Collectibles
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Pretty much every natural beach in Alaska looks like this. In it's on way this beach is as beautiful as a sandy beach.
As these two were doing at Bryce Canyon National Park.
Every year, Bryce Canyon National Park awes visitors with spectacular geological formations and brilliant colors. The towering hoodoos, narrow fins, and natural bridges seem to deny all reason or explanation, leaving hikers gazing around with jaws agape in wondrous incredulity. This surreal landscape is what brings people from around the world to visit Bryce Canyon National Park.
How are those Hoodoos and fins formed? It starts with rainwater seeping into cracks in the rock. The water freezes during Bryce’s cold nights, expands and breaks apart the rock. The deep, narrow walls called “fins” result from rain and snowmelt running down the slopes from Bryce’s rim. Eventually the fins form holes (called windows), and when the windows grow larger they collapse and create the bizarre hoodoos that we see today.
... at Little Town
"Ideals [and dreams] are like stars,
you will not succeed in touching them with your hands,
but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters,
you choose them as your guide,
and following them, you reach your destiny."
- Carl Schurz
(Cica Ghost's installation "Little Town" (with little additions)/ Region: "Taboo Rock")
In the first day that I was in the fields (a Sunday), there were many cars and many people there as you may saw in the previous photos.
Most of them were photographing the flowers, other up the hill having lunch, buying artcraft products, observing the destroyed city or searching for the better viewing angle to see the wonderful mosaic of colors - a splendid gift from nature with human intervention.
I realized that people were having so much fun there, each one in his own way, but the most popular game was certainly collecting memories.
I know a million people have
taken a picture of this bike but it's just so pretty I couldn't resist.
Taken at the Amazingly Beautiful and Peaceful Elvion
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Quiet/136/56/26
Flower Basket Bike is by
dust bunny & consignment
" The bee collects honey from flowers in such a way as to do the least damage or destruction to them, and he leaves them whole, undamaged and fresh, just as he found them."
--- Saint Francis de Sales
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You have a safe and lovely weekend
A mural with a task to collect them all. I will see if I can find more …..;-))
Found it in Arnhem.
Happy Wall Wednesday !
This picture of my granddaughter was taken back in 2014. I first processed it shortly after it was taken and have redone it a couple of times as my processing skills have improved. Other artists have used the image to paint an oil painting and a watercolor painting. Since the last time I worked with this image my Photoshop skills have improved significantly, thanks to several online course, and I have also added a few tools to my tool box. In the past year I have been focusing on learning texturing, knowledge which I applied generously to this image.
Thank you all for your views, faves, and comments.
"El universo a punto de estallar
(...)
Colecciono planetas
Me hace falta una estrella para quien girar"
"The universe about to explode
(...)
I collect planets
I am missing one star for whom to spin around"
Siddharta: youtu.be/eHUtRKRx_60
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 😊
What to do when you have a lot of hay bales to collect up .. pile them up as high as they will go, put a few more on, then drive off, of course! A scene witnessed while relaxing on the balcony having lunch.
A scene repeated throughout the Kenyan countryside. Outside of tourism the key industry in Kenya seemed to be agriculture which was labour intensive and virtually devoid of mechanisation.
... there’s probably one in here. 68, High Street, Hastings.
6’8d - six shillings and eightpence - was a third of the old pre decimal British pound. Twelve pennies in a shilling. Twenty shillings in a pound. It was all rather complicated but there were certain tricks to make multiplication and addition easier, which I’ve now forgotten. If we were to go back to that system, and nothing would surprise me now, a lot of people would have difficulty with it - there would have to be an app.
I remember 6’8d once being the price of a “single” vinyl record.
lesclairsdelunederoxaane.blogspot.com/2022/01/portrait-co...
Beauty Style| ✈︎ Clef de peau╰☆╮Kiko EvoX skin w/Lelutka Ceylon EvoX╰☆╮
Nails Style| ✈︎ DO INK @ Unik╰☆╮Maria nails╰☆╮
Macro Mondays theme is "sewing notions." I had to laugh because I cannot thread a needle and the only thing I have ever sewn was a simple shift in 6th grade Home Economics class and that was a mandatory assignment. To make matters worse, we had to wear our dress to class upon completion. My shift was so poorly made I had to wear a sweater over it because the armholes were way too little. That was in Houston, Texas and the temps that day were almost triple digits. So....above I displayed a simple button I have been wanting to sew on a blouse and it has been put on the back burner for at least half a year. Just can't do it! I would much rather bake a cake any day!
Did you know, huimmingbirds collect spider webs and use them to make nests. They use spider webs to glue there nest together. I have seen them use lichen and and other small pieces of material with the spider web to bind them together and there nest is only about the size of a walnut as you can see in the image I shot below.
California State University Fullerton
Campus has very few people allowed right now and I have been told that this is a very rare. I am taking advantage of this opportunity while it last. CSUF hopes to bring students back this Fall.
As if, the sunlight was trapped in between the petals of this pink flowers. No flash, no lighting support, purely sunlight...
Better View On Black