Welcome to Friday Night Photos everyone. Your once a week break from the daily madness of the crazy world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music, or whatever else you find of interest that helps you escape the madness.

Tonight's birds are from multiple visits to both the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and Santee Lakes. The Black-crowned Night Heron was good enough to pose for me on a rainy day at the Safari Park at the end of March. In April sunny blue skies accompanied me for another visit to the Safari Park and two visits to Santee Lakes. I shot the Owl images at Santee Lakes on Easter weekend. Two days later they were gone.

Snowy Egret Breeding adult

Welcome to Friday Night Photos everyone. Your once a week break from the daily madness of the crazy world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music, or whatever else you find of interest that helps you escape the madness.

Back at the beginning of the month I went to the San Diego Botanical Garden for their World of Orchids exhibit (May 9th FNP). After spending an hour in the exhibit I spent another hour wandering around the rest of the gardens.

Welcome to Friday Night Photos everyone. Your once a week break from the daily madness of the crazy world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music, or whatever else you find of interest that helps you escape the madness.

Tuesday evening the camera club went to Fiesta Island on Mission Bay to play around with long exposure and light painting. 1,3,5,7 are burning steel wool. 2,4,6 are LED lights. Shutter speed varies from 1.6 to 5 seconds.

Whirligig

Welcome to Friday Night Photos everyone. Your once a week break from the daily madness of the crazy world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music, or whatever else you find of interest that helps you escape the madness.

Come along with me on a visit to the San Diego Botanical Garden for their fifth World of Orchids exhibit. This year's theme is Orchidelirium focusing on 19th-century orchid mania, where rare and exotic orchids fueled the passions of Victorian-era collectors and botanical enthusiasts alike.

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The Balboa Park rose garden is in full bloom right now so yesterday I grabbed the macro lens and spent about 3 hours hunting for bugs. Unfortunately the pickings were pretty slim. Lots of bees and flies but not much of anything else. I ended up taking more shots of roses than bugs. Oh well. Some days you bite the bear and some days the bear bites you. Hopefully next time I get to bite the bear.

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On the first weekend of this month I went to the Goodguys hot rod and custom car show at the Del Mar fairgrounds. This was the 24th year for the event and my 6th or 7th time attending. This year there was a noticeable drop in the number of cars and spectators. I don't know if the ailing economy had anything to do with it or if it was just an off year. Whatever the reason, there was still a large variety of beautiful cars and works of auto art. In tonight's FNP I highlight the Lowriders.
(NOTE: do to the decrease in the number of cars, some of these images are from 2022)

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The week got off to a rocking start Monday morning with a 5.2 magnitude earthquake centered between Ramona and Julian which is about 30 miles northeast of where I live. I was out with the bird watching group for our monthly bird walk when it happened. It was kinda funny hearing everybody's cell phones all start chiming with an emergency alert messages right after it hit. A moment's pause while everybody acknowledged the message on their phone then right back to bird watching. Oh look! A Common Yellowthroat.

Our bird walk this month was at Santee Lakes. It's breeding season for the Wood Ducks and they were in abundance.

Great Horned Owl. I hear them all the time at night. This is the first time Ive seen one during the day out in nature and not in captivity.

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It's spring. That means it's time for the annual butterfly exhibit at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I stopped by the park on Monday to check it out. The variety and total number of butterflies and the length of time the exhibit runs varies from year to year. This year the variety and total number were the smallest and the length of run is the shortest I've seen in the dozen years I've been a zoo member. I hope the low numbers this year were an anomaly and not a sign of things to come.

Blue Morpho

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Springtime in SoCal. Monday it was sunny and 85. It's slowly regressed through the week and today it's 60° and drizzling. I guess that's better than the heavy rain JtC is dealing with on his weekend getaway.

Got a mixed bag of images tonight. I entered the first two images in the camera club's monthly photo challenge. The subject was close-up/macro. The B&W got 1st place and the watch face tied for 2nd. That helped brighten an otherwise dull day.

Welcome to Friday Night Photos everyone. Your once a week break from the daily madness of the crazy world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music, or whatever else you find of interest that helps you escape the madness.

Some more from my visit to the San Diego Museum of Art and the Mingei Museum last month.

"Jaguar Head" Unknown artist. Wood, beeswax and glass beads.