Mud Lake Photography (Britannia)
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Rothschild's swordtail (left) and other butterfly eating minerals on river bank in Manu National Park.
Mud-puddling, or simply puddling, is a behaviour most conspicuous in butterflies, but occurs in other animals as well, mainly insects; they seek out nutrients in certain moist substances such as rotting plant matter, mud and carrion and they suck up the fluid. Where the conditions are suitable, conspicuous insects such as butterflies commonly form aggregations on wet soil, dung or carrion. From the fluids they obtain salts and amino acids that play various roles in their physiology, ethology and ecology.
Protesilaus earis, the Rothschild's swordtail, is a species of butterfly found in the Neotropical realm.
Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, Manú National Park
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Seal enjoying the mud at Walton back waters.
Going to Bempton cliffs for a few days, it's somewhere I've always wanted to go! So consequently I won't be posting anything for a few days, but I'll try and keep an eye on everyone's posts! Just praying for some decent weather and plenty of local ale!
There is an almost alive quality with fresh-molded mud that makes me want to cry when someone has gone slip-sliding across its folds and joints. I try to leave it as I found it to delight the next person who chooses to admire its unique beauty.
Something different today....
Many swallows built these impressive and unique mud nests on one side of Yellowstone's Soda Butte.
For some reason they didn't stick around to pose for me....
Soda Butte in comments.
Thanks for taking a look! Always appreciated.
American coots display several interesting breeding habits; mothers will preferentially feed offspring with the brightest plume feathers, which has resulted in coot chicks having brightly ornamented plumage which becomes drabber as they age.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_coot
Central Park, Ormond Beach. Florida, USA
www.alltrails.com/trail/us/florida/ormond-beach-central-p...
The Fabled "Mud Cracks" of Death Valley during an early spring sunrise.
After getting a couple good shots on the card, here in Death Valley, I started to move around and explore the area a little more. The best spots were already covered by other photographers. I found this spot with a nice crack and quickly pulled up the center column and set up my tripod to shoot horizontally so that I could spread out the legs and shot as low as the tripod could go as to capitalize on the crack. One good thing about having all those photogs there is you always have a subject to use for scale, that is if if you don't mind using photoshop to clone them out, i just shoot all the other guys in there and remove them later in post. That's what I did, I removed 3 other guys from the shot but left this one in for scale. Don't let the crowd keep you from getting a shot.
Thanks for taking the time to take a look at my photos, and as always, your views, comments, faves, and support are greatly appreciated!! Have a great weekend my friends!! :)
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House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) When you have a bath in a muddy puddle even the splashes are muddy!
A resident swallow in the country often sighted in the countryside continuously gliding close to water bodies and around puddles on dirt roads. They are also the most common swallows to see at eye level, the others like the the Barn swallows and the Streak Throated Swallows are bit tough to get that level.
The birds often nest under road drains, bridges or culverts. They swoop wet mud from wet areas and then build their nest in a laborious process.
During my Himalayan trip , I found a small flock of these birds picking up mud next to a small hand pump in a muddy patch. They were making multiple trips in building their nests. I wondered where they are setting up their nests for a while and finally found the answer. The birds were laying nests in the roof corners of shops in the area. And the shopkeepers did not mind the nests and Swallows inside their nests much to my delight. The ceiling is only like 8 feet in most places (to keep the heat at ground level) and they don't use fans due to the cold.
Many thanks in advance for your views, likes and faves. Much appreciated.
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Was going through old photos and came across the original of this (see below) and a photoshopped version from that time period. I decided I'd like to rework it, and so brought the photoshopped version into the Develop module of Lr where I slud the shadows all the way to the right, and made it black and white. Oh, and cropped it a bit.
Then it was exported as a brand new Ps file. First, as usual, luminosity based channels were created in the channels panel, using information from Tony Kuyper.
An adjustment layer for photo filter was created next. I wanted to create a duotone, and so filters were used to create reddish tones and masked to only allow them to affect lighter mid tones and blue was used with masking to only allow that effect on darker mid tones.
In a screen shot of the photo below, one can see the expanded Layers panel and the expanded Channels panel. The Channels panel shows the luminosity based channels created using information from Tony Kuyper. These channels aren't the ones originally created. At times I would delete all of them and create new ones as the photo changed over time.
In the Layers panel one can see the photo filter layers with the masks created from the channels, so that the filter effects are constrained to particular luminosity based pixels.
Next are dodge burn layers. They are 50% grey filled, set to soft light blend mode so they are invisible. But if white or black is painted on them, it's akin to dodging and burning. One of the things I have taken from Tony Kuyper's information is the use of those luminosity based channels, creating self feathering selections and painting "through" them onto an active layer like a dodge burn, with lowered opacities of white or black to build the effect that is desired.
Then there are Curves adjustment layers to lighten some of the darkest pixels. Then more dodge burn layers.
There are more photo filter layers placing color in certain areas, some based in lighter pixels, some in dark, and some in mid tones. Again constrained by the use of those luminosity based channels, some subtracted from others.
I often use the high pass filter to create sharpening. Generally I use the luminosity based channels to create a mask preventing the high pass filter from affecting the lighter pixels. This time, I used those channels to prevent the high pass filter from affecting the dark pixels and only affect the light pixels. I wanted some extreme effects. And actually copied the high pass layer so it was doubled in its effect.
And when looking at the original image, the result is pretty extreme. Press L to view full screen.
I hope everyone's slider sunday is going well.
After spending the day at the Knoxville Zoo, far from home, it was nice to get back into my old stomping ground, and bring my friend back to experience nature in a different way. This of course is one of the elk I have been documenting for the past few years with my photography, strong, proud, antlers not symmetrical, and in this case, covered in mud. I managed to miss the large animal thrashing in the mud puddle, though the ranger I stopped to talk to gave me a full account. Of course this individual was apparently giddy for the rut a bit early, and was making a bit of a scene, despite that, I gathered my wits about me, and began capturing fresh images.
Aperture: f8
ISO: 800
SS: 1/250th
Focal: 560mm
Fujinon 100-400mm TC 1.4X
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Another from the Saturday outing with John Cothron. This is Mud Creek Falls in Georgia's highest city, Sky Valley.
We are fortunate to have Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Idaho, here in the valley, just a 15 minute drive from home. I didn't have any luck finding wildlife there today, so looked for landscapes and found this mud circle. The area is a salty mud flat where I have photographed acres of bright red pickleweed in the past. Today most of the plants were gone, leaving a soggy mud flat and a few mysterious circles like this one. Each circle has a cluster of dead plants in the center. I suspect that the area around each plant is a little higher that the mud around it, so it has dried more than the rest of the mud flat, forming a light colored circle. The dark mud was still wet and sticky, so my hiking boots are a caked, muddy mess.
Though warthogs appear ferocious, they are basically grazers. They eat grasses and plants, and also use their snouts to dig or “root” for roots or bulbs. When startled or threatened, warthogs can be surprisingly fast, running at speeds of up to 30 miles an hour.
Warthogs are adaptable and are able to go long periods without water, as much as several months in the dry season.
When water is available, warthogs will seek it and often submerge to cool down. They will also wallow in mud for the same purpose—and to gain relief from insects. Birds also aid these hogs in their battle with insects; oxpeckers and other species sometimes ride along on their warthog hosts, feeding on the tiny creatures invading their hides.
Seventh picture of the series Canes & Mud.
(Is part of a third session, dawn last Saturday, with much softer lights. What do you think about this another sunrise? Soon I will post new photos of both session.)
Magical sunrise in this beautiful place that is the Albufera of Valencia.
The image title is because during the photoshoot, surrounded by all this beauty, calm water, boat, reeds, mud, tranquility, flying birds ... every moment reminded me a lot to the great novel "Cañas y Barro" of the great Valencian writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, set in rural Valencia (Albufera) of the early twentieth century, the novel observes and portrays the social reality of the time and place with absolute precision.
Would like to thank this picture to my friend Javier Girbés, which helped me a lot with the location and encouraged me to know this magnificent spot.
On the technical side, say that I only used a neutral gradient three steps filter.
I hope you like it. Have a nice Friday. :)
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Autumn and winter is when most female grey seals haul themselves ashore to give birth.
It seems like a strange time to do it, when icy winds are blowing and the nights are long. One explanation is that after a summer of catching fish, the females are simply in great shape to feed their young.
When pups are born the mothers spin round to sniff them and get to know their smell. The pups are covered in fluffy white fur, not good camouflage on sand or pebbles you might think, but that's because it's a relic from the ice age when they would have been born on snow!
Female grey seals are dedicated parents, spending several weeks feeding their pups and losing up-to 65kg in the process. The pups drink two and a half litres of milk every day and it's so rich pups can grow by as much as 30kg in two weeks.
After a month or so, females leave their pups and head back out to sea where they feed and mate again. The pups can spend up to two weeks all alone on the beach while they build up the courage (and the right fur) to take the plunge into the sea and learn to fish for themselves.
This little camper was walking through the mud with her purple umbrella after a thankfully, small mud slide that didn't cause too much damage. I found it to be a nice color contrast. Hope you enjoy!
What you get when walking around in a muddy cow pasture, Mud Socks as shown by this Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)
These two yellow swallowtails were flittering around and stopping down in these little mud puddles. I wondered what was up with that. In checking afterwards, they extract the sodium they can get out of mud puddles to assist them with mating, called mud-puddlin'. So, was the flittering and cavorting around a little mating ritual, or two males fighting over the mud puddles? This was taken in the Timberwolf Ponds area of the Genesee County Parks, July, 2025.
If you look closely you can see some fine wires running from the tips of the tail planes to the mid-rear fuselage on each side. These were an early form of 'friend or foe' detection; a radio signal from them helped differentiate defending RAF aircraft from others on the crude radar screens of the time.
This aircraft has a 'c' type wing, sometimes called the 'universal' wing which had provision for up to four 20mm cannon and four 0.303 Browning machine guns, although because of weight restrictions, not all could be carried at the same time without seriously degrading the aircraft performance. It is not uncommon to see two of the cannons capped off, as here. The red tape over the machine gun ports was to prevent debris from muddy airfields being blown back into the guns from the propeller while the engine was running on the ground. Wet mud could jam the guns. Of course, the first shots would go straight through the tape.
The outer machine guns were often considered to be not all that effective - the wings would vibrate when they were firing, so an ever widening cone of bullets would issue forth reducing the effectiveness on the target. The 'e' wing, which many later Spitfires sported, was a simplified 'c' wing, had the outer four machine guns bays deleted and could carry heavier machine guns and/or cannon in the four inner bays.
I can spend days appreciating the varied landscape of the desert. One place that I yearn to visit, any opportunity I get, is the Death Valley National Park. It’s easy to get lost in its vast beauty and takes some time to see the infinite lines, curves, cracks, and textures. The fun thing with mud cracks is, move your camera slightly, and you have a completely different composition. If it’s helpful, when I point my camera over the cracks, I look for a prominent shape as a focal point and use the surrounding lines to create a visual flow leading towards the background.