This is probably my favorite of Jim’s Badlands shots, because of the light quality and the clouds in the sky – most of his other shots show skies that are brilliantly blue yet bare, in need of something to offset the solid color. Here, however, the color has softened, and not just in the sky – everything has a pastel appearance that comes very close to making this
Author: Al Denelsbeck
More than you might think
In doing an earlier post about local arthropods, it struck me how long it can sometimes take, and this is mostly because of the research (and only partially in trying to write flowing and coherent sentences – perhaps I should be devoting more time to that.) Let’s be blunt: blogs are an exercise in thinly-disguised narcissism, or at least those like mine are.
A little advance notice
Okay, everyone, take heed. Friday, September 15th is International Dive Into A Gas Giant Day! NASA is celebrating by sending its orbital probe Cassini down into the atmosphere of
Jim pic 43
Jim told me that, standing up on top of the hills where he took this pic, he could hear the desperate cry of hikers that had ventured down to the valley floors and gotten lost in the natural rock maze. Plus the occasional scream as one would get eaten by a Griffindor…
Okay, I lie, Jim would pay no attention to anyone that idiotic. But I did finally look up the geologic history of the Badlands,
Sunday slide 37
This one’s only about seven years old I think, not too long before my slide shooting petered out in favor of digital. Well, not really in favor of, since I still like the color register of slides, but it became harder and more expensive to get them processed, and when doing the more demanding pursuits of macro, it was easier to a) shoot several frames to help ensure
Let’s do this by category
As I mentioned, I have more pics to put up and have been juggling time to try and get to them – not at all helped by the number of unforeseen circumstances that spring up on top of the routine things already taking up my time. So right now, I’m splitting up the posts by subject matter of the photos, and today is arthropod day.
My attempts to capture more Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis)
Jim pic 42
I am almost positive this is facing in the opposite direction as the previous Jim pics, the view from the top of the trail up those curious hills. The landscape is actually a little enigmatic, since it appears to be the result of erosion yet is amazingly flat for such circumstances, and the rock that looks soft and crumbly is likely much, much harder than the ‘bedrock’
Encouragement
At the old place I had gotten a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) to grow, and it enticed numerous species to come by and pose for the camera. But for some reason, the soil in the yard of the new house is kinda weird and it’s hard to make anything thrive numerous plants have started
Sunday slide 36
This week, we go back to 2005, and over to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. There, a seahorse posed enigmatically among the fronds of seaweed in an aquarium, with just barely enough natural light to pull off the shot wide open at f2.8.
I make no bones about it: true underwater photography is demanding. Just being down there generally takes a good amount of
What goes on when no one’s looking
We reside in a small housing development, nothing too crowded or active, and with this comes the peculiar concept of the listserv, the ability to e-mail everyone who has subscribed with items of (dubious) collective interest to the homeowners. Not too long back, there came a couple of accounts of cars being ‘broken into,’ only they really weren’t because the owners hadn’t