Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Arroyo Steps

I thought I might have published a photo of these stairs before. It turns out I have, from a different angle. I've also wondered but never known if they're vestiges of the original Busch Gardens. They're off the main path where you can't easily see them. Watch for side trips.

I do know that's poison oak on the right.

Will you have some time off over the next few days? It looks like we're going to have perfect hiking weather.

Let me know if this picture's too big on your screen. I'm tired of the teeny ones. I like big. But I need some easy watermarking software.

22 comments:

Dina said...

It's good to see this magical path again.
The photo is nice and big and gets so much bigger when I click once, and then once again. But on my notebook computer screen the poison oak is cut off (before I enlarged it).

Anonymous said...

Don't watermark, just sue them when they lift it.
Big bucks. I speak from experience

Shell Sherree said...

I'm glad we don't have poison oak here. And I'm all for big! But I only see about an inch below the lowest steps when I have the top of the photo on screen. Not that it worries me ~ I can scroll. What do you use for your watermark, Petrea? I zap mine on in Photoshop Elements as a duplicate layer pretty quickly {then I alter the transparency to suit the image if it looks too stark}...

Kalei's Best Friend said...

PicMonkey was a site another blogger recommended... I use to love Picnik till google disbanded it ( was another site by google).... That path looks a lot friendlier than Temescal's..

Petrea Burchard said...

This picture is more than twice as big as yesterday's, but Blogger doesn't offer a middle ground. I'd like to figure that out.

JB, they get stolen whether I watermark or not. I just figured having a watermark might give me stronger legal grounds, or keep them from stealing in the first place and save me the trouble. I still have to pay the lawyer.

Shell, I'm embarrassed to say I never figured out Photoshop Elements. Maybe I could give it another try now that I know more. I used to have iWatermark before it stopped working with my Mac. Now I don't have anything.

So are you using PicMonkey now, KBF? Your watermarks look fine.

Tim Martinez said...

Poison Oak is beautiful! Thanks Petrea, I love this spot…

Petrea Burchard said...

Tim, I agree! It's beautiful when red or green.
I love this spot, too. I'll bet there are plenty more I haven't found.

Bellis said...

I much prefer it when I can enlarge your photos. Want a quick lesson in Photoshop? It's only easy once someone shows you what to do.

I know these steps well, but they were built during the Depression, I think. Busch Gardens only went as far upriver as the Camel's Hump area. It's a pity the City isn't mending these old steps and stone walls, because falling trees have done some serious damage just above the place where you took the photo. The funds to do this were redirected to that black hole called the Rose Bowl renovation.

Kalei's Best Friend said...

@Petrea: I upload thru Photobucket, there u can choose the size.. btw, this photo fits fine as well as your others.

Kalei's Best Friend said...

the watermarks u see on recent photos are from picnik... but i have used watermarks from picmonkey and its similar.

-K- said...

I've lived here long enough to know exactly what this smells like.

Looking forward to hike this weekend at Tree People, off Mulholland. Although it will probably be more of a walk than hike.

Laura M said...

I recommend Faststone Photo Resizer for resizing and watermarking batches of photos. It can do a lot of other things as well, I just can't. It's free and you can download it here http://www.faststone.org/ (it's the bottom one) or if you feel it's safer, through download.com.

Petrea Burchard said...

I'm glad you mentioned the smell, Kevin. It's especially nice on a foggy day.

KBF and Laura, thank you, I'll try all your suggestions.

Ms M said...

Your photo seems to shimmer...
It's not too big for my screen. It does take more time to load than the smaller ones when I first came to your page. But our internet connection here in the City of Trees isn't the fastest (unless you go cable).

I use Photoshop Elements to mark mine, and to do other tweaking/editing.

Katie said...

Beautiful photo, even the poison ivy. Glad you're getting good hiking weather; by Friday it should be nice in the SF are too. On my Mac your photo is a bit too big to fit on the screen, but on my PC at work it was ok. Bummer you don't have more options on blogger.

Petrea Burchard said...

Loading time is a biggie, Ms. M. At least for me. If something takes too long too load I often get impatient and move on. Thanks for letting me know.

Maybe it's the size I'm exporting from my photo program, Katie. I don't know. I'll keep tweaking.

Thanks for all the suggestions today, everyone.

Susan Campisi said...

The steps look very inviting. I definitely plan on hiking over the next few days. Perhaps I'll run into you and Boz!

Petrea Burchard said...

I hope so! We'll be going either there or JPL a lot over the next few days.

Jilly said...

Love the light and shade and the way the eye is drawn into the photo so we want to take this walk.

Book Dragon said...

Big is good. Yes, it is too big but I'm on a laptop. I'm sure it would look more amazing on the desktop :-)

Pasadena Adjacent said...

We kids used this area to smoke dope "back in the day" among other things.

Interesting about the Rose Bowl budget. Seems it swallowed the Art budget as well.

Petrea Burchard said...

PA, the Rose Bowl budget has swallowed a lot more than money.