A snowy day of winter scenery over high peaks and high cliffs with dramatic clouds, 2,962 meters of Zugspitze, Bavaria, Germany.

GPS might not the exact point of this photo.

Have a lovely day everyone! ❤️

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Blaksæter, Vestland county, Western Norway

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Over There, Amsterdam

Most of my photographs are available for sale as high quality print.

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IMG_1017 2021 07 15 file

Olympus em-1

Paulding County, GA

And we'll play all day! ;-)

See the Playground On Black

I'll Take You There

tuffetto nel Parco del Ticino

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Blog Post :#225

A Squadron of 21 Canada Geese heading for the coast just before dawn in the Sunflower field. Thanks for looking and have a safe week.

This Grote's Buck Moth caterpillar was crossing over our welcome mat. Zoom in and see the incredible details on the skin, besides all the spikey hairs.

Bridging over the land. The Owachomo Bridge in southern Utah.

From this angle the Eiffel tower has a delicate, almost ethereal, structure. Rescued from an old Kodachrome slide,

© All rights reserved.

Augustus posing very nicely for once, apart from the strand of grass sticking out of his mouth.

Texture is Painted Clouds by ghostbones/skeletalmess which is appropriate as we have another storm on the way.

Sometimes you gotta take the jump

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

The setting sun over Blakeney in Norfolk on the 28th September. Looking west from Blakeney Quay outside Blakeney Hotel.

Taken on iPhone 11 Pro Max.

One from last Wednesday when we took a wander up the Afon Lloer cascades to get that classic shot of the falls and Tryfan.

It was a fun afternoon but I think by the end I was the only one left with dry feet, the water was very boggy and we all had a few slips and falls on the way up and down. I did want to venture further up the hill but in the end, we decided to call it a day happy with what we had.

I did this little hike on my first visit in April and the area was covered in snow, this time it was full of Autumn colour and looked amazing. This shot was actually taken on our way back down, and as there have been a few shots of this area posted on Facebook and Instagram over the last few days I thought I'd post a different view rather than a shot with the falls in.

And I don't wanna see what I've seen

To undo what has been done

Turn off all the lights

Let the morning come

Now there's green light in my eyes

And my lover on my mind

And I'll sing from the piano, tear my yellow dress and

Cry and cry and cry

Over the love of you

On this champagne, drunken hope

Against the current, all alone

Everybody, see, I love him

'Cause it's a feeling that you get

When the afternoon is set

On a bridge into the city

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over

South towards Edinburgh. The island is Inchkeith, Arthur's Seat on the left and the Pentland Hills behind

Dreamy visit~

to see the detail of my outfit please check my blog link : 🌙

(no mp link no sim link included)

the church and sluice at Weurt, with the new observation tower

a walk on hathersage moor, peak district national park

518. Montgomery County, New York. Pentax K3

Darkness is settling over the town of Minturn, that sits at the foot of Tennessee Pass on Rio Grande’s Royal Gorge Route main line. Three EMD SD40T-2 Tunnel Motors used as helpers for trains on the arduous 3-percent grade up the pass, snooze near the small enginehouse in the yard on the evening of July 5, 1987.

► Full Credits HERE ◄

Outfit: Galagher - Jennifer Fatpack @ Dubai

Hair: Nova. Aloft // Blended Kit

Facetattoo: Leven Ink -Memento Face Tattoo

I took this photo from the third balloon about 4400 ft above the red rocks.

After the sun slides over the edge

We have had about 30 cm/ 1 ft of so in Norfolk over the past few days and it's just started snowing again. Although we get some some every winter this amount is unusual.

Taken over my garden wall near Fulmodeston, Norfolk, England.

It sure looks like a fine early afternoon in Brookfield, as Lonnie captured this view looking over the top of his ribside marker, of westbound hotshot 263 while clearing onto the Prairie du Chien mainline.

Milwaukee Train 263

MILW 160,155,159

Brookfield, WI.

September 1975

Lonnie Maves photo,

D.A.Longley collection

All Rights Reserved

A red lake is bordered by sandy shore, forming an interesting pattern, do you know the name of this lake?

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 in 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 😊

*Working Towards a Better World

The greedy are taking over and leaving those who have very little with less still. This too must and will change.