May 16, 2021: Early this week, I started playing with the Average Camera Pro app on my iPhone. This app takes multiple images and combines them into a single impressionistic image. It's fun, but I wanted more control. So I looked into the Pep Ventosa Technique. Pep Ventose takes multiple shots, often hundreds, of the same scene and combines them into one photograph. So this morning at the California True Color Garden, I took series of pictures of various flowers. For this one, I combined 12 images in Photoshop to make this final version.  Once finished, I added a texture from DistressedFX and a border from Formulas.

May 8, 2021: A Metro Bus passes one of the faces in the art installation "Faces of Elysian Valley," located in Los Angeles. The nine stone statues were installed in January 2017 in the traffic circle at the intersection of Figueroa St. and San Fernando Rd. The sculptures by Freye Bardell and Brian Howe reportedly took eight years to make. Social media has nicknamed the sculptures "Egghead Stonehenge." In December 2019, a vehicle crashed into the sculptures, knocking down several.

Sep. 26, 2016: Hill of Crosses in Lafayette, California, stands in memory of soldiers lost in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Officially named the Lafayette Hillside Memorial, the memorial began in 2006 as a protest against the Middle East wars. While the number of crosses is limited to 5,000, a large sign gives the number of military personnel lost - 7,934 in a 2018 photo. The site is also known as the Crosses of Lafayette.

April 29, 2021: A hummingbird poses for me this morning at the Conejo Valley Botanic Gardens in Thousand Oaks. This bird stayed at this flower for three minutes allowing me to shoot 70 frames. Also, he's only eight feet away. Two weeks ago, I put up a hummingbird feeder at my home. No birds seem interested. But for the second time this year, I was this close to a hummingbird at the local botanic gardens.

April 25, 2021: Infrared image of the Goebel Adult Community Center in Thousand Oaks, California. For this image, I used an iPhone with a 720nm filter, Camera+ 2 app, 30-sec exposure at f/1.8, ISO 1. The center at 1385 E Janss Road is currently closed and being used as a Covid-19 vaccine location.

This lilies photo was taken April 2, 2021, at the California True Color Garden in Thousand Oaks, California, and textured with DistressedFX Plus, Snapseed, and Jazz applications.

April 9, 2021: Infrared iPhone image of the Stagecoach Inn Museum located in Newbury Park, California. Built in 1876, the hotel originally opened as the Grand Union Hotel. In the 1960s, the widening of the Ventura Freeway forced the building to be moved to its present location. A 1970 fire destroyed the Stagecoach Inn. The rebuilt hotel opened on July 4, 1976. For this image, I used a 720nm filter, Camera+ 2 app, 6 sec at f/1.8, ISO 5.

Feb. 22, 2014: A searchlight backlights a participant dressed as General Douglas MacArthur at the Great Los Angeles Air Raid World War ll reenactment at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California. Fort MacArthur is named after General Arthur MacArthur, father of Douglas MacArthur.