Master Photographers
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"He who gives you many dreams is a great master, and the foggy weather is such a master!"
- Mehmet Murat ildan
I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.
~ Eckhart Tolle
I am very busy this week but will do my best to keep up with all of you.
This cat belongs to my friend Chris: www.flickr.com/photos/97556096@N06
Photo for the **SL pictures that touch us** January Contest. Theme: Reflections
Hair: Doe - Spring Breeze (gacha)
Clothes: -Pixicat- Breeze.Tunic (Cream) & Blueberry - Melanie High Waist Capri Jeans
Pose: *!R.O!* Violin BENTO 3 Pose Set w/ Mesh Vionlin
Plants & Dragonflies: [ keke ]
Papers: ~ASW~ The Distant Storm Papers
Pose: CuCa Designs - Your Master (couple bento pose)
мy мυѕιc "Nine Inch Nails - Meet Your Master""
"Bow down in position
Against the polished steel
This is something different
You'll like the way this feels
No time for asking question
No time for wondering
We've heard enough from you now
We've heard everything
We're going to play a new game
You'll put on this blindfold
You'll do what we tell you
You'll do as you're told
Used to be the leader
But now comes the time to serve
Maybe we show some mercy
Maybe you get what you deserve"
nice evening cloud ships in the sky above Puerto Ingeniero Ibanez
Many thanks for comments and visits ;-)
This beautiful waterfall was our destination after an hour-long ramble in the Whirinaki. A gorgeous spot to stop and have some lunch and play with the camera - a shower cap worked a treat on the lens to keep the water spray at a minimum.
Amazingly we saw no one else on this track both ways - just us and the native birds including a good number of Kaka which was great to see in a totally natural environment.
Lee Landscape Polariser
© Dominic Scott 2022
he doesn't ask much as a dictator, just don't ask him to move off the couch and feed him promptly 2x a day ...or else
La Cappella del Barolo is a never-consecrated building located in La Morra, in the Langhe region. It was reinterpreted in 1999 by the artists Sol LeWitt and David Tremlett.
The building was originally built around 1914 by some farmers working in the surrounding countryside and vineyards as a place of refuge and temporary shelter in case of storms or other weather.
In 1971 the building was bought, together with the surrounding land, by the Ceretto family. After falling into disuse and years of neglect, in 1999 the Ceretto family entrusted a modernist reinterpretation to the genius of artists Sol LeWitt, who did the external renovation, and David Tremlett, who repainted the entire interior.
On the outside, the building is characterized by geometric shapes in strong, vivid colors designed by Sol LeWitt, a master of conceptual art.
Text adapted from Wiki (italian version).
© Rainer Merkl
Wingardium Leviosa. It was the first spell she learned and, as it turns out, is one of her best spells. At first she could barely lift anything, or everything would backfire. Now? Now she could pull a person up by their clothing or move an object from across the room. Still, this didn’t mean she didn’t have to practice.
“Wingardium Leviosa,” she said quietly to herself and smiled as her books and papers lifted up around her.
Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius)
My best photos are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
More TICINO/TESSIN Wildlife Photos (all taken in my garden in Monteggio/Ti, Switzerland): it.lacerta-bilineata.com/ramarro-occidentale-lacerta-bili...
If you're interested, you'll find a more detailed closeup here (it's the 8th photo from the top): www.lacerta-bilineata.com/western-green-lizard-lacerta-bi...
My latest ANIMAL VIDEO (it's very brief but pretty unusual: a tiny wall lizard attacks two young great tits): www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQqkSsyrm7E
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO: MY LONG AND ARDUOUS JOURNEY TO BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY
If you've set yourself the challenge of exclusively shooting the wildlife in your own back yard, you might find - as I did - that bird photography is really, really hard.
It's not that reptiles are easy to photograph either, mind - but at least the ones in my garden stay (for the most part) on the ground, and one can learn how to carefully approach them with a camera. They're also clearly egoists, which from a photographer's point of view is is a great character trait: if a lizard detects a human in its vicinity, it's only interested in saving its own skin, and it won't alarm its buddies.
But birds... oh man. Over the years, my feathered friends and I have developed a lovely routine that now defines our peaceful co-existence. As soon as I as much as open a window (let alone the door), I'm instantly greeted by an eruption of panicky fluttering and hysterical shouts from my garden: "SAVE YOUR WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND FLY FOR YOUR LIVES: THE HAIRLESS, PINK MONSTER IS COMING!!! (Yes, I speak bird, and I know that this is exactly what they are shouting 😉).
Needless to say, with the exception of the redstart I already showed here, all my efforts to get the kind of detailed shots I usually strive for with my nature photography ended in complete failure and utter disillusionment. I was ready to give up on stalking the winged misanthropes in my garden altogether, but then winter came - and changed everything.
One day this past January I observed my neighbor Signora P - a kind, elderly Italian lady - putting something on the low garden wall in front of my house. At first I thought she was just putting some treat there for her cat Romeo; the young tom patrols that wall constantly (it's his favorite spot in the garden, and during the warmer months he usually lurks in the thick foliage next to it to prey on lizards).
But once I detected a lot of movement on that wall through my window, I understood she had put a little pile of bread crumbs there; she was feeding the birds who soon arrived in flocks. This was certainly well-intended on my neighbor's part, but her noble action came with a catch, and I'm afraid quite literally.
When I took a stroll through my garden the next day I discovered a suspicious amount of feathers on the ground next to the wall. Romeo had apparently switched from his low-calorie summer diet (lizard) to more energy-rich meals consisting of "fowl" (it was winter after all, so from a nutritionist's point of view this made sense).
I would find fresh traces of Romeo's victims (mostly feathers, but also the odd wing) in my garden over the following days; so my first intuition that my neighbor was feeding her cat hadn't been that far off after all, as Romeo was now clearly being "served" fresh birds on a daily basis. And although the hungry visitors seemed to be aware of the danger and became slightly more prudent, they just couldn't resist the tasty snacks Signora P put on that wall - and neither could Romeo.
It was obvious that I had to act, but talking to my neighbor - who is as stubborn as she is kind - would have been futile, I knew that much. I pondered the matter long and hard - until a light bulb went off in my head. The idea was genius. If successful, what I had in mind would not only increase the birds' chances of surviving Romeo's appetite, but also greatly benefit my own photographic endeavors.
I started to enact my master plan the very next day by buying a giant bag of bird feed (consisting mainly of sunflower seeds) from the store. Then I dragged a huge piece of a tree trunk (approx. 120 cm in height) that we normally chop firewood on from the shed out into the garden and emptied almost half of the bag's content on top of it. Signora P's buffet for birds (and cats) was about to get some serious competition 😊.
My reasoning was as follows: not only would the birds be lured away from the fatally low garden wall to a place where they were safe from the cat - there was nothing around that tree trunk that provided cover for a predator, and the birds had a nice 360° view around it at all times - but I was also able to photograph them while hiding in the shed.
However, in order for my plan to work there was one little extra measure I had to take, and it was one that risked lowering my own life expectancy considerably once the owner of the property - my mom - discovered it. You see, our shed is completely windowless, so if I wanted to use it as a blind, I had no choice but to cut a hole into one of its wooden walls... which I promptly did (I figured all's fair in love - and photography 😉).
Granted, I have absolutely zero carpentering skills, and it showed. That hole was an ugly mess: the shed's wall seemed to have had an encounter with Jack Nicholson's ax-wielding lunatic character from the film 'The Shining'. Needless to say, I was incredibly proud of my work (I mean, come on: there now was a hole where before there wasn't a hole, and it was big enough for the lens of my camera to peek through, so it was mission accomplished as far as I was concerned).
Now all I had to do was wait for the birds to discover the tree trunk. In the meantime I started to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable confrontation with my mom and go through possible explanations for that splintering hole in the wall (it was either gonna be a rabid woodpecker attack or an emergency rescue mission with a feeding tube for a little kid that had accidentally locked himself inside the shed - both seemed valid options, though I slightly preferred the locked-in kid due to the involved drama and heroism 😉).
A whole day went by, and not a single bird visited the sunflower seeds. I had expected that it might take a few hours until the first of the ever curious great tits or blue tits would show up, but given how tiny my garden is, an entire day seemed excessive. Then another day came and went: the birds kept flocking to the bread crumbs on the wall, and my tree trunk kept collecting dust. To add injury to insult, a few fresh feathers on the ground were proof that Romeo was still feasting.
It was incredibly frustrating: I provided my winged guests with a much better view - plus a higher chance of surviving the cuisine - than Signora P's place; I risked (almost) certain death at the hands of my own mother (OK, the act of vandalism on the shed I had committed for my own benefit, but still), yet the birds kept ignoring me.
Then, after three days, just before sunset, I spotted a single blue tit on the tree trunk picking away at the sunflower seeds.
When I got up the next morning I immediately realized that the loud noise that accompanies each and every tit activity had shifted from the wall to the shed. At last the dam had broken: there was a flurry of movement around the tree trunk, and I counted at least 5 different species of birds feasting on the sunflower seeds.
From day 4 onward my plan worked beautifully: the birds now indeed mostly ignored Romeo's "snack wall" and kept to the tree trunk. And yes, I was able to play peeping tom from behind the shed's wall and photograph them!! 😊
Thus, dear readers, I finally managed to produce some acceptable bird photos, and I had even saved my feathered friends from a deadly foe in the process. All through winter and spring I took advantage of my new bird hide, and in late May I started mixing some cherries with the sunflower seeds. The idea was to attract a Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius), and as you can see, it worked!
It took me almost three weeks and more than a few tricks to capture that clever fella, but given how long I've been rambling here already, that's a story for another day. As for my mom, she still doesn't know about the hole in the wall, so please don't snitch! 😉.
I hope you like the photo and wish you all a wonderful weekend! Many greetings from Switzerland, and as always: let me know what you think in the comments 🙏 😊 ❤!
P.S. if anyone has their own funny tale about the obstacles we photographers are prepared to overcome for a desired photo, please write it in the comments: I love such stories 😊
Great Potoo - Wild - At Pantanal - MT.
With its characteristic drawn-out moaning growl, the vocalizations of the Great Potoo are among the most exciting and perhaps most unsettling nocturnal sounds in the Neotropics. Apart from its vocalizations, the Great Potoo is an intriguing species. Great Potoos are nocturnal and feed on large flying insects, and occasionally bats, which they capture in sallies from a high perch. During the day, they remain motionless in mimic of broken tree branches. The Great Potoo is distributed throughout humid and semihumid forested habitats in Central and South America. Across this vast region, there is little geographic variation in size or in plumage; two subspecies sometimes are recognized, but these do not differ greatly from each other. Despite the lack of conspicuous geographic variation, populations on either side of the Andes have been found to be very distinct genetically. This level of divergence is similar to the genetic divergence found between other species of potoo, pointing the possibility for ‘cryptic’ species within the Great Potoo lineage. neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/Species-Account/nb/species/...
Happy Thursday!
Thanks a lot for your visits, comments, faves, invites, etc. Very much appreciated!
© All my images are protected under international authors copyright laws and may not be downloaded, reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without my written explicit permission. All rights reserved. Please contact me at thelma.gatuzzo@gmail.com if you intend to buy or use any of my images.
Nikon D610
Sigma 100-400 f5/6.3
Prote filtre Benro FH100M3
Filtre Benro master cpl
Trépied Benro mach3 TMA38CL
Rotule Sunwayfoto FB-44IIDDHi
Young leopard, Auob calcrete ridge, Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park
Copyright © Gerda van Schalkwyk 2020 - All Rights Reserved
Thank you to one of my flickr friends for giving me some much needed inspiration! flic.kr/p/X536V9 She posted a fabulous tutorial in her picture description. I had a BLAST taking this shot! :)
Zenit 122 (1990)
Super-Takumar 55mm
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Mi galeria en Color www.flickr.com/photos/samycolor
Mi Galeria en B&N www.flickr.com/photos/samycollazo
Arista Edu 100
Kodak D-76
Lightroom 3
Epson Perfection V500 Scanner
Les objectifs à très grandes ouvertures, souvent appelés les “bokeh masters”, font rêver. Ultra lumineux, ils permettent de travailler en basse lumière, créer une profondeur de champ très réduite et magnifier un sujet en développant un flou en avant/arrière très prononcé.
°°°°°°°°°°°
Very wide aperture lenses, often called “bokeh masters”, are the stuff of dreams. Ultra-bright, they allow you to work in low light, create a very shallow depth of field and magnify a subject by developing a very pronounced front-to-back blur.
Norfolk Southern train 955 was deadheading home to Altoona from the 2026 Masters golf outing in Augusta under a gorgeous spring sky.
NS used the train to wine dine and shake down the customers, shareholders and 1 percenters while in Georgia and was rolling north out of Hagerstown to head home and prepare for the next outing to please the clients.
Disclaimer-a wire was removed via AI to improve the image. Nothing else was enhanced, added or removed.
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present” - Master Oogway
Galápagos giant tortoise, chelonoidis niger is given a black and white conversion to enhance the swirls and patterns on its textured head. #edit
… that, and the focus was just a little on the soft side + camera shake.
Photographed Australia Zoo, 2023
The Götheborg slipped silently away yesterday evening taking with it my dreams and aspirations... well....maybe not that silently as she fired some cannon shots on the way out of the harbour!
Sadly the sails remained furled.
I do have some more on board shots to show you later!
Master Gardener Tour, June 24, 2023 in Sequim, Washington. Six homes were opened to the public exhibiting a vast array of flowers and other ornamental lawn and yard art.
Leica M-P & Summilux-M 35mm . ND Filter 1.5
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my written permission.
© Toni_V. All rights reserved.
Chuck-Will's-Widow (Antrostomus carolinensis)
Buffalo National River, Arkansas, U.S.A.
A Chuck-will's-widow roosts quietly on a tree branch, camouflaged by its cryptic plumage.
I was thrilled to find one of these birds while hiking along the bluffs above the Buffalo River. This nocturnal species is the largest nightjar species in North America and the only one I've ever seen. Unfortunately, it is currently classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN.
The spectacular Buffalo National River in northern Arkansas holds the distinction of being the first National River in the United States. Stretching 153 miles (246 km), it was officially protected on March 1, 1972, through an Act of Congress. This designation put an end to repeated efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build dams along its course.