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IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
My best photos (mostly not on Flickr) are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/western-green-lizard-lacerta-bi...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
The fella above looks like he's about to devour me any second, but I'm happy to report that I survived the unusual encounter with him without any injuries and remain completely undigested 😄 - in fact, he didn't even threaten me.
It's a juvenile green whip snake (Hierophis viridiflavus), a non-venomous colubrid species which I photographed in my garden in Ticino (Switzerland), but as with all my pictures on Flickr, I'll try to give you a bit more context.
First of all, you have to know that I adore snakes - even though they have the nasty habit of preying on my beloved green lizards - but if you now wonder why I so far only uploaded a single snake photo here before today, the answer is that until relatively recently, I hardly had any.
The reasons for this are simple: our snakes are very shy, plus they're far from abundant. If you're lucky, you might be able to spot one, but if it also becomes aware of you, it will inevitably be gone long before you have your camera ready.
The history of human-snake interaction in Switzerland (and particularly in Ticino) has sadly not been a happy one for the reptiles, and every snake knows this. Out of ignorance, superstition and the fear they might be venomous - which most snakes in Switzerland aren't - people beat them to death wherever they found them for centuries, so you can't blame our serpentine friends for hissing "Hell, no!" and slithering to safety as fast as they can whenever they see or sense a human approaching.
There are exceptions of course; our vipers and adders sometimes rely on their camouflage and keep still rather than fleeing when you get near them - which still doesn't mean that they're inclined to pose for a selfie with you, mind - but around my village I sadly haven't come across one of those in over two decades.
So I've rarely been lucky in the snake department, but, as the famous saying goes, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity", and I took that to heart. Two years ago, I built piles of rocks and heaps of dry grass and twigs and branches all over the garden to provide basking spots and hiding places - not just for snakes but for reptiles in general - and this worked better than I could ever have hoped.
First the western green lizards came back (they had previously been driven out of my garden by my neighbors' cats), and then the snakes started showing up. Particularly the species H. viridiflavus now seems to feel very much at home on my premises, and so the opportunities to photograph my serpentine friends have increased dramatically.
They still flee as soon as they become aware of me, so a good shot is rarely a given, but since I made my my garden more reptile-friendly, the odds of getting a usable photo have gotten much, much better. Which finally brings me to the fella above.
I spotted the youngster one morning in early summer, and because I (almost) always have my camera at the ready when I enter my garden, I was able to photograph him from afar before he saw me and disappeared.
As I went back into the house to check the photos, I noticed something interesting. As expected, they were pretty bad, because I hadn't been able to get close enough, but when I enlarged them, it seemed there was something in the snake's mouth.
It looked like a small rib cage, but I couldn't be sure, so I went back into the garden to investigate, hoping the snake might have left behind whatever it had been eating when I scared it away.
And indeed, when I inspected the woodpile beneath my palm tree where I had photographed the young snake, I saw a lizard carcass. It was nothing but a rib cage with some skin and hardly any meat left - plus the two quite intact seeming hind legs.
This was very strange; as far as I was aware, green whip snakes didn't eat carrion. On the contrary: they are known to be very agile hunters - they're actually the fastest European snake species - and only eat live prey. That lizard carcass was anything but that: by the look (and smell!) of it, it was at least a couple of days old, if not more, and other animals had already done a pretty good job gnawing off the meat.
As I was still contemplating the meaning of all this, I suddenly realized something even more unusual: the snake was still there! Only a foot length away from the the dead lizard it was lurking in the shadows, motionless, observing me.
Now this was really exceptional; as already mentioned, our snake species are generally very shy, but the shiest among them are definitely the green whip snakes. In my experience, they never return to the exact same spot once you've scared them away, at least not within such a short time frame.
I slowly backed away, hoping not to spook it, cursing myself for leaving the camera attached to the computer as I went back into the house to get it. When I returned, the snake thankfully hadn't disappeared, and so I very carefully set up the tripod with the camera in front of the woodpile and waited.
After a few minutes, the snake started moving. It had a length of maybe 60-70 cm, and I would have guessed its age at around 2 to 3 years (the species can grow to a length of 150 cm, in rare cases even to almost 2 meters, which makes it one of the biggest European snake species).
The little guy was clearly aware of me, but those putrid lizard ribs were just too enticing to resist. Once he had reached the smelly object of his desire, he started to swallow it while at the same time trying to drag it away from the nasty human, back into the shadows.
Both tasks proved very difficult, however, which was very comical to watch. The carcass - the remains of a pretty sizable common wall lizard - kept getting stuck between the twigs and branches of the woodpile, but it was also simply too big for the snake's tiny mouth (while a body length of around 70 cm might seem respectable, juveniles of this species still have a rather small head by comparison).
The young snake kept trying; several times it let go of its stinky treat only to attempt to swallow it again, from pretty much every angle, but it just wouldn't work. This was exhausting business, and so in between attempts the snake understandably took some breaks, basking on the woodpile for a few minutes, before it went back to work with new vigor. It also had to clear its throat from time to time and readjust its jaws, and during one such moment I took the photo above.
In the end, it managed to drag the dead lizard out of my sight into the woodpile, at which point I left the little fella (I had been photographing and filming the scene for over an hour, and by now I felt nearly as exhausted as the snake just from watching the whole ordeal; btw, the film clip is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8x0tBpRTck ).
When I returned to the woodpile almost two hours later, the snake had come out again, still fiercely trying to devour the dead lizard. I was impressed; this time I didn't stay, because I didn't want to disturb the little guy again with my presence, but as I left I thought admiringly: "That's what I call dedication!"
As always, many thanks for reading and commenting: have a great start into the new week everyone! ❤🙏😊
P.S. @ willjatkins Did you ever encounter this species feasting on carrion or hear of such behavior, Will?
A remaster in HDR.
Shots from a decade old night out at MaiIani Junction.
Oct 2015.
Do you want me to remaster and reupload some of my pics in HDR?
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June 16, 2024 - Mirage Nebraska
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A vibrant lightning bolt cuts through a stormy night sky, illuminating clouds with a vivid purple hue. The landscape below is dark, contrasting with the dramatic burst of light above.
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Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
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IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
The color version of the photo above is here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
So far there's only been one photo in my gallery that hasn't been taken in my garden ('The Flame Rider', captured in the Maggia Valley: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/53563448847/in/datepo... ) - which makes the image above the second time I've "strayed from the path" (although not very far, since the photo was taken only approximately 500 meters from my house).
Overall, I'll stick to my "only-garden rule", but every once in a while I'll show you a little bit of the landscape around my village, because I think it will give you a better sense of just how fascinating this region is, and also of its history.
The title I chose for the photo may seem cheesy, and it's certainly not very original, but I couldn't think of another one, because it's an honest reflection of what I felt when I took it: a profound sense of peace - although if you make it to the end of this text you'll realize my relationship with that word is a bit more complicated.
I got up early that day; it was a beautiful spring morning, and there was still a bit of mist in the valley below my village which I hoped would make for a few nice mood shots, so I quickly grabbed my camera and went down there before the rising sun could dissolve the magical layer on the scenery.
Most human activity hadn't started yet, and I was engulfed in the sounds of the forest as I was walking the narrow trail along the horse pasture; it seemed every little creature around me wanted to make its presence known to potential mates (or rivals) in a myriad of sounds and voices and noises (in case you're interested, here's a taste of what I usually wake up to in spring, but you best use headphones: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfoCTqdAVCE )
Strolling through such an idyllic landscape next to grazing horses and surrounded by birdsong and beautiful trees, I guess it's kind of obvious one would feel the way I described above and choose the title I did, but as I looked at the old stone buildings - the cattle shelter you can see in the foreground and the stable further up ahead on the right - I also realized how fortunate I was.
It's hard to imagine now, because Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world today, but the men and women who had carried these stones and constructed the walls of these buildings were among the poorest in Europe. The hardships the people in some of the remote and little developed valleys in Ticino endured only a few generations ago are unimaginable to most folks living in my country today.
It wasn't uncommon that people had to sell their own kids as child slaves - the girls had to work in factories or in rice fields, the boys as "living chimney brushes" in northern Italy - just because there wasn't enough food to support the whole family through the harsh Ticino winters.
If you wonder why contemporary Swiss historians speak of "slaves" as opposed to child laborers, it's because that's what many of them actually were: auctioned off for a negotiable prize at the local market, once sold, these kids were not payed and in many cases not even fed by their masters (they had to beg for food in the streets or steal it).
Translated from German Wikipedia: ...The Piazza grande in Locarno, where the Locarno Film Festival is held today, was one of the places where orphans, foundlings and children from poor families were auctioned off. The boys were sold as chimney sweeps, the girls ended up in the textile industry, in tobacco processing in Brissago or in the rice fields of Novara, which was also extremely hard work: the girls had to stand bent over in the water for twelve to fourteen hours in all weathers. The last verse of the Italian folk song 'Amore mio non piangere' reads: “Mamma, papà, non piangere, se sono consumata, è stata la risaia che mi ha rovinata” (Mom, dad, don't cry when I'm used up, it was the rice field that destroyed me.)... de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaminfegerkinder
The conditions for the chimney sweeps - usually boys between the age of 8 and 12 (or younger, because they had to be small enough to be able to crawl into the chimneys) - were so catastrophic that many of them didn't survive; they died of starvation, cold or soot in their lungs - as well as of work-related accidents like breaking their necks when they fell, or suffocatig if they got stuck in inside a chimney. This practice of "child slavery" went on as late as the 1950s (there's a very short article in English on the topic here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spazzacamini and a more in depth account for German speakers in this brief clip: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gda8vZp_zsc ).
Now I don't know if the people who built the old stone houses along my path had to sell any of their kids, but looking at the remnants of their (not so distant) era I felt an immense sense of gratitude that I was born at a time of prosperity - and peace - in my region, my country and my home. Because none of it was my doing: it was simple luck that decided when and where I came into this world.
It also made me think of my own family. Both of my grandparents on my father's side grew up in Ticino (they were both born in 1900), but while they eventually left Switzerland's poorest region to live in its richest, the Kanton of Zurich, my grandfather's parents relocated to northern Italy in the 1920s and unfortunately were still there when WWII broke out.
They lost everything during the war, and it was their youngest daughter - whom I only knew as "Zia" which means "aunt" in Italian - who earned a little money to support herself and my great-grandparents by giving piano lessons to high-ranking Nazi officers and their kids (this was towards the end of the war when German forces had occupied Italy).
I never knew that about her; Zia only very rarely spoke of the war, but one time when I visited her when she was already over a 100 years old (she died at close to 104), I asked her how they had managed to survive, and she told me that she went to the local prefecture nearly every day to teach piano. "And on the way there would be the dangling ones" she said, with a shudder.
I didn't get what she meant, so she explained. Visiting the city center where the high ranking military resided meant she had to walk underneath the executed men and women who were hanging from the lantern posts along the road (these executions - often of civilians - were the Germans' retaliations for attacks by the Italian partisans).
I never forgot her words - nor could I shake the look on her face as she re-lived this memory. And I still can't grasp it; my house in Ticino is only 60 meters from the Italian border, and the idea that there was a brutal war going on three houses down the road from where I live now in Zia's lifetime strikes me as completely surreal.
So, back to my title for the photo above. "Peace". It's such a simple, short word, isn't it? And we use it - or its cousin "peaceful" - quite often when we mean nice and quiet or stress-free. But if I'm honest I don't think I know what it means. My grandaunt Zia did, but I can't know. And I honestly hope I never will.
I'm sorry I led you down such a dark road; I usually intend to make people smile with the anecdotes that go with my photos, but this one demanded a different approach (I guess with this latest image I've strayed from the path in more than one sense, and I hope you'll forgive me).
Ticino today is the region with the second highest average life expectancy in Europe (85.2 years), and "The Human Development Index" of 0.961 in 2021 was one of the highest found anywhere in the world, and northern Italy isn't far behind. But my neighbors, many of whom are now in their 90s, remember well it wasn't always so.
That a region so poor it must have felt like purgatory to many of its inhabitants could turn into something as close to paradise on Earth as I can imagine in a person's lifetime should make us all very hopeful. But, and this is the sad part, it also works the other way 'round. And I believe we'd do well to remember that, too.
To all of you - with my usual tardiness but from the bottom of my heart - a happy, healthy, hopeful 2025 and beyond.
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge 135 - Fiddler
Model with thanks to ackermaennchen
Created for MIXMASTER Challenge # 8
Chef jaci XIII's ingredients:
~ You must include an image of a city and ...
~ Elements from a chess set (board and/or pieces) and ...
~ A drop shadow or silhouette and ...
~ And an image from outer space (such as a planet) but ...
~ You may NOT use the color red (orange and pink are okay as long as they're clearly not red).
Thanks to Rubyblossom for pre-made background
IMPORTANT: for non-pro users who read the info on a computer, just enlarge your screen to 120% (or more), then the full text will appear below the photo with a white background - which makes reading so much easier.
My best photos (mostly not yet on Flickr) are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:
The above photo - a field poppy (Papaver rhoeas) in full bloom - is a rare exception for me, because I normally don't photograph flowers. Not because I don't like them; I assure you I hold no grudge against the most colorful emissaries of the plant kingdom, nor do I have floral allergies of any sort - it's just that I'm no good at it. Believe me, I've tried, and the results were not pretty.
I've never found out why; I adore the magnificent flower photos I encounter here on Flickr and have attempted to replicate their style many times, but it never worked. With animals I tend to know what to focus on - usually the eyes - and have at least a vague idea how to compose a shot, but with flowers I'm at a loss.
Unlike the accomplished floral compositions of the photographers I admire so much, all my efforts looked lifeless and dull, and the poor subjects in my photos ended up with about as much charm as a salad in fast food restaurant (I'm talking about the one they actually serve you - not the nice one they've photographed for the menu ;-).
Now the photo above is the first flower shot of mine that I like, even though some of you might think it is a bit a of cheat, since there is also a honeybee (Apis mellifera) visible in it. But in terms of mere percentages, there's much more poppy per-square-inch-of-photo present than bee, so to me it counts as flower photography (and my lawyer agrees ;-).
The main reason why I posted it here, however, happens to be another one, namely that it was incredibly hard earned. And I'm not referring to the photo itself but the subject in it: the poppy - or rather the poppies. You have no idea how much it took until I finally had a few of those gorgeous flowers blooming in my garden.
Some of you might recall that with my last photo, I told you about my remodeling of the garden and how I scattered seeds of wildflowers - including poppies - all over the premises to increase biodiversity. I might have given the impression that it was all smooth sailing, and that everything went just as I had hoped it would, but that isn't exactly how it happened.
In truth, it was a hard-fought battle against an almost invincible army of adversaries that tried to prevent my intended wildflower meadow for my beloved "creepy crawlies" at almost every step of the way. But I have to start at the beginning.
After I had removed the old lawn and emptied a big bag full of seeds all over the upper part of the garden, I regularly went to check on their "progress" - of which there was, unsurprisingly, none. Now I'm not a complete idiot, and I didn't expect my wildflowers to sprout right away as if they were on steroids - after all it was still February and very cold - but what struck me was that I soon didn't even see most of the seeds anymore. No matter how hard I looked - and I even dug a little in the ground - most of them seemed to have mysteriously vanished.
It didn't take me long to identify the likely suspects: a gang of siskins (Spinus spinus) had appeared in the neighborhood a while ago, and I actually had caught them red-handed (or rather red-beaked) when they were picking around on the ground where I had removed the lawn. So I went into the gardening center and bought a new "wildflower mix" - along with a huge bag of sunflower seeds.
This is how I intended to save my flowering paradise: I would just offer the siskins enough calorie-rich delicacies as an alternative to the meager wildflower seeds for as long as it took the latter to sprout. The idea was genius - or so I thought. Unfortunately I hadn't taken into account the competitive, greedy nature of my avian adversaries.
Once I had put a bunch of sunflower seeds on the tree trunk that serves as my "bird buffet", it didn't take long until the hungry flock arrived. Now the first thing you have to know about siskins is this: they really, and I mean REALLY don't like to share their food. Not with any other bird species, nor with their own kind.
The leader of the gang, a tiny - but ferocious - female immediately took possession of the tree trunk, and anyone attempting to join in the feast got chased away with a vengeance. The remaining gang members sat in the fig tree while they had to wait their turn at the buffet, which they didn't like one bit. And that's the second thing you have to know about siskins: patience is not their strong suit, and so they immediately got bored - and started looking around for other sources of food.
And guess where they found it? Exactly: within two minutes most of the rowdy bunch had fluttered onto the ground and started picking away my beautiful future wildflower meadow, one seed at a time. After all, who doesn't like a little appetizer before the main course - right?
It was a disaster. In my desperation, I didn't know anything better to do than opening and shutting the living room window loudly - which worked: the feathered little gangsters fled the crime scene immediately. So this became my new strategy: I sat near the window with my laptop all day (which I'm apt to do during the colder season anyway), and whenever I saw the siskins starting to veer away from the "official" buffet, I used this "opening-shutting" tactic to scare them back where they belonged.
Over the following days, the siskins and I continued this lovely routine: whenever the first bird showed up near the wildflower seeds: "BANG"! went my window. Unfortunately, the intervals between these bangs got increasingly shorter, because the bird buffet and the loud flock of siskins attracted other birds - as well as more siskins - to my garden.
This was obviously not what I had intended at all! Now pretty much the whole feathered neighborhood sat in my fig tree, impatiently waiting until the next ravenous little bird at the buffet had finally had its fill and vacated the tree trunk, and to pass the time the hungry onlookers would inevitably start searching for other delicacies in my garden.
It got to the point - and this is the sad truth - where I opened and shut the window almost every five minutes! I can only imagine what my neighbors thought (although they're used to many weird, mostly garden-related activities from me and probably stopped wondering ;-), not to mention any unsuspecting tourists passing my house, who must have believed it was haunted by a poltergeist. :-)
Then, one day, the whole flock of Spinus spinus was gone - just as they had appeared out of nowhere a few weeks earlier, they'd now left without prior notice, presumably to pursue their seed-stealing activities further south and bully some other poor wanna-be gardener. "Problem solved!" I thought, and opened a bottle of champagne (well, it was just a beer, but you get the idea ;-)
Once the siskins were gone, the other birds co-existed much more peacefully around the tree trunk/buffet, and I was soon able to reduce my window-shutting duties to a minimum. As temperatures in March gradually got warmer, I expected the first tiny wildflower saplings to emerge from the ground - but still nothing happened. I was getting worried, so I went to investigate. A close inspection of the ground led to a shocking surprise: there was no trace of the seeds.
I couldn't believe it. I had no explanation; by now I was sure it couldn't have been the birds - so who was secretly sabotaging my future wildflower meadow? Was it my neighbors? Had I finally gone too far with my window-banging after all my previous, highly suspicious "creepy-crawly-furthering" activities over the years?
I tried to imagine them all coming together in my garden during the night as I was sleeping, a group of men and women mostly in their late 80s and 90s (I'm by far the youngest inhabitant of our village), armed with tiny tweezers to pluck the seeds out of the ground, to punish me for disturbing the quiet in our peaceful community. It just didn't make any sense (though I didn't rule it out completely ;-)
I was at my wits end, but I'm stubborn as hell: I had made up my mind to have a wildflower meadow, and I would will it into being - regardless of the costs. So I went into the gardening center once more to purchase yet another "wildflower mix", or rather several (I bought three bags, which theoretically should have provided enough seeds to turn the entire area around our village into a blooming paradise ;-).
I scattered the content of one bag in the garden as I had done before, but now I went to check on the seeds every day. And each time I checked, they had become fewer - there could be no doubt about it. It was truly puzzling: whoever the thieves were, they kept their identity hidden; I even went into the garden at night several times with a flashlight, but I never saw any small rodents or other possible suspects.
Then, one day in late March, as I was closely scanning the ground, I noticed something peculiar: a particularly large seed appeared to be moving all by itself across the dark earth. Imagine my disbelief: the thought that the seeds themselves were leaving my garden of their own volition had obviously never crossed my mind! What an insult - was my garden so horrible that the wildflower seeds had sprouted legs just to flee to a place that was more suitable to their taste?
I immediately went on my knees to further investigate this new mystery, which - as some of you with more gardening experience than me might have already guessed - revealed itself to be no shocking new step in plant evolution, nor any mystery at all: it was an ANT that was carrying the seed! And now that my eyes and brain had become accustomed to recognizing the little bugger, I realized he wasn't alone: they were everywhere! And many of them were carrying seeds!
As I watched them carrying the loot - my poor wildflower meadow - away to their colony, all the pieces finally started to fall into place. The ants were hard to make out against the dark ground (and admittedly my eyes aren't the best), which is probably why I hadn't seen them, but it also had been raining most of the time for the past few weeks, and they had to have carried out their raids during the short dry spells or perhaps even at night when I wasn't in the garden.
Just to make sure you don't think I'm a complete ignoramus: it's not that I wasn't aware that several species of ants were living in my garden, but when I had removed the lawn it had been February and still winter, so the ants were deep under ground. And they'd never been on my list of suspects in the first place, because I'd had no idea ants even collected seeds!
I'd always thought the kinds of ants living in Switzerland were predators and preferred a largely carnivore diet (with the occasional sip of honeydew or other sugary treats for dessert if the opportunity arose) - which in the north, where I grew up, is largely true. But of the many ant varieties present in Ticino - which lies on the southern side of the Alps - one in particular has specialized in foraging for seeds.
A search on the internet quickly educated me on the matter: my tormentors were "harvester ants" of the Messor structor species; apparently I had a so called "super-colony" of them in my garden, and the more I read about them, the more fascinated - and shocked - I became.
These ants build gigantic underground colonies (on the surface only tiny mounds of earth or sand around the entry hole are visible) and store the foraged seeds in huge chambers: but not before cutting the seeds' appendages to prevent germination! Isn't that pure genius? But my greatest shock came when I read that their storing chambers can hold up to 2 kg of seeds or more! One wildflower mix from the store consisted of perhaps half a kilo (if even that): I needed more and bigger bags!
And as I found out, these Messor fellas aren't just thieves, they're also bakers - and I'm not kidding you! They chew the seeds into a paste-like substance that is called "ant-bread" which is their staple food (and sorry: whoever makes bread is a baker in my book, regardless whether they actually "bake" the bread or not ;-)
These tiny, bread-loving thieves had stolen the seeds from right under my nose, and perhaps they had already started doing so back in the siskin days, whenever temperatures were warm enough for them to venture out. They'd completely outmaneuvered me, and I felt about as foolish as Donald Duck trying to defend his pick-nick against an army of ants in the old Disney cartoon. But at least I now had finally managed to solve the mystery of the disappearing flower seeds.
In the end, I found a solution to my ant problem. I simply went to the gardening center once again and bought a half dozen more bags of wildflower mixes, all of which I emptied into my garden. It wasn't the most sophisticated strategy, but it worked.
Once the ants had filled their pantries to capacity - and I imagined they were now able to gorge themselves on 10-course menus of ant-bread every day - there were still enough seeds left that my wildflower meadow eventually started to grow.
In June, the cornflowers, ox-eye daisies - and of course: the field poppies - opened their buds, and my garden exploded with the most gorgeous colors. And thus, dear readers, I managed to get the above photo ;-)
As always, many thanks for reading and commenting: have a great start into the new week everyone! ❤🙏😊
P.S. I documented the transformation of my garden here, the photos of the blooming wildflower meadow are towards the end of the post: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/post/attract-lizards-to-your-ga...
Ilford Delta 100 reversed in PQ Universal and scanned with Plustek 7600i Ai.
Best enjoyed with Dark Ambient / RUREX
2J74 Southport to Manchester Oxford Road, formed of 150138 trailing 156428, has deposited a solitary passenger at Hoscar station. In the 2016/17 period the station was the least used station in Lancashire with just 1024 recorded passengers although this was up from 900 in the previous year. There are just 8 services, 4 in each direction, that call at this lonely outpost Monday to Saturday.
August 16, 2020 - North of Elm Creek Nebraska
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Though this storm did have severe warnings on it and it had better structure to is before I got on this storm to the north of Elm Creek Nebraska. I did end up underneath this cell but it was already loosing her steam.
This storm cell was still warned and producing 2 inch hail. I would stay to the southwest of this so I would have a really good view on the rear flank.
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Copyright 2020
Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
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An old'ish image from The Maldives given the 'sketch' effect. Our water bungalow was the second from the last on the right...steps direct into the water where there was the most amazing lagoon for us to explore each day...total bliss!
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sneak peek from today!!
model: madeline rae mason
makeup: chereine waddell
stylist: jessie mcnaught
edited with lovestruck: digitalfilmactions.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/lovestruck-raw...
“Any users, found to replicate, reproduce, circulate, distribute, download, manipulate or otherwise use my images without my written consent will be in breach of copyright laws as well as contract laws.”
“The Eye Moment photos by Nolan H. Rhodes”
nrhodesphotos@yahoo.com
Spent Wednesday with Anna, Bailmentos! Such a great time :)
Any of you with youtubes, if ya want, subscribe my human youtube account! www.youtube.com/user/urbangloss
There will be a photoshoot that i did with Anna up later on Ag088 :)
Finally :"O !
i'm Canon User !
Thanx Dad 7bibi ! , j3lneee Man7rm Mnk y el.'3aly :* !
Trd Le B el.Salma <33 !
Twinzy : Fdeet 3mrch ! To Manwrt Q6r Brj3tCh !
Miss yeew Mn el.5a6r :| ! Mtaaaaaaa Ashof Facech el.jmeeeeeeeel <33 !
LOVEu (L) !
Spicalle Thanx For Shlon b9br 3 Kl Shy Sweeth 4 Me , :* LUVyew Mn el.5a6r Walla (A) !
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All rights reserved
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge 144 – 181
With thanks to....
Background • Nathies-Stock
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For all commissioned work, please contact me via the contact form on my Website
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© Copyright Parée Erica. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this image in any form without express and written permission from me is illegal
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge #57 – Queen of the Night 38
Model with thanks to Valentine-FOV-Stock
Model: valentine-fov-stock.deviantart.com/art/Queen-of-the-Night...
Forest: northstar76.deviantart.com/art/Nice-and-quiet-341162110
Roses: yvaineglarestock.deviantart.com/art/4-Roses-stock-pack-19...
and inadesign-stock.deviantart.com/art/Rose-and-Petals-Pack-1...
Buddha: www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=4851258
With dozens of railfans waiting for the CP 150 train to enter the Port of Montreal, a drone user launched his drone nearly at track level (seen just to the left of the lead unit), which seemed dangerously low and was certainly very inconsiderate to the many railfans waiting to shoot this historic train in an unexpected location (the CN Wharf Spur).
With approximately 40 million users on Flickr, yours truly (thanks to all my Flickr friends) made #1 as Flickr's top photographer ( www.flickrooster.com/archive/2017/03 ) - yeah I'm tooting my own horn since no one else will... but I digress. That leaves the question: With nothing left to accomplish, what do I do now?
Hmm, got to be a bird in that image somewhere lol...