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Nugget Point and Lighthouse

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Nugget Point lighthouse, Catlins, New Zealand
On my recent trip to New Zealand, I joined a group of friends for a trip to the Catlins region. The Catlins is the coastal region at the very south-eastern tip of New Zealand's South Island. It is a very remote and sparsely populated area of the country and features some dramatic beaches and coastline, virgin forest, and spectacular farmland.

One of our first ports of call was Nugget Point which gets its name for the islets or nuggets of rock that point up from the sea just off the headland. The rocks have been uplifted and tilted over millions of years and the sedimentary layers are now vertical as a result.

The headland attracts New Zealand fur seals, New Zealand (Hooker's) sea lions, southern elephant seals, colonies of yellow-eyed penguins, blue penguins, and a host of other sea birds.

A lighthouse stands at the end of the point.

Go here to see my photos of Nugget Point and Nugget Point Lighthouse

Note, pressing F11 in Internet Explorer which hides the toolbar menu (pressing F11 shows it again) may allow you to view larger versions of the photo depending on your monitor size.
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

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Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
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A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

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I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula ( Aphonopelma steindachneri ). Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.  Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into ...
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