Theme of the Week: WOOD
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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 😊
This week's FlickrFriday theme is: #BestWishes
Le thème de ce FlickrFriday est: #Meilleurs vœux
O tema desta FlickrFriday é: #Muitas felicidades
本次 FlickrFriday 主題: #最好的祝愿FlickrFriday-Thema der Woche: #Die besten Wünsche
El tema de FlickrFriday es: #Los mejores deseos
When I started to photograph flowers and insects were what I photographed the most. Over the years my choice clearly shifted to other stuff.
Did you experience such a change in your photography style as you well?
I wonder what will come next for me 😉
A view of Lake Te Anau as we left the glow worm caves in a fast ferry boat. No photos allowed inside the caves but it was like looking up at a starry sky just a short distance from our faces in pitch black darkness. Our guide was silently pulling our small boat through the darkness somehow avoiding the walls of the cave and the other boat we knew went out into the cave lake before us.
Thanks for visiting and I look forward to comments!
PS. Easy to take photos like this travel.usnews.com/rankings/worlds-best-vacations/?src=usn_fb
My choice for the "Macro Mondays" "Redux 2018 Theme :"Flame"
A Very Happy and Peaceful Christmas to you all
One of my attempts at the "Macro Mondays" theme "pie".
Shot with a Noritsu "60-90 mm F 4.5-5.6" (enlarging) lens on a Canon EOS R5.
Macro Mondays theme In Ice
A simple image of a frozen snow drop.
I experimented with various ideas until I gave I up. The trouble with ice is that it has a tendency to melt and by the time you get to a subject or composition that you like it's all over and gone.
After a few days of messing around and sad news coming in that my Godmother had been taken gravely ill with the virus, I found this solitary snow drop that I had frozen last week. It seemed quite apt under the circumstances.
This photo is dedicated to all those who have lost loved ones to this awful virus.
HMM
[The width of the ice cube is 3cm, the overall image is around 7cm and within the MM requirements.]
Done for the Macro Mondays theme of Music. This is a reworking of an upload from 2 years ago, however it was not previously an MM image. Mild texture was applied here.
It's a windy, cool and cloudy day in Jerusalem in the high 60's/f.
Happy Macro Monday!
For the theme with a Z I took a picture of this voorjaarsZonnebloem in Dutch. In English this is leopard’s bane, familie of the sunflower
The flowerheads are about 4 cm. They are blooming from April till June.
Thanks for taking time to fave, comment and look at my work. I really appreciate.
Theme - Junk
From my Jewellery Junk Draw, my favourite earings that broke and I'll never throw them out :)
Bicycle chain. Less than 1 1/2 inches. Square format. Photograped above a T-shirt background placed on the pavement.
Chose a theme for this day’s shoot and it was blue, so set off for Stampede Reservoir to maybe find some great blue sky shots, as the dam was crossed this view seemed to say, this is it, the theme shot of the day…. With the water so low and the contrast of the land and the blue of the sky and water I stopped and took some shots of the area showing the rocky foreground but none of those grasped the theme so took this one with nothing in the foreground but the water and liked it best. As a rule in landscape photography there should be something in the foreground but sometimes rules just do not work and need to be broken. Go for it.