They say that chance favors the prepared mind.  Just before our trip to California I feverishly purchased all of the equipment that I would need to take significantly better pictures than I was used to.  The gear included the newly minted Canon EOS dRebel, kit lens (18-55 mm offering really wide angle shots all the way up to what used to be considered normal for a 35 mm camera), and a few items from the Cokin Creative Filter System: two grey graduated filters and their circular polarizer.  Fortunately all of it came together just before the day we left.

You prepare yourself with the proper equipment and you go out and roam in the scenery where there are a hundred opportunities, opportunities that other photographers have been presented with before.  Many of them may have had much greater ability than me.  The moment however is mine and mine alone.  The day it rained cats and dogs...that cloudy day was a wonderful moment.  I had hoped that the graduated neutral density filter would give me the intensified detail in the sky; the clouds; the sun when it peeked through.  That day in Sausalito when I roamed alone in the marina in search of a hippie past, reflections, color and life in inanimate objects was so exciting.  Linda didn't understand my excited babbling as we enjoyed light lunch in the restaurant on the Bay and watched the cormorant diving repeatedly into the sun-dappled breakers.  There was so much to take in.

It really comes down to luck.  You are there with the Canon EOS Digital Rebel, the latest development in picture-taking science with just the kit lens and your hopes.  The lens is one that provides wide angles like you see in some of these images.  I think that these are the best that I have snapped in my lifetime of picture taking.  All I had to do was adjust the knobs, and open the shutter at just the right moment for the the CMOS collector behind the expertly-fashioned piece of glass to gather 6.3 megapixels of colorful light beams and convert them into a digital databank for you to enjoy at your leisure.  Feast on the chaotic moments when the clouds scud by, the rhodos bloom their best, that butterfly sits just so, and the sun illuminates the foam below Point Reyes.  These are unique moments stilled forever.  I'll never see their like again.

		creatures of San Francisco posed for just a few captive moments
			I could not stop snapping the treasures of Sausalito while Linda went shopping.
	Point Reyes		Napa and Sonoma			Santa Rosa