Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS Mk II USM
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Switzerland, May 2021
My best photos are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
My latest ANIMAL VIDEO (warning, it's a bit shocking): www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2-Xszz7FI
You find a selection of my 80 BEST PHOTOS (mostly not yet on Flickr) here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/western-green-lizard-lacerta-bi... (the website exists in ESPAÑOL, FRANÇAIS, ITALIANO, ENGLISH, DEUTSCH)
ABOUT THE PHOTO:
So this photo is a bit of a novelty for me - at least here on Flickr, but it's also a journey back in time in a sense. I've always loved b/w and sepia photography; already as a very young teenager I would go out into the woods with an old Pentax Spotmatic (which I had nicked from my father) whenever it was a foggy day to shoot b/w compositions of sunbeams cutting through the ghostlike trees.
I used films with a sensitivity of at least 1600 (for those of you who remember what that means 😉 ), and the resulting photos had an incredibly fine grain which I loved; I blew them up to the size of posters and hung them on the walls of my teenage man-cave next to Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Slash.
But then I abandoned photography altogether for 20 years, and when I finally picked up a camera again, it was one of the digital kind. Now neither film nor grain played any role in my photographic endeavours - let alone b/w compositions: because the reason I fell in love with shooting pictures once more was the rare and incredibly colorful lizard species that had chosen my garden as its habitat.
It's this species - the Lacerta bilineata aka the western green lizard - that my photo website www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ and also my Flickr gallery are dedicated to, but I've since expanded that theme a bit so that it now comprises the whole Lacerta bilineata habitat, which is to say my garden and its immediate surroundings and all the flora and fauna I find in it.
I like that my gallery and the website have this clear theme, because in order to rise to the challenge of portraying all aspects of a very specific little eco system (which also happens to be my home of sorts), it forces me to constantly explore it from fresh angles, and I keep discovering fascinating new motives as my photographic journey continues.
Which brings me to the horse pasture you see in this photo. This playground for happy horsies lies just outside my garden, and it normally only interests me insofar as my green reptile friends claim parts of it as their territory, and I very much prefer it to be horseless (which it thankfully often is).
Not that the horses bother the reptiles - the lizards don't mind them one bit, and I've even seen them jump from the safety of the fly honeysuckle shrub which the pasture borders on right between the deadly looking hooves of the horses to forage for snails, without any sign of fear or even respect.
No, the reason I have a very conflicted relationship with those horses is that they are mighty cute and that there's usually also foals. The sight of those beautiful, happy animals jumping around and frolicking (it's a huge pasture and you can tell the horses really love it) is irresistible: and that inevitably attracts what in the entire universe is known as the most destructive anti-matter and ultimate undoing of any nature photographer: other humans.
Unlike with the horses, the lizards ARE indeed very much bothered by specimens of loud, unpredictable Homo sapiens sapiens - which makes those (and by extension also the horses) the cryptonite of this here reptile photographer. It's not the horses' fault, I know that, but that doesn't change a thing. I'm just telling you how it is (and some of you might have read about the traumatic events I had to endure to get a particular photo - if not, read at your own risk here: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/51405389883/in/datepo... - which clearly demonstrated that even when it's entirely horseless, that pasture is still a threat for artistic endeavours).
But back to the photo. So one morning during my vacation back in May I got up quite early. It had rained all night, and now the fog was creeping up from the valley below to our village just as the sky cleared up and the morning sun started to shine through the trees.
And just as I did when I was a teenager I grabbed my camera and ran out to photograph this beautiful mood of ghostlike trees and sunbeams cutting through the mist. There had already been such a day a week earlier (which is when I took this photo: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/51543603732/in/datepo... ), but this time, the horses were also there.
Because of our slightly strained relationship I only took this one photo of them (I now wish I had taken more: talk about missed opportunities), and otherwise concentrated on the landscape. It was only later when I went through all the photos on my computer that I realized that I actually really liked those horses, even despite the whole composition being such a cliché. And I realized another thing: when I drained the photo of all the color, I liked it even better - because there was almost a bit of grain in it, like in the photos from my youth.
Since then I have experimented quite a bit with b/w and sepia compositions (some of which I will upload here eventually I guess), but this photo here is the first one that helped me rediscover my old passion. I hope you like it even though it builds quite a stark contrast with the rest of my tiny - and very colorful - gallery. But in the spirit of showing you the whole Lacerta bilineata habitat (and also in the spirit of expanding my gallery a bit beyond lizards and insects), I think it's not such a bad fit.
As always, many greetings to all of you, have a wonderful day and don't hesitate to let me know what you think 😊
I don't have a name for it. It's been a while in the making. I was trying to make it look like vines climbing up the tree in the foreground but I don't think I did very well at that. Anyway . . . it is what it is
The latest variety of daffodils to bloom in my garden. For the first time I can remember, my earliest daffodils are still looking great. In past years, shortly after they would bloom, we would get very hot Santa Ana winds that would just decimate the flowers. This year, some of us are complaining that it's cold, but not the daffodils.
It's that time of the year again. Hiawatha #336 arrives Chicago behind the class Amtrak B32-8WH which is subbing for a Charger that shit out a few days prior. The searchlight installations at the east end of Morgan Street were installed in the early 1980s.
Real estate development has exploded in the West Loop over the past decade. The Fulton Labs on the right were completed last year, and 345 N. Morgan on the left was completed a few months ago (still under construction when this picture was taken). The latter was built by Sterling Bay which is also overseeing the redevelopment of the former ADM flour mill. What you see here is only a fraction of what's to come to the West Loop in the next few years.
My latest glass fusion project, and the one I'm most happy with. It's 19.5 x 12 inches (Golden Ratio!)This is mostly all back light
Don't hesitate to take a close look
Colourful scooters - Alicante, Spain
As many of you may already know:
Mods and rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the early/mid 1960s to early 1970s. Media coverage of mods and rockers fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youth, and the two groups became widely perceived as violent, unruly troublemakers.
The rocker subculture was centred on motorcycling, and their appearance reflected that. Rockers generally wore protective clothing such as black leather jackets and motorcycle boots.
The mod subculture was centred on fashion and music, and many mods rode scooters. Mods wore suits and other cleancut outfits, and preferred 1960s music genres such as soul, rhythm and blues, ska, beat music, and British blues-rooted bands like The Who, The Yardbirds, and Small Faces.
[Wikipedia]
Latest release from Ahlure currently @ Designer Showcase
Info & links on my Blog ~ aznanasfandangles.blogspot.com/2025/01/010525ds02.html
Is the name of the latest event happening at Maya's wonderful Sanctum. Time - tomorrow (Sat 11th) Noon, SLT.
Sanctum is semi-private, so join the group for more info.
© Zoë Murdoch. All Rights Reserved. Use without permission is illegal!
Latest face, so effortless
Your great arrival at my eyes,
No one standing near could guess
Your beauty had no home till then;
Precious vagrant, recognise
My look, and do not turn again.
Admirer and admired embrace
on a useless level, where
I contain your current grace,
You my judgement; yet to move
Into real untidy air
Brings no lasting tribute -
Bargains, suffering, and love,
Not this always-planned salute.
Lies grow dark around us: will
The statue of your beauty walk?
Must I wade behind it, till
Something's found - or is not found -
Far too late for turning back?
Or, if I will not shift my ground,
Is your power actual - can
Denial of you duck and run,
Stay out of sight and double round,
Leap from the sun with mask and brand
And murder and not understand?
~ Philip Larkin.
SCT intermodal 3MB9 works around Goondah curve with CSR016 and CF4430 hauling dead attached C’s 502/503/508.
SCT transferred the C class from Western Australia after a period on hire with Watco, they would be detached at Goulburn before being forward to SSR’s Cootamundra depot.
Southern Shorthaul Railroad has added the former Railfirst C’s to their ever growing locomotive fleet.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
You can see my images on fluidr: click here
You can see my most interesting photo's on flickr: click here
OBSERVE Collective
All images are © Copyrighted and All Rights Reserved
germanstreetphotography.com/michael-monty-may/
37605 and 37259 are seen leading 1Z38 Kyle of Lochalsh-Inverness 'Easter Highlander' away from Kyle at Badicaul - 01/04/2018
More recent photos @ www.milepost39.co.uk/mp39.asp?do=latest
Common Name : Red Kite
Species : Milvus milvus
© All rights reserved
Please NO LONG MULTI INVITATION, thank you.
Have a great Sunday!
Ever wondered how to build good tudor style walls?
Check out our latest tutorial by Titus V. on brickbuilt.