Don Perry

@alsodon.bsky.social

501 Followers 622 Following

Husband and father; past lives include the USMC and defense aerospace. I have many hobbies. All photos are my own.

The reflection of a house and photographer are visible on a closeup of a young man's eye.
A stained, small white homesteader shack with a dilapidated roof sits in a field with another shack visible in the distance.The north face of the San Gabriel mountains spans the background and a newer neighborhood is seen encroaching on the right. Llano was a socialist commune around the time this was built.
A female Renaissance Faire reenactor in red and black garb leans on a tree and blows soap bubbles.
Black silhouetted Joshua trees in the foreground contrast with a fading dusky red horizon and darkening blue sky.
Barely beating the highway closure in a race to get home, an idiot drives through the very large Station wildfire and sees electrical repairs taking place. The fire is actually burning on both sides of the road but is unseen at this angle. Orange smoke fills the sky while 2 workers on a sketchy platform splice high voltage power wires back together. Their platform is supported by a hook on the power wire at one end and a cable attached to the tower and supported by a helicopter flying closely above.
An aircraft drops retardant on a smoky wildfire at the edge of the Angeles National Forest while another aircraft is circling back for the next pass. We were on evacuation alert but didn't get the order to leave. The retardant and the fire running out of trees as it moved from the forest to the desert helped the firefighters contain it. Pinon Hills, California
A large and deranged looking California gopher snake with it's jaw unhinged finishes up a squirrel in the shade of a broken-down Cushman scooter. Skeletons on the ground nearby indicated it was a good hunting spot but unfortunately for the local snakes, the scooter's no longer there.
This image is of a Pacific coast beach in late August with the camera facing the setting sun. A golden-orange glow permeates the scene of a person walking along the shore while a bicycle hides directly in front of the sun.
"Hey dad, that's a tiger swallowtail and a beautiful one at that" per my son the entomologist.
The undulations of a red metal sea serpent protrude above the ground in Borrego Springs, a small desert city completely surrounded by the state park. A planned housing development commissioned an artist who created over 100 metal sculptures only to see the housing venture fail.
An atomic-era sign on Route 66 looks out of place in a now sleepy rural setting.
A chipmunk-like mother squirrel sitting atop a granite boulder is eating seeds and stashing them in her cheeks.
A Mojave Green rattlesnake at the side of a trail strikes a menacing pose and shakes it's rattle for the photographer.
The XB-70 was a prototype fast, high altitude bomber that never went into production. It's on the top 10 list of the fastest crewed jet aircraft. It's huge, has 6 engines and looks wicked. The YF-12 was a prototype high speed interceptor that never went into production. It was based on the A-12 and was the predecessor of the SR-71. The YF-12 and A-12 are usually grouped with the SR-71 as the fastest crewed jet aircraft ever but the A-12 was the fastest and highest flyer in the Blackbird family. I knew nothing about the XF-84H before I looked it up for this post. The prop spun at supersonic speed and that caused a host of problems in addition to the unbearable loudness. It was an experiment that didn't pan out. Image taken at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, Wright-Patterson AFB.
It's evening in Morro Bay. The town is in the foreground and across the bay in the background is Morro Rock, a 597 foot rounded off volcanic plug. This is one of 13 volcano remnants in the area.
The photo shows an abandoned patio of graffitied concrete pillars, lines and shadows. The tilt lens angles the plane of focus diagonally into the right of the scene, putting an interesting "symbol of peace" and a swastika into prominence.
Joshua trees are silhouetted against a fading orange sky at dusk with mountains visible in the distance.
STS Columbia had finished depot maintenance at a contractor and was mounted on the SCA 747 for delivery to Cape Canaveral. A rainstorm the night before grounded them as a wet shuttle is too heavy for flight. It was moved to the NASA facility and nosed into a hangar to dry out. I was nearby on the X-33 program and for 3 days I had the good fortune of being allowed to bring a camera and tripod into the site. The second mission after she left was the disaster.
If you've ever watched a game or parade at the Rose Bowl on TV you've seen the southern side of these mountains in the background. This is the northern side.
We ran into a friendly bobcat kitten in the middle of nowhere. No, I didn't try to pet it. We knew mom had to be nearby but we never saw her.
A skeleton of a broken brick building in late afternoon sunlight has arched windows and doorways, one of which is missing its capstone. The back wall's cracking apart above it as the right hand wall is slowly sloughing off.
A sun bleached, very dead Joshua tree with damp sand at its base stands in front of a dry lake bed with a large expanse of barren land and faraway stony mountains in the background. There's a small stone firepit kept out of frame on this photo; a recent camper likely drained a cooler here.
It's cruise day for a car club. A line of muscle cars, coupes and a hot rod take the scenic route through the mountains.
A shot up, broken down old yellow school bus and a red sedan are incongruously abandoned along the Mojave Road.
A boy is illuminated by a beam of sunlight as he talks to his mother through a hole in the top of a lava tube.
A classic shot of the wind sculpted Mesquite Flat Dunes in the Death Valley National Park. It's late afternoon with the reddish-purple Amaragosa mountains in the background.
An old, broken down wooden structure is missing enough pieces that it has a nice open view without any windows. Snow is everywhere, the sky is blue with some low clouds.
Looking down from a mountain, one sees a forested plateau with a parched, dry desert below it. A half-dozen stone outcropping are visible. The one on the near left is known as Elephant Butte because it resembles a pachyderm laying on its side when approached from the west. In the center are the Three Sisters, used for 4x4 and as an informal shooting range. El Mirage's dry lake bed is known for its drag racing.
A reddish thistle is in focus with pale yellow poppies and some purplish flowers progressively out of focus behind.
The road was closed so I'm taking my 3 sons up a back route to play in the snow. Trees line the trail. A Suzuki Samurai on the left is close to the camera while snow blankets the Forest Service trail and surroundings in front of it.
A lone tree is foremost with layers of mountains and a non-AI sky behind.
In a very snowy early morning scene, long icicles hang from the eave of a house with shadowed Joshua trees sprinkled through the background.
A brown California Thrasher is caught with a peanut midair between it's highly curved beak.
A bar full of people drinking, dancing and having a good time.
These squirrels are tiny.