Though it doesn’t always seem like it southern California does experience change from season to season. Temperatures vary, the landscape comes alive or becomes dry and brown, and we occasionally receive rain.

The first photo is of a hillside in Ramona last spring. Following last year’s wildfires a number of wildflowers bloomed throughout the region during the spring months.

Ramona Hillside in Spring by Ryan Wentzel

This second photo is of the same Ramona hillside in the fall. As you can see the wildflowers have long since disappeared and the landscape now resembles much of the rest of southern California.

Ramona Hillside in Fall by Ryan Wentzel

The San Diego skyline is one of the more beautiful skylines I’ve been able to see in person.

San Diego Skyline at Twilight by Ryan Wentzel

When seen from Coronado Island you get a wonderful view of the harbor and downtown, especially at twilight.

My interest in photography began in high school. The photo below is one of the very first photographs that I shot and developed myself (as if you couldn’t tell it wasn’t professional work). As you can see the paper is water stained, but I guess it fits with the subject matter.

Sea Isle City, NJ by Ryan Wentzel

The photo was taken in the fall of 1996 in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. I was the only person on the beach and the only one who surfed that day. Several weeks later the water was simply too cold for me to continue surfing so this was one of my last surf sessions on the east coast (I moved back to southern California after the school year). This photo has a nostalgic feel to it and brings back fond memories of the surprisingly good waves I surfed in New Jersey in the fall of 1996.

While creating this blog I came across an error whenever trying to upload an image using the Wordpress media uploader. The error indicated that the uploader could not create the directory where the uploaded media would be stored and that I should check the permissions on the parent directory. I checked the permissions and everything seemed to be ok. I searched Google for some help and noticed that many, many other people were experiencing the same issue.

I tried the various fixes suggested by others who were having the same problem. Changing directory permissions didn’t help. Adding settings to the .htaccess file to disable mod_security didn’t help either. I tried several other suggestions without success. I then came across a post that said the path to the upload directory that is specified in the Wordpress settings dashboard *should not* begin with a forward slash. I checked my settings and there was in fact a forward slash at the beginning of the path. I removed it, saved the change, and then was able to successfully upload an image with the uploader.

Seems like a bug to me, but I’m glad I was able to find a workaround.

My son wasn’t tall enough to reach the water fountain, but he didn’t let that stop him from getting a drink of cool water on this warm summer afternoon.

Quench Your Thirst by Ryan Wentzel

I crouched down near the water fountain and began clicking away. I think this shot best captured the moment.