California
California is the state I was born in and it keeps drawing be back. It is an amazing state. I have been fortunate enough to see a lot of places in the world, but I have yet to find a place that is as diverse and beautiful as the state of California. In a single day you can drive through high mountains, fertile valley, deserts, rainforests and grass hills. Along with all the diversity comes some incredible beauty.
I really like the similarity of patterns in the photograph. The patterns in the sand are like the dunes, which are like the foot hills, which are like the mountains. Fractals in nature. The yellow patch beyond the dunes is a bunch of wild flowers that goes for miles. Death Valley can be amazing in the spring.
Iconic Half Dome dominates this panoramic taken from Glacier Point in the famous Yosemite National Park. You can also see how granite the vast landscape of the Yosemite backcountry and how the landscape has been formed over the centuries.
Bodie is an old mining ghost town in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Having been made a State Park, it is one of the best preserved ghost towns I have ever seen, with many building and their content preserved. It is a major attraction to history fans, photographers and lovers of the old west. This old Dodge truck is parked in front of a filling station that dates back to the early 20th century.
2014 was a dry year and it left the mighty Yuba River running very low and slow, but it made from beautiful reflections. I choose to render this in black and white to emphasis the wonderful texture of the scene.