Many photos on Flickr

©Elsie van der Walt, all rights reserved. Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. If you are interested in using one of my images, please send me an E-mail (elsie.vdwalt@gmail.com).

Many Details by Uli Kraus

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It is raining by pasquale e giuseppe di marzo

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Many tanks for your visit,

your critic comment

is much plaising

Pictures can not be used.

without my written permission.

So Many Compositions by Scott N

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Florida Polytechnic University offers so many compositions - I was lucky with the weather and was fast on my feet to move between spots to grab multiple views

practicing his dance moves red a blue ...edit by Sonja Parfitt

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many thanks for your comments faves and invites always much appreciated

and thanks for 6 .7 million views

Mantis religiosa. by Elena Amor

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Many thanks to everyone who chooses to leave a comment or add this image to their favorites, it is much appreciated.

Muchas gracias a todos los que eligen dejar un comentario o añadir esta imagen a sus favoritos, es muy apreciado.

Happy Mother's Day by The Pocket Rocket

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Many thanks for your visits, kind comments and faves, very much appreciated.

softly painted Peony ..edit by Sonja Parfitt

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many thanks for your comments faves and invites always much appreciated

and thanks for 6 .7 million views

yellow to brighten your day by Sonja Parfitt

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many thanks for comments faves and invites appreciated

stay safe

MANY DAFFODILS P3240757 by hlh 1960

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Switzerland by Lacerta Bilineata

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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 😊

Blue Tit 501_6821.jpg by Lynn Griffiths

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Many thanks to all who take the time to comment and fav. I very much appreciate it.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

many mushrooms high in the trees by Ge van 't Hoff

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Fly agaric by The Pocket Rocket

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Many thanks for your visits, kind comments and faves, very much appreciated.

New Holland Honeyeater by The Pocket Rocket

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Many thanks for your visits, kind comments and faves, very much appreciated.

Heron and ducks Lost Lagoon ..texture edit by Sonja Parfitt

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many thanks for your comments faves and invites always much appreciated

and thanks for 6 .7 million views

Swallowtail on Butterfly Bush by Ruth

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Many thanks for taking a look!

Pica pica (joven ) by Elena Amor

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Many thanks to everyone who chooses to leave a comment or add this image to their favorites, it is much appreciated.

Muchas gracias a todos los que eligen dejar un comentario o añadir esta imagen a sus favoritos, es muy apreciado.

I Ran by J J

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Since so many recognized my referenc eto the Band a flock of Seagulls on a recent shot thought I would use this shot to refer to one of there well known songs, This Gulls seems to have ran fron the flock

Comments appreciated, Constructive critique even more appreciated, best way for me to learn

better on B l a c k M a g i c

Simple Joys of Life by Sandy Duncan Rudd

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Still escaping to my garden to avoid the ubiquitous and ever-disgusting "orange menace" currently in the White House" ...

"Your life will always be better off when you concentrate on the simplest joys of life like drinking a cup of coffee."

~ Mehmet Murat ildan

"It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them." ~Paul Coehlo

Many, many thanks to all my Flickr friends for your visits, faves, and kind comments - you are always an inspiration and source of encouragement to me!

Many Peaks by Paul R. Sanchez

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a little fun with cosmos flowers edit by Sonja Parfitt

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many thanks for your comments faves and invites always much appreciated

and thanks for 6 .7 million views

so many boats by Maj-Lis Bengtsson

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Nashville Warbler by Salman

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Many thanks to all those who View, Comment and or Fave My Photos and happy weekend to all 👍

tulips in Stanley Park...edit by Sonja Parfitt