I barely recall any mention of Halloween when I was growing up. That’s changed in the last few years. It’s certainly being much more heavily promoted these days and I want to say — though I have no evidence to support it — that it’s at the expense of Bonfire Night. Presumably children asking strangers for sugary treats is safer than fireworks and piles of burning wood?

In any case, it’s big in America and has been for a long time and one of the traditions is going to a pumpkin patch. Since I was in California recently with family, including two children¹, it made sense to check out what happens…

There was a friendly atmosphere and plenty of activities from horse rides and hay mazes to eating grilled food and drinking lemonade. Oh, at there were pumpkins for the taking.

I never really got the idea of dressing up, but it’s a popular thing to do. Whatever my misgivings, Junior didn’t seem to mind being dressed as a pumpkin. His cousin wore the same outfit last year (this year he was dressed as a tiger). He spent some time studying his (almost) doppelgängers before moving on to the hay maze.

Away from the stalls, the pumpkins progressively lost their vivid orange colour and became yellow and then food for non-humans.

We didn’t take one in the end — suitcases being only finite in size and Virgin’s baggage allowance not being overly generous — but plenty of other people clearly did. Around the local neighbourhood were many examples of some fine carving…²

Whether or not you celebrate Halloween, I hope you’re having a great day. Here it may not be such a big deal but I had a fun day seeing what the run-up is like across the Atlantic.

1. Only one mine if you’ve been keeping count. [↩]
2. Complete with plenty of purple haze. Thanks iPhone 5. [↩]

This weeks PhotoFriday theme, “Pristine,” is a word that I always associate with clean, white, untouched snow. I’ve only ever been skiing once and, since I spent most of my time falling down, I didn’t have my camera with me very much. So instead, I have the above image, taken near Lake Tahoe. The snow, despite it being July, is still pretty much untouched.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Cloudy.” I’m entry number 206.

I’ve a feeling that I’ve used this picture for at least one PhotoFriday before, but I can’t think of a better image that I’ve taken that says “Wilderness” any better. It was taken in Yosemite from Olmsted Point.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Building.” I’m entry number 226.

For this weeks PhotoFriday, I thought of a picture I took a couple of years ago in Stockholm. As I usually do, I searched to see if I’d used the same image for any other challenges. It turns out I had. For a challenge titled, “Contrast.” Well, at least I’m consistent.

The above image, of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has pretty much the same idea.

I’m even later than usual this week — I was away from home is my excuse — so even though I posted an entry in last weeks challenge, it’s now too late to vote for it. Even I didn’t vote for myself!

People are impressed by the Academy Awards ceremony, all the glitz and glamour, the celebrities and the recognition for their work. However there are much easier ways to pick up your own Oscar statue.

This weeks PhotoFriday, “Nature,” is a much broader theme than we’ve had in the last few weeks. So lots of choices this time — too many — and in the end I figured that showing the vastness of a natural area, barely touched by man was the way to go. This image is originally from my tribute to Ansel Adams.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Lightness.” I’m entry number 220.

“Surfaces,” this weeks PhotoFriday theme, is kind of an odd subject, I mean in some sense almost everything is or has a surface. But what I liked about the Getty Museum in Los Angeles is that the whole building was strange shapes and surfaces, something that I tried to get across in this image. Which I thought made it a decent candidate for this weeks challenge.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Distant.” I’m entry 189.

My previous exploits in San Francisco have been well documented (1 2 3 4 5) so I shall just get straight into the images.

This time I have no particular theme to link the pictures together. I quite like the Golden Gate Bridge peeking through the fog and the yachts. I got a better day to visit Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid.

Despite Californian voters failing to reject Prop 8, the graffiti in Los Angeles shows that not everyone agrees: Post No Bills Prop.

In stark contrast to pretty much everything else, Time Lords in the US are clearly smaller than their British equivalent.