Digital Cameras, well some of the older ones, are good for Infrared Photography.
The sensors in digicams are naturally sensitive way into the IR typically 900nm or 1000nm. But, the camera manufacturers have to cut everything out above about 720nm else the pictures won't look right. They use an IR 'cut' filter.
But some cameras don't have very efficient IR cut filters, including my favorite for Digital IR - the Olympus Camedia C2020Z. Get one from eBay, get a Hoya R72 filter for 'standard' IR or the B+W 093 filter for 'extreme' IR, and off you go! It is sufficiently sensitive to IR that you can handhold.
With the Hoya you can leave the camera set to take (false) color, or you can use black and white. The B+W filter really does need to have the camera on black and white.
Ancient Olympia in Greece is a wondrous place. You really should visit before all the ruins get roped off, and it gets overwhelmed by commerce.
Today you can wander among fallen stone-works, walk where athletes walked, view the remains of temples, priests' dwellings and public buildings.
Time, and events. Earthquakes and emperor Theodosius I. Go on a quiet day, or try to ignore the tourists and you almost hear the hustle and bustle from all those years ago. Nothing in the main site has been re-constructed - it lies exactly as it fell and 1500 years later uncovered.
Theodosius I abolished the games in AD 394 because he considered them paganistic. (Sometimes the abolition is attributed to Theodosius II but it cannot be Theodosius II because he only became (co)Emperor in AD402).
Situated where rivers Alpheios and Kladios meet, the Sanctuary of Zeus played host to the Olympic Games for over a thousands years, from 776 BC to the end of 4th century BC. At first, the games lasted one day only and had a single event, a sprint the length of the stadium.
It wasn't long before other events were added, such as the chariot race, discus, javelin, long jump, boxing, wrestling and the pentathlon. All these events required extra time and so the games were extended to five days.
Winners would return to their families and cities with their crown of olive leaves and would be heroes, bringing enormous status and wealth.The stadium, with seating for at least 30,000 spectators, remains today, and visitors can walk the dusty surface, and stage impromptu re-runs of those ancient events.
Inside the museum there are many precious artifacts and many of the more important statues including Zeus and Apollo have been reconstructed.
Zeus
One of the world's endangered species, the Loggerhead Turtle, requires the beaches of Zakynthos to lay its eggs.
Unfortunately the increase in tourism, particularly the use of beaches by man, and the proliferation of artificial light, is having serious effects on the Loggerhead Population.
The infant turtles use the moon to guide them to the sea; if the inland lights are stronger they get confused.
A great step forward in their protection occurred when on the 1st of December 1999 the National Marine Park of Zakynthos (N.M.P.Z) was formally established by Presidential Decree.
There are many fabulous gardens to see in Cornwall. We chose Trebah on the Helford. A few miles from the very characterful Mawnan Smith, its about 20 minutes drive from Falmouth.
With a children's adventure playgrounds, a beach, lake, rare fish, and a Monet's bridge its a great day out for the whole family.
Did I mention the giant 12 ft rhubarb?
Trebah (pronounced Tree-bâ) is Celtic for ‘The House on the Bay’. The land was not originally the gardens they are today. Its recorded history starts with an entry the Domesday Book of 1086 stating it to be the property of the Bishop of Exeter. Over the next 745 years after passing through the hands of various farmers and families, in 1831 it was acquired by a Falmouth family called Fox .
Charles Fox laid out 26 acres and being a perfectionist exactly positioned every tree, requiring the Head Gardener to build a tower to represent the eventual height of each tree.
In 1944 the beach was concreted over and the rocks dynamited. This was because on June 1st 7500 men of the US 29th Infantry Division with their tanks and vehicles, embarked in ten 150 foot flat-bottomed landing craft for the D-Day landings. The garden was used as an ammunition dump, slit trenches were dug and Messerschmitts attacked, without success.
During the D-Day assault on Omaha Beach in Normandy, they suffered enormous casualties. There's a memorial at the bottom of the garden which commemorates them.
The old road used is still there, on the western side of the gardens.
After the war the gardens fell into significant neglect, only being rescued by new owners who bought the gardens in 1981. After being opened to the public in 1987, in 2000 visited numbers increased to over 100,000.
Zakynthos is the sixth of the Ionian islands, west of the Coast of Ilias. The other Ionian Islands are Corfu, Paxos, Lefkas, Ithaka and Kefallonia. Homer refers to Zakynthos in The Odyssey as 'woody Zakynthos'.
Today Zakynthos is a very green and fertile island assisted by sensible sustainable irrigation and underground springs.
This area of the Ionian sea has a long history of seismic activity, and forming the island itself and all the smaller islands surrounding Zakynthos. 
As recently as August 9th 1953 a devastating earthquake hit the island, destroying seventy percent of the buildings on the island. You can still see many abandoned buildings today.
Of the Mediterranean's many geological features, one of the main ones is south east of the island. The Calypso Deep (also called the Pit of Inoussae), is the deepest part of the Mediterranean sea at 5,267 metres (17,280 feet). When the Mediterranean was completely dry this would massively deeper than Death Valley at (only) −86 metres (−282 feet) or the Dead Sea at −418 metres (−1,371 feet)!
One of the highlights of a visit to Zakynthos is sighting the beautiful loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta). The turtle is an endangered species and can be found both on Zakynthos and Kefalonia.
The highest point on Zakynthos is Mount Vrachionas at 2487ft (758m). From the top you can see the Greek mainland to the east and Kefalonia to the north. (Kefalonia has a much higher peak - Megas Soros / Mount Ainos at 5,338 ft (1,627 m).
The very famous wrecked ship is a good day trip. Although the wreck appears at first site to have been there for a long time in fact it was run aground in 1980 by its crew after the Greek Navy caught up with them smuggling.
Man has inhabited the area for thousands of years building the Iron Age forts of Pilsdon Pen, Lamberts Castle, Blackberry Castle and Coney Castleand, and Lyme Regis on England's South Coast has a history going back over 1200 years. In the middle ages it was one of the most important ports on England's south coast. Today it has great importance as a gateway to the World Heritage Site the Jurassic Coast - Lyme Bay as seen in the picture above.
The Romans knew current day Lyme Regis as "Lym Supra Mare" and a Roman Villa has been found at the nearby village of Harcombe. The name comes from the river Lym which means a torrent of water. The Town is located in the Coombe formed by the river valley.
In 774AD the West Saxon King Cynewulf gave the land along the river Lym to the monks of Sherborne Abbey, who made sea salt.
Lyme Regis was mentioned in the Doomsday Book and received its Royal Charter from King Edward I in 1284, and saw action in the English Civil War - the Royalist forces laid siege in 1644 and the Duke of Monmouth landed here in 1684 in his attempt to gain the Crown.
To the east is the Majestic Golden Cap at 618 ft. which is the highest Cliff on the south coast of England. Westwards is the famous Under Cliff.
Lyme Regis' geology now means it is on the western edge of a World Heritage Site - the Jurassic Coast. 180 million years ago in the Jurassic period, a soft sedimentary rock layer called Blue Lias formed. It is this rock that all the fossils are found. One of the first recorded finds was when Mary Anning (born locally in 1799), excavated a fossil ichthyosaur.
More pictures
Its a bit of an effort to see Kelso Dunes, regardless of where you live or are staying. You see them from miles away, and as they are in the class of object that is so big you cannot tell how big they are, their apparent size doesn't really change much, even walking on them.
They rise 600 feet above the desert floor, and are a similar height to the Eureka dunes of The Death Valley National Park and the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado, and the third highest in the US.
Kelso Dunes are created by a prevailing wind which starts in the southeast and swirls around to the north before becoming a north westerly, blowing and depositing finely grained residual sand from the Mojave River Sink, which lies to the northeast. Next time I'll take a magnet and see if I can try the trick of trawling for magnetite.
Kelso Dunes are in the class of 'singing' or 'booming' dunes. This phenomenon has been known about for thousands of years, with some of the earliest references about "acoustical" dunes being found in Chinese and Mideastern chronicles dating back more than 1500 years.
Marco Polo described hearing weird sounds in the Gobi Desert, and Charles Darwin recorded when he was in Chile.
The sounds have been variously described as singing, whistling, squeaking, roaring and booming, distant kettle drums, artillery fire, thunder, low-flying propeller aircraft, bass violins, pipe organs and humming telegraph wires. Yep thats quite a lot of descriptions!
The low frequency sounds are produced when closely packed sand grains (mostly made of polished grains of rose quartz) slide over each other, such as an avalanche down the slip (leeward) face of a dune.
The stationary sand underneath acts like an amplifier.
For the movement of the sand to produce sound, the sand has to be very dry. Also the grains are much more rounded and finely polished compared with ordinary (silent) sand.
I took some pictures of the dunes, but what I was most struck by was the still-life qualities of the plants, sand and the shadows they make.
Waiting for you after the truly great drive on R18 from Los Angeles / San Bernardino area is Lake Arrowhead. When I was there the colors were great.
Do your shopping in the outlet mall, have lunch at Razzbearies Bakery and Cafe - the roast beef sandwich is fantastic, and then take a walk around the shore.
Its the thing you remember, the trees and the rocks
First Light in Joshua Tree National Park
Today Joshua Tree National Park is a really dry area, with only the occasional thunderstorm / flash flood. 12,000 years ago it was very different.
Back then we were emerging from the ice age, and the jetstream generally ran much further south than it does now. 
The whole area was much wetter with running water and lakes, much like the Pacific north west today.
Gradually the jetstream moved northwards and the area dried up. The 
rivers stopped running, and the lakes dried up.
(Salton Sea was dry for thousands of years until due to man's environmental meddling it partially filled with water).
The flash floods have over the years stripped the land of its soil, and left the dusty land we see today.
The 2 sides of Joshua Tree have different characteristics, the lower hotter east and the higher and slightly cooler west. The Joshua Trees themselves are mostly in the west.
In the east there are 2 other plants you will see a lot of, the cholla cactus and the ocotilla.
There are a lot of both of these by the side of Pinto Basin Road, in the Cholla Garden and the Octotilla Patch.
Be very c
areful with the Chollas, their spines can be really nasty!
After 4 trips to San Francisco, after the vagueries of (foggy) weather and their landscaping schedule, I finally saw the Palace of Fine Art in San Francisco and its newly landscaped grounds in sunshine. What I really wanted to capture was the Roman rotunda (fantastic color!) against a blue sky. Hurray!
Now owned by the City of San Francisco, the Palace of Fine Arts was built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition on land previously part of the Presidio.
If you are in this part of the world, go see the Longnow Foundation as well. Its only about a mile away at Fort Mason and they've got a great orrery.
I came across the Longnow Foundation at Fort Mason. Their mission is to change our definition of 'now', believing it is too short a time period, and we should think longer term. They have various projects including a large orrery which has the planets moving in relative scale.
Its an interesting idea. What is 'now'?
'Now' for a volcano such as the Amboy Crater is thousands of years. For a tree 'now' might be the current season, for a muscle cell requiring constant nutrient supply else it dies, 'now' might be fractions of a second.
Maybe the underlying message is that as a society we have gone from change driving us, to us driving change, and being addicted to it. So much of what we do only occurs because of change. A new blog entry else visitors will stop coming, a new range of cars because advertisers don't want to advertise old stuff, and so on.
