canyon itself. This lamp is on the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim. It's one of the fantastic lodges built in the National Parks out west in the 1930s.

These lodges often used native materials, hand hammered ironwork, and designs that let them perfectly fit in with their surroundings. They are wonderful to see, comfortable to stay around during your visit and seeem to make you feel comfortable.

This is a sunset at Bryce Canyon National Park on a rainy day. The clouds were a bit scattered, so sunlight shown on different parts of these beautifully colored rock formations.

The one in the foreground is called "The Sinking Ship" and in the back, lit up, is "Boat Mesa".

After a few minutes, the clouds moved and this scene was gone. But it was fantastic to see while the sun lit up those white cliffs!

At night, the stars at Bryce Canyon are fantastic! You can see about three times as many as you would in a dark rural area, and many, many times more than in an urban area. The Milky Way looks like a road in the sky.

These are sea anenomes in an aquarium at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center near Santa Cruz. It's a wonderful small museun with many hands-on interactive exhibits. Outside is a skeleton of blue whale that is 87 feet long, the largest blue whale skeleton on display in the world.

I had fun taking closeup pictures of the animals in their tanks. Sometimes the glass got in the way, other times, the light was not good. But a few of the shots were just lovely!!!

Praying Mantis - these carnivorous insects show up around our house every now and then. I am always fascinated by them and have been ever since I was a little kid.

This one happens to be on our patio table, but we've also had several that we found inside our house, including one right on my wife's office window. Luckily I found that one and escorted it outside before she came home!

Opossums are not exactly my favorite critters, but this one is actually cute, caught up in a tree, looking at you with those big, sad eyes.

Don't be fooled - that long snout has a mouth full of sharp teeth and a temperment to match ... and they are very quick! Until they decide to play dead.

When I worked at the Lindsey Wildlife Museum we'd take care of the baby opossums that came in. Later we volunteered to take litters of them home where we raised them until they were large enough to be let go back into the wild.

The tree limbs nicely center the focus on this little guy.

For a few years we went up to Reno to visit friends and see the Reno Air Races. These races feature multi-lap, multi-aircraft races between extremely high performance aircraft - the Unlimited class, which consists almost entirely of both modified and stock World War II fighters, routinely reach speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour.

It's pretty exciting!!!

Of course there are all sorts of acrobatic shows too - these three planes came by the stands and we were lucky to get a snap shot of them.

A cloeup of a sea anenome in an aquarium at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center near Santa Cruz. It almost looks like some kind of a very weird flower...but in this case, it would eat you (if you were small enough).

I like the different pink colors of the arms and the inside section, contrasted against the darker reddish seaweed around it.

I don't know how the camera focused on this, because it was continually moving. I consider this one of those very lucky shots you get once in a while.

My wife and I went to Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park in 1998....and as I think you know, I just love seeing animals in the wild....so we had black bears walking thru our campsite, (got a few stories there!!!), saw all the usual critters, a few marmots, and so on....

We went on a side trip in the park on a dirt road....not her greatest thrill to start with, so she was kinda bored. Suddenly I stopped the car in the middle of the one lane road, grabbed the camera, and hopped out.

This caught her interest so she yelled out, "What are you doing?" I yelled back, taking a picture of a Western Rattlesnake....about then she saw it stretched out across the road...it was a fairly big one.....and I had left the door open....

Then, to make matters worse, she saw me picking up small rocks (thereby getting my body parts closer to the death-dealing snake by her perception) and throwing the little rocks at it....

Various nastiness from the direction of the car ensued as I explained I wanted to get a picture of it in a strike pose....while being threatened with great bodily harm or worse and other various death threats from inside the car.....

I figured by then it was safer to be out on the road with the rattlesnake than inside side the car with my rattled spouse.....

But I got this nice picture!

Would you believe this is a sunflower? No??? But it is a member of the sunflower family!

The Haleakala Silversword is a rare plant that grows on the flanks of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii.

This one looks almost like a frosted Christmas tree. Given that I was freezing cold when I took this picture, it seems appropriate. We had gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the top of Mt Haleakala to see the sunrise - which was fantastic!

But it was cold! Oh so cold compared to the 80 degree temperatures down on the beaches!

This plants looks like no other plant I've ever seen. It's location is desolate and makes you wonder how it can survive. It's a bit humbling to see this living object clinging to life in this location.

I took this picture at Le Marché de Papeete, otherwise known as the marketplace. It's a wonderful experience to go there! On our past Tahiti cruises, we've picked up huge boquets of Tahitian flowers for about $20 - back home they would easily have cost over $100!

These fish look like they're having a conversation. Just look at their eyes and open mouths....

“Joe, I told you not to swim near the net!”

“Yeah, look at the trouble you've gotten us into now!!!”

“Bob, do you know why it's so cold? BBBBrrrrrrr...”

This is one of my all time favorite pictures. Not because it's a great picture, which it's not, but because of the memories it brings back.

The USS Constitution (and another neat site) is the oldest commissioned warship in the US Navy. That touches many things I like in life - history in general and military history, sailing, the sea, stories of bravery, architecture, cannons, etc.

I like the layout of this picture. You see the carronades right away, and they your eye links the light brown awning and the brown hatch covers, both of which frame the cannons. Then you eye moves to the ship's bell, brightly polished.

I like this propeller on a B-24 Liberator. It has some symmetry and projects a sense of power. Obviously from the way it is beautifully painted and polished, it is cherished by some people.

These WWII planes fly over our house around Memorial Day and July 4th. You can hear their engines from far away - it's a sound unlike any modern planes. I usually go running out to the backyard to see them fly by.

I get a thrill every time....

I like going to our local airport to see the WWII "birds". This is one I've seen flying over our house, aBoeing B-17 Bomber, aka “Flying Fortress”

From the outside it has a lot of 50 caliber machine guns, but when you go onboard, you realize the only thing between you and the fighters firing bullets at you is a thin piece of metal. The veteran who flew in these ships had a lot of guts!

I was very moved when I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Very, very, somberly touched. For one, I knew I was extremely fortunate not to have my name etched on the Wall. By all "normal" ways that life works, I probably would have.

But everybody assumed that I would be drafted that day, so I had my last piece of cake left over from the night before and my normal cup of tea, with sugar. So I got rejected...If not for that, where would this skinny kid, with great scouting skills, and expert markmanship ended up in 1970?

The Wall is a place you could spend days photographing, but you'd be emotionally drained. There are so many poigniant scenes as people look for names, leave momentos by the Wall, trace the letters with their fingers.

I get choked up even writing about it....

This photo has those elements in it. There is the reflection of the people as they are stopped, thinking about the war, the flag and flowers left behind by someones name, the person pointing at a name, the lines and lines of names going on.

You have to look very carefully at this photo....it's not just a bunch of fuzzy pine trees!!!

I like the way that after you look at it you suddenly see the hidden object, which is well camouflaged in this setting.

As the saying goes, it's right there in front of your eyes!

Early morning in Yosemite National Park, with a slowly flowing Merced River reflecting Half Dome which luckily has a few clouds to highlight it in the dark waters.

This is a case of being in the right place at exactly the right time.

I like how clearly Half Dome and the trees are reflected. It makes my head bob up and down!

It's not often you can get this close to a deer in the backcountry without spooking it and having it dash off. This shot took about 15 minutes of slowly getting closer. The instant my camera made a "click" sound as it took the picture, the deer bolted.

I took this in Yosemite National Park, on the Old Inspiration Point trail. The trail was covered in six inches to a foot of snow in places and it was obvious that no one had been on it for a while. I wasn't surprised to see wildlife like this, just a bit worried that I might run across a hungry bear!

Old Inspiration Point is where Ansel Adams took one of his famous photgraphs of Yosemite Valley.