A little bit of autumn color to brighten up a wintery day:
This was on opportunistic shot I took on a lunchtime photowalk some months back.
Bloomin’
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Category Archives: Nature
Blue kaboom
An oldie but goodie from Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington:
Hope everybody had a fun and festive holiday break! It’s almost hard for me to believe now that I took this with my first DSLR nearly four years ago…
Treekeh
A little seasonal bokeh from our front yard:
Sorry about the thin posting schedule lately, writing photo guidebooks has been absorbing my every waking moment — but the end’s in sight!
Seed head
A spur-of-the-moment shot from a solo photowalk a few weeks back:
I have no idea what kind of plant grew these seeds, but I liked how the swirl of the seed head mirrored the feel of the bokeh background. It’s just one of those things I don’t really have words for, you know?
Looking back at Autumn…
…from the start of Winter:
A shot from a lunchtime walk about a month back, before the season’s first big snowfall wiped out the colors.
House of the Cenote
At the ancient Maya ruins of Tulúm, México:
This was a tricky shot to get — bright sky above, and (dark, cave-like) cenote below. It didn’t turn out well as a multi-image HDR, for some odd reason — but tweaking a single image and running HDR on that did the trick. Amazingly, the structure at the top still has some of its original (500+ year old) plaster, in spite of being close to the cliff’s edge and the Caribbean.
Want to know more about photography in Tulúm? You might want to check this out…
Xaibe
You may not realize it, but this is a particularly odd structure in the Maya world:
It’s a pyramid called Xaibe at the ruins of Cobá in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The name comes from a Maya term for a crossroads, since it’s at the junction of four Maya roads — and it’s nearly unique in being a Maya pyramid with an elliptical (vs. rectangular) footprint. It *may* have been used as a lookout tower, but I’ve never seen anything resembling an authoritative statement on that.
Structure IV — Becán, México
As seen from neighboring structure II:
The ruins on the top of the pyramid were once an elite residential area, BTW — sort of the ultimate gated community.
Bath toy
Grizzly bears are some really amazing creatures — smart enough to act a bit like humans, unpredictable enough to be hazardous. When we were in South Dakota earlier this Fall, one of the residents of “Bear Country, U.S.A.” was having a grand old time playing with a chunk of wood in his pond.
It was almost like watching a kid play with their bath toy. A big, furry, lethal kid, that is. Should you like a closer look, I’ve included the two images making up the diptych below.
I was really happy with how these turned out, I don’t get much practice with splash photography — much less out in the real world (vs. in a more controlled setting).
Getting airborne
I’m writing up another eBook review, so have limited time to blog today — but in the meantime, here’s a shot from this year’s Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta:
