Rainbow & Santa Cruz Island

**click on each photo for a better view**

I heard on the radio last Thursday that Ventura County was suppose to have flash flooding due to intense down pour between 3-4p.m., so I decided to grab my camera on my way out the door to pick up Kayla from school since we leave her school at 3p.m. My hopes were to see a rainbow. Kayla was still quite energetic, and was enjoying the time in the car, so she was in no hurry to get home.  On our way home I saw a dense rainbow, so I decided to get off the freeway and do a little side driving (head the back way home) to see what we see. 

The rainbow only lasted a minute, and never could find a better angle, view of it, so I decided to go home and grab K's medications before we headed back out. It looked like it was raining inland and I just knew there had to be more rainbows popping up, plus the lighting was what I call "rainbow lighting". When we got home, there was another dense rainbow over the school by our house, but not much of one to take a photo of. 

I needed open space for our next rainbow as I was wanting to see a "great" rainbow. Ya know, those double rainbows. We found a spot that looked like it was raining in the distance with nice "rainbow lighting" in foreground, so I decided to park and wait. I had Kayla entertaining me playing her music as I watched for the rainbow to appear. 45 minutes later still nothing, so I decided to turn around and head home. Well, just then a rainbow appeared; not a big one, but just a piece of one. Still good enough for us, plus the lighting was gorgeous. I took a few photos and then we went home. 

I decided to take the day off on Friday from life and head out to the islands with a friend, and take a nice long hike out to Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz Island. Intense hike to say the least (still sore three days later), but it felt good to get out and do some hiking. I hadn't been on the islands since the beginning of the year, and I hadn't done any hiking since early summer, so I was over due. 

It was an 8 mile round trip hike due to the way we came back - took an additional hike. It sure was a gorgeous day out. 

I have the hardest time getting my horizon straight, even in the editing phase. A few still seem off to me. 

We came across two Island Foxes; one along the trail to El Montanon Ridge, and one in the typical spot; picnic tables by the Visitor Center.  

Hope everyone is doing good. 

I posted this once already, but the colors were stripped when converting images for web viewing. I figured out how to fix this, so am posting this post again.

This year I decided to participate in a project that JMG-Galleries blog has been running every year since 2007. I wanted to do this last year, but just never made the time to. I don't blog as much as I would like to. Maybe I can try again this year (2012). :) We shall see how life rolls. But as for now, here are my favorite 10 photos that I took throughout 2011. The list started at 21 which was tough getting it down to 10, but Jim said 10, so 10 it is. :)

I realized one notable thing when I went through my photos, is that I didn't shoot a lot of landscap

e - serious landscape photography. I want to change that this year and shoot more! I miss getting wrapped up into a scene where everything else in life disappears and your just focused on what your photographing. That actually happened on a recent trip to Yosemite. I hiked up to Vernal Falls past the viewing bridge. As I was hiking to the top, I spent 3 hours photographing the falls. I tore it apart in pieces photographically.

Anyway, here are my favorite 2011 photos (no specific order):

Grizzlies of British Columbia

CA - 199 on the backside of Anacapa Island

Pt Mugu

Yosemite

Bottom of Vernal Falls, Yosemite

Yosemite

Mom and her baby. Orangutans

Gorilla

Tunnel View in Yosemite

Orcas traveling along the southern part of the island

Runner up: Humpback Whale off the California coast

Thank you Jim for the motivation and deadline as that helped me make sure I got this done this year. :)

I hope every-ones year is starting off grand!

Michele

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas