Okay, this will be a short one because I just don’t want to think about it anymore. Right now I am on vacation in Laguna Beach in southern California. We got some free tickets at a coastside resort so we cashed in and got out of winter for a few days.

Now to the point. I didn’t bring any camera gear-none, nothing, zippo, nil, nada. Why? Because I wasn’t anticipating having anything to photograph in Laguna Beach. Not that there isn’t anything to photograph there. It was more that I wasn’t going to be looking for things to be photographing.

Oops. Turns out that you don’t have to look for things to photograph, they’ll find you. So far, there has been spectacular sunsets every night. I would’ve had to decide between palm trees or breaking waves as a foreground. Yesterday, we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Nothing to photograph there! Andean Cock of the Rock in perfect light on branch at eye level with nothing but green in the background and beautiful twisting neck of a Chilean Flamingo, his eye just peaking out from under his wing- 8 feet away!!!

And just now I have walked back from the pool area where a falconer was set up. He comes three times a week to fly his birds to keep the gulls off the roofs. No one else was down there with the birds other than the handler- 3 Sakar falcons, 2 Harris’ Hawks and, just to deepen the dagger in my photographic heart, a Eurasian Eagle Owl. Soft light, soft backgrounds, still birds, happy falconer- couldn’t be better. I would love to show you the pictures I took of these magnificent birds but I DIDN’T HAVE MY CAMERA!!!!

Did I mention that the eagle owl is huge and has blazing orange eyes? Never mind, I don’t want to hear about it.