"At the San Diego Zoo," April 2006

She's not one for portraits, so hopefully she doesn't stop by this blog this week. She's away for the weekend, so maybe I can put up a newer entry before Monday. In any case, we went back to the slope of orange flowers -- pansies, I think -- because I thought a portrait of her in her orange wrap in front of the flowers would be a nice blend of her favorite color. Unfortunately, we couldn't find a spot where the flowers blanketed the hillside, or at least approached a 50-50 ratio with the green leaves, but we still got a nice shot out of it. I should send it to her parents.

"Broken bat," Trenton, July 2006

"Broken bat," Trenton, July 2006

Brett Gardner lost his lumber on this swing last week in Trenton. I'm still amazed I caught this one. It's why I love shooting sports. There can still be moments missed even with the new digital SLR. What I love is the whole image -- the ball still in the frame, the barrel of the bat parallel with the ground and the splinters flying off in blurred motion from the space between the windmilling barrel and the broken handle still in his hands. Easily the best shot I got all day, and in the past week at several games.

I also definitely like the larger format I've set up for posting through Flickr. I still think I need to play with the template to even out the text with the image and get the right column to appear nice and neat without being too narrow.

"Peak season," Rocky Mountain National Park

"Peak season," Rocky Mountain National Park, May 2006

When you finally make a trip out West, it's hard not to find the views remarkable. On a late-May afternoon, we left Boulder and meandered up through Rocky Mountain National Park, where the temperature dropped into the low 50s -- though we kept the top down the whole time -- and the snow remained frozen in drifts that reached heights above our windshield as we cruised by them. As I do with many expansive National Parks, I'd get to one turnout or viewpoint, get out of the car, take it all in and enjoy it for some time and think, "It can't get any better than this." And then, five minutes up the road, another vista would have me thinking those words all over again.

"Riding the pinwheel," Coney Island, August 2005

"Riding the pinwheel," Coney Island

Growing up in New Jersey, I'd only heard about Coney Island, but it always meant summer to me. We, of course, have the Shore, but if you go up to the northernmost tip of Sandy Hook on a clear day, or climb up the tower at Twin Lights, you can look across the harbor and see the distinctive parachute drop, which now stands just outside the right-field fence at Keyspan Park.

I always thought of Coney Island as New York City's little slice of the Jersey Shore -- Surf Avenue, with Nathan's hot dog stand and the shops and arcades, and the Cyclone roller coaster and the entrance to Astroland recreates any number of New Jersey beach towns at the southern end of Brooklyn. Taking in a Cyclones ballgame and then wandering among the amusments, as we did on this night, did bring back some memories of Point Pleasant and Seaside Heights.

These hot, sticky August nights made bearable by the cool sea breezes -- that's summer in New York. Or New Jersey.