Sunrise 6:07 am: Portola ranch trails with friends

The Dawn Joggers and Cassie met friends Sara and Peter, along with four-year-old Labrador Riley, for a loop hike along the Spring Ridge, Blue Oak, Sunrise, Los Trancos and Black Oak trails of the Portola Valley Ranch system. There were only hints of the various grasses starting to turn brown and the stream that drains into Los Trancos Creek was still running. While color photography shows off the greenness of the hills and all the wildflowers, the male DJ enjoys doing close-up black and white studies, too. It's a return to his roots as a press photographer who mainly shot features not news. That was in the era of film, and he would often spend hours (deadlines premitting) in the darkroom working with the negative and print. Today he uses a Leica Digilux 2 and will still work on a shot he particularly likes in Photoshop. The fern shot appearing today is as it was taken.