One thing that I wasn’t really expecting to see in Southern California were a series of wind farms. With their quiet grace and purpose against the desert backdrop they are oddly beautiful.

When you think of Noisy and loud musical instruments, one that springs to my mind is the bagpipe. In Jerash, Jordan, they were not only loud but very unexpected.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Monochrome.” I’m entry number 78.

In the weakest possible sense of the word, these two images can be considered to be my tribute to Ansel Adams’ work in the Sierra Nevada.

While he had to lug huge cameras around and work with large format film I merely had to carry around my 50D¹ and play around in Photoshop Elements.

I find it a little odd that the thing that drew me to both of these pictures were the colours² yet there is still enough texture and shape to make them work in black and white.

It’s at times like these that I feel that I have been short-changed with my 50D. Both the model above and below it have a HD video feature and mine does not. I’m not one to let these little limitations get in my way though…

With apologies for the size, here are a bunch of images I took in Yosemite stitched together into a single animated GIF¹.

What can you say about Yosemite that hasn’t already been said? And what can you photograph that there aren’t already ten copies of on Flickr? (Don’t even get me started on some of those people that used film rather than CMOS sensors.)

Having said that, it didn’t stop me trying. There is no two ways about it: Yosemite is an absolutely stunning location. Everywhere you look there is more beautiful scenery, forests, water falls.

I thought that this image was suitable for the “Monochrome” theme for a number of reasons. It was taken on black and white film (Ilford XP2) and, even on colour film it would have been pretty monochromatic. It was taken in Vigland Park, Oslo.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Metal.” I’m entry number 27.

As if wandering around a conference centre before the start of the conference wasn’t enough, I also went to the south of the Bay Area to visit some of the major sights in Silicon Valley.

I started at the excellent Computer History Museum. I don’t doubt that most people would find this mind-numbingly dull but I thought that the large archive of “significant” computers was great. It would be easy to argue over the machines that were on display, the ones that were more significant or, well, less American¹.

Ever since I’ve been “into” Macs, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference has been a draw. As an iPhone developer this years was especially interesting to me. Unfortunately it’s not a full time job to me so it was hard to justify the time off work or the expense of the ticket.

I was, however, in the Bay Area just before the event and managed to have a quick walk around Moscone. I felt a bit geeky taking pictures of a trade conference, but I wasn’t the only one doing so and I didn’t have my nose pressed against the glass unlike certain people!

We went for a longer-than-expected walk just north of San Francisco and stumbled across these mail boxes. I love that they’re so bright and cheerful. Maybe it takes the edge off receiving lots of junk mail and bills?

The cars in the Rally of Corsica were zipping through the streets at High Speeds, which I thought made this a good candidate for this weeks PhotoFriday challenge.

Please vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Shiny,” I’m entry number 162.