Monday, May 20, 2013
Santa Barbara Mission Cross at Night

One evening when we were at the Santa Barbara Mission we noticed someone playing ball with their dog in the field by the mission rose garden. The really interesting thing for my camera is they were playing with a ball that had a light in it. It was a lot of fun watching the ball move back and forth, it was too dark to really see the dog, but it was obvious where he was. In the end, there were too many cars to get an interesting shot of the ball, although it is in there bouncing under the big tree at the left. The fun thing is the shot came out beautifully anyway.

Friday, April 6, 2012
Santa Ynez Oak Tree

One of the things I enjoy when driving out to Santa Ynez Valley is all of the beautiful Oak trees. This one is beautiful, but relativly tame compared to some of the wild shapes they take.

Monday, March 26, 2012
The Great Wall

...of Santa Ynez. I've driven by this beautiful wall a number of times in the past, but the timing was never right to get a nice shot. There is a rather large hill across the street, and the sun sets pretty early at this particular spot. But Saturday I was fortunate enough to be in the neighborhood right before the sun slipped behind the hill and I was able to catch some nice golden light.

Sunday, May 16, 2010
UCSB Evening Path

This is an out-take from a shoot for an annual report. The only reason it was left behind on the first pass is the client was specifically looking for a two page spread. Of course when you have a beautiful evening you shoot everything that catches your eye. Invariably the client comes back looking for a different angle or more images. Or, at the very least you can come back a few months later and find some hidden gems that were overlooked on the first pass.

Friday, October 7, 2005
Happy Cows

You can't really make them out at this size but there is a heard of cows in the distance on the left side of the image. If you are not familiar with it, the California Cheese industry runs a cool ad campaign about their happy cows. You see, they are much happier because they live in beautiful rolling fields in sunny California so they make good cheese. Those commercials always make me think of this photo and the beautiful day I took it.

I think it's time for another vacation, then again, when isn't it?

Friday, May 27, 2005
Lake Los Carneros

There are some places that you can live right next to and never know they are there. The Monarch Butterfly Overwintering spot in Santa Barbara is one of them, and this is another.

I know I am not the only one that is surprised by this place. Last week at the Art Walk I listened to a "Local" tell his friends from out of town that this was the bird refuge, right down the street from where we were standing (which, of course, it is not).

Where I was standing to take this picture, I had my back to the 101 Freeway about 50 feet away, right near the Los Carneros exit. But, due to the rolling land and the trees, you would never have any idea it was here. Fortunately there is a good adult education program here that has some excellent nature hikes.

Saturday, January 22, 2005
DCXVIIII

There is a great little area at State Street and Figueroa in Santa Barbara called La Arcada. It is a little walkway lined with shops and restaurants and a number of Galleries. One of which, incidentally, has a display of my photography right now.

After the rain subsided a bit last week I spent some time at La Arcada trying to get some shots of the Christmas decorations before they take them down.

When I was getting this image ready for the site, I noticed the roman numerals on the face of the clock, particularly the four. The interesting thing is that it is made up of four roman numeral ones IIII, rather than IV. This stood out to me because I remember learning roman numerals from my Mom and Dad. They had a rug inside of our front door when I was a kid that had a clock face on it with the number four made up of four 'I's. I vividly remember my dad pointing it out to me and saying that it was not the proper way to write four in roman numerals. Unfortunately, at the time, we did not have access to something quite as cool as the Internet to learn why some clocks were made that way.

Ahh, but even the Internet doesn't have all the answers. It has some good theories though. The best explanations I could find are listed here. If you have a better theory, I'd love to hear it...

• A popular notion is that the visual balance of the clocks were thrown off by the fact that the VIII on the left was so much larger than the IV on the right. So it was a visual decision to use the IIII. Sounds reasonable but there are good references to extremely old clocks that were not symmetrical in other ways but still used this style of markings.
• One theory was attributed to a number of different monarchs. It goes something along the lines of a clock maker made a clock for (pick your favorite monarch). When presenting the clock the monarch stated that the numeral IV should actually be IIII. And, who wants to argue with the guy who has all the guillotines. Unfortunately, this one sounds more like a legend started by someone who did not know the real answer. Further discrediting this theory is the fact that the earlier clocks and sun dials are even less likely to have the numeral IV.
  Monarch theory and quite a few others.
• A much more plausible reason stated hinges on the fact that in the Roman language, Jupiter (as in "king of the gods" Jupiter) was spelled IVPITER since there was no J or U. Not sure the deity of deities would take kindly to having his name abbreviated on the face of all of their clocks, the clock makers erred on the side of not offending him.
• Another interesting thought is the fact that using IIII made it easier for metal smiths to cast the numbers because you then had a balanced number of 'I's 'V's and 'X's (twenty, four and four respectively). So you could cast four identical sets of XVIIIII and have one set of numerals for a clock face.
  Clock numeral casting theory.
• In the end though, it seems that the contractions for fours and nines may not have been used in a consistent way at all. It may have just been common practice for the Romans to use IIII in place of IV. IV could have been a Latin practice much later. The oldest known surviving clock-face along with documents from the same age seem to use IIII regularly. As do the numbers on the surviving doors of the Roman Colosseum.
  Other good examples of IIII
  And, still more.