Yes, another muted color example, and I’m often enthusiastic about the vibrancy of slides (it just means the scene was really bland.) We’ll get into some nice color shortly. For this week we have a dual illustration, which is clear the moment you look closely. First off, Florida is home to more than a few examples of this massive spider, a female golden silk
Category: Nature
Daily Jim pic 9
All this talk about global warming, but nobody has plugged this sonofabitch up yet. It’s a good thing Jim is providing the evidence to bring this to greater attention.
Eclectic and farraginous
This post marks a particular milestone for the blog, as it is my first use (actually, in my entire life) of the word, “farraginous.” Which spellcheck doesn’t even have listed, so that guarantees that I’m sounding like a pompous ass. But I’m not going to make anyone have to look up the word to see what it means just to understand a simple blog post, so I’ll
Daily Jim pic 8
If you’ve ever wondered where they get the water to make those colorful freezer pops, it’s Yellowstone National Park. This is the ambiguous “berry” pool.
Actually, I think this is from copper, but I could be wrong. Either way, there are enough minerals in the waters of the park to -… I can’t think of a good analogy, but there are a lot. Yellowstone has water that
Daily Jim pic 7
And so we move on to Yellowstone Park, and a torrent in an as-yet-unidentified river. That stark dead tree is a strong element, but notice that it’s actually two trees, and the grey one contrasts nicely against the deep green of the background trees while the smaller still-living one sets off against the water.
However, I’ll never forgive Jim for not getting a bear catching a salmon in
Daily Jim pic 6
This is probably my favorite of Jim’s Tetons compositions, a nice use of the foreground stump mimicking the background mountain in roughly 1/13776 scale. I am guessing this is Jackson Lake, which fronts the Tetons from most of the public access areas.
I’ll take a second to talk about composition here, because I would also have liked to have seen a slight variation of this, from a smidgen
Of course of course of course of course
Poking around in the yard late last, I was silently lamenting the fact that the mantises (as well as nearly all other critters of interest) seemed to have moved on – it’s been days since I’ve seen any sign of them, but I’m not at all surprised, because the hot and dry weather has been taking its toll on the plants and so the favored lairs of the mantids are not very impressive
Daily Jim pic 5
Knowing that Jim went through Yellowstone, it’s easy to imagine this is the after-effect of a geyser – but if the notes are correct, this isn’t from Yellowstone and, given the apparent distance, it would had to have been one hell of a geyser. Instead, I suspect he just captured a curious cloud formation while at the edge of a lake in Grand Teton National Park.
Or it could be smoke
Well, would you look at that?
The time has been getting away from me, it seems. I have suddenly discovered that this Friday, July 28th, is National Treat A Nature Photographer To Dinner Day. Yes, it’s the day when we show our appreciation of all the stunning natural images, interesting behavior, or grotesque closeups that only nature photographers can provide us. It should be more than one day a year,
Daily Jim pics 3 and 4
Jim sent me several variations of these mountains, and I was having a hard time deciding which of them to feature, not really wanting to do a series of days of the same subject, but I liked the difference between these two images so I’m doing a double feature. These are the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, one of the more distinctive mountain ranges in the US. Take a moment to absorb



















































