Tripod holes 28

Al Denelsbeck

fartistic high-contrast monochrome image of pool in sand
N 35°14’12.95″ W 75°31’41.43″ Google Earth location

A few weeks back, I presented my favorite true B&W image; this is my second-favorite, though the rankings may swap depending on my mood, so be warned. And this is largely as-shot, with perhaps a slight tweak to brightness and contrast, but nothing that I couldn’t easily accomplish in the darkroom. A friend and I were out at the Outer Banks, specifically a beach access south of Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, NC, and I was carrying a film camera loaded with Ilford HP5+ because I was in that phase (and likely will be again.) I realized that the sun reflecting from the still water might make a nice focal point and fired off a frame or two; the bright light coming into the lens shifted it from a ‘normal’ exposure to quite a bit darker, which improved the moodiness of the image magnificently.

While I purposefully avoided extraneous elements, the unintended result was that scale becomes almost impossible to determine, potentially even being an aerial photo of a coastline, at least until you find the seagull tracks entering and exiting the pool at the bottom. Curiously, while I usually call this, “Tidal Pool,” it’s not, and appears and disappears in the same location from time to time. From looking at the aerial photos and bolstered by my own hazardous experience (yes, that’s the same pool,) I’m inclined to say it’s a drainage swale from further inland, perhaps only brackish despite its proximity to the ocean. So if you go to this location hoping to duplicate (or, dog forbid, improve upon) my image here, be warned that you may never even see this fleeting puddle.

Limited success

Al Denelsbeck

About seven weeks ago, I was at the neighborhood pond without my camera (hush – it was a spur-of-the-moment thing) and spotted a green heron, not too unusual, except that this one seemed to be half to two-thirds normal size. Even the young tend to be just shy of adult size and weight when they leave the nest, and this one was displaying adult plumage. An example of dwarfism in avians? I honestly didn’t know, but I wanted a photo of it. Thus started my quest to find it again, returning semi-regularly armed with the camera and long lens, which naturally meant that I saw no signs of it again.

Until today.

small adult green heron Butorides virescens perched on semi-submerged branch
Only thing was, this time I wasn’t trying for wildlife, and while I had the camera (duryea!), I wasn’t carrying the heavy, bulky long lens with me, because I also had an infra-red camera along – long story, but I’m kinda on assignment for some particular images, and it isn’t even a dedicated IR camera, but the ancient (in digital camera terms anyway) Canon Pro90 IS, which will do infra-red in a pinch. So this image was taken with the Canon 7D and 18-135 STM instead, and limited by 135mm, I was forced to creep closer while not appearing to creep closer. The heron accepted this for a while, and then decided discretion was wiser and all that, and flew off, but I could see that it just cruised around the point of the island in the pond. So I hiked back, ditched the IR for the long lens, and returned.

I did eventually track it down, but significantly father away now so the edge of the long lens was diminished, and the choice of backgrounds and positions almost nil.

very small adult green heron Butorides virescens perched on snag
The main issue with both of these, which I knew I’d be facing the moment I first saw the bird weeks ago, is that there is no way to determine size or scale. What I really need is another green heron of normal proportions immediately alongside, close enough to be in the same frame, or really, any other bird of recognizable size. The chances of achieving this are small, given that I’ve only seen two or three green herons at the pond this entire season, and no evidence of nesting activity so not even any young to be venturing out soon.

During all this I sweated out roughly a liter of fluids, though not from the enormous exertion of getting these photos, rather from the stifling heat; that’s the heron panting in the first photo, and it was svelte and holding still, so you can imagine the effect on my fat ass (well, if you’ve met me in person anyway, since I don’t publish the photos that show reality.) This is part of the reason you haven’t been seeing much here (the heat I mean,) but only part. We’ll see if that can be corrected soon.

Just because, part 52

Al Denelsbeck

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis peering down from upper branch of Yoshino cherry tree
Just a quick one from today, finding a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) stretched out on an upper branch of the Yoshino cherry tree, the same one that I’ve been trying to protect from the Japanese beetles – it would be nice if this guy was eating those, but I’m not sure anything does. After finding the lizard there, a bit higher than I stand myself, I misted the leaves nearby because it’s been hot as shit here recently and I thought it might like a drink; my reward was this expressive pose, though at the same time the reptile’s skin darkened to a medium greenish-brown from the pale green that it was when discovered. What this means, I do not know, but I suspect we might be married now…

Tripod holes 27

Al Denelsbeck

North American manatee Trichechus manatus surfacing for food in Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, Florida
N 28°47’57.33″ W 82°35’16.94″ Google Earth location

This plot is as close as I can get it with the trees in the way, though if I was there again I could tell you within a half-meter. Not that it matters, because you might see something similar from many different spots, and anyway this particular model is likely not still waiting there.This is a North American manatee (Trichechus manatus,) or at least the head of one, found (easily) in Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, far too long of a proper name, in Homosassa Springs, Florida – the “Ellie Schiller” part has been added since The Girlfriend and I were there in 2009. We had been making our way south along the West/Gulf coast of Florida and had stopped in two locations previously to try and spot manatees; we’d actually been successful at the first, though it was from a distance without the best lighting and we saw what is typically seen, a snout peeking briefly above the water. This is so unprepossessing that it could easily be mistaken for a turtle, and if you look closely at the image here you can see the waterline around the nostrils that denotes what’s above and what’s below the surface.

But we hadn’t seen this yet, and were continuing on our path south when we suddenly passed the state park and decided to turn around and check it out. This was quite fortuitous since it is, among other things, a manatee rehabilitation center and one of Florida’s many warm springs, so the manatees were there in abundance, this one in particular coming right up along the shore under a viewing stand to await the scheduled feeding. Thus, captive, but about as close as you could possibly get, so if you want to see what a manatee really looks like, this is one of the better places, short of the tours at nearby locations where you’re allowed to snorkel with them. The Girlfriend doesn’t consider herself a nature photographer (I know, right?) but is more than happy to do so when the subjects are nearby and photogenic, while the definition of that word is stretched a bit when talking about manatees, just slightly above a formless blob and what I tend to call, “the beginnings of evolution.” Which isn’t true at all, and they used to be land mammals, but I can be cruel like that. I include, however, a shot of The Girlfriend getting her own shots, taken from the viewing bleachers in the same spot.

The Girlfriend aiming down at a captive North American manatee Trichetus manatus in Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park in Homosassa Springs, Florida
This is the visual of a story that I still tell, by the way, because The Girlfriend stood there motionless without snapping any frames for a while, and eventually I asked her what she was waiting for.

“I’m waiting for it to open its eyes,” she told me.

“They are open,” I replied, and they’re wide open in the top pic as well; manatees have quite small eyes for their bulk, and that’s as big as they’re gonna appear.

Now, some comments about the locale. The northern to central parts of Florida are riddled with warm springs; the geology is ‘porous,’ largely subterranean caves, that take the drainage from the swamps of southern Georgia and carry it underground until it pops up in various openings throughout Florida. Because they’re deep enough to be sheltered from surface temperatures, the water stays roughly the same temperature year-round, about 23°c – this is pleasantly cool in summer but nicely warm in winter, and thus the manatees love it, and will follow the channels up from the ocean to the spring sources in winter; despite their bulk, manatees can not handle colder temperatures. I say all this because the park sits directly over the mouth of one of these springs, and I mean directly: an underwater viewing area is suspended smack in the mouth of the spring. That’s the octagonal building with the pale green roof immediately west of the plot that I provided, and in those photos you can see the water darkening as the bottom (only a handful of meters deep until that spot) begins to drop off into the cavern system. As I type this, the aerial photos used in online Google Earth and the default in the program actually show manatees in the water. It’s easy enough to zoom out and follow the path of the springwater out to the nearby Gulf, and you’ll see the gate that keeps the injured or ill manatees within until they’re healthy enough to be released.

Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park is also home to an education center and a small zoo, so definitely worth a stop. There’s a boat tour that you can take from the visitors’ center off of Rt 41 (you can follow that narrow, winding channel east from the plot too,) but you can also just drive over to the zoo area.

Two small side notes: the slide film I was using did not come up with a good color register, either from age or (more likely, since I kept my film refrigerated) a bad batch, so the colors have been improved here yet still suck. And North American manatees are also known as West Indian manatees, a name that I’m surprised is still in use; the “West Indies” is a relic of Christopher Columbus’ stupidity and “Indian” isn’t even considered appropriate for the indigenous people of North America. While I find a lot of the ‘Woke’ actions recently to be overreactive nonsense, anything related to the region being considered the ‘Indies’ should have vanished long ago.

June’s last gasp

Al Denelsbeck

Just three four last photos before I close out the first half of the year, and start all of the associated maintenance.

In doing my routine patrol of the front forty of Walkabout Estates today, I was musing to myself that I hadn’t seen any Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinenesis) up there for a while, like several days; there are at least two, in two different locales. Not troubling, but curious.

That was all it took, apparently.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinenesis posing on ornamental sweet potato leaves
This is the closest one, generally hanging out on or around the Japanese maple that sits close to the front door; in this case it’s on the sweet potato vines in the planter that’s immediately adjacent to the tree, flanking the front steps, which also holds (as you can see) some pansies. While cautious about my presence, the lizard nevertheless gave me a couple of poses as I endeavored to get the flower in there.

A little later on, while engaged in the ongoing Japanese beetle slaughter that marks summer around here, I found the other one, or at least an other one, on the front oak-leaf hydrangea. This one sat up high and retained its position as I scooped a handful of beetles off of lower branches into the soapy water.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis atop oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia
Both were patient enough to allow me to go inside and grab the camera, since I did not have it in hand on either occasion – my hands were full with beetle patrol. [A little tip: Japanese beetles typically just drop off of their perch when danger threatens, counting on either taking flight as they fall or simply disappearing into the undergrowth. Fill a bowl with water and a little dish soap and hold it underneath, then tap the branches above or near the beetles, and they’ll usually fall right into the bowl. The soap breaks down the surface tension of water, preventing it from being repelled by the beetles’ chitin, and they’ll drown – without it, they may escape. And while you might question the efforts to slaughter insects by a nature photographer, this particular species is invasive, has few predators in this area, and can do a lot of damage.]

Back to the anoles. Suspicious of my switching vantage, this one started slipping down the layers of leaves, but in doing so came in my direction, so I got a few more frames.

Carolina anole Anolis carolinensis atop oak-leaf hydrangea Hydrangea quercifolia showing eyes aimed in two different directions
This is not just an expressive pose, but it is the first distinctive evidence that I’ve gotten that shows that anoles, like chameleons, can aim their eyes in two different directions as once; I’d often wondered, but the chances of seeing this are always slim, unless I somehow got one to pose in front of a mirror. There’s no reason why they couldn’t move their eyes independently, since binocular vision isn’t too necessary for them, but I’d never been sure until now. By the way, I cropped this image to include the entire tail, and so have to draw your attention to it.

One more, totally unrelated, but I’m not making an entire post over just this:

basilica orbweaver Mecynogea lemniscata in tentlike web structure
This little guy has had a web stretched between two potted plants on the back deck for a while, and I initially took it to be an orchard orbweaver because I couldn’t see the back of the abdomen clearly, but later determined that it’s a basilica orbweaver (Mecynogea lemniscata) – I’ve only seen them once before, but certainly recognize the pattern. And while they call it an orbweaver, which typically means a wheel-shaped web, this is more of a sheet web, and you can see that there are multiple layers to it with some curious strand patterns. On moving the plants earlier, I reduced the space between them to almost nothing, collapsing this web, and then returned them to position and the web sprung right back into its shape, the spider only twitching in preparation of fleeing. Good engineering.

Last night I had finished photo sorting over 1,500 images and run the internal backups, and then today I added another couple dozen photos so, do it again – it shouldn’t take too long this time. Though there’s also the post draft purge of the blog database, and e-mail purging, and some month-end maintenance, so I’ll be busy for a couple of hours – but at least I got one last post out for June.

Garden finds

Al Denelsbeck

fartsy shot of possible bigleaf magnolia Magnolia macrophylla
The other day I went out to the NC Botanical Garden for the first time in ages, to see what could be found. Notably, this was the first time in several years, I think, that I found no Carolina anoles during my visit, though we’ll make up for that shortly. There were enough other things to photograph, but like normal, I wasn’t looking for the ID plaques of what I was photographing, so most of my identifications here are tentative and subject to blaming the garden just for the sake of it. For instance, I believe the above image is a bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla) – it is certainly distinctly different from the common magnolias around here, but we’re not here for a botanical lecture, just for fartsiness. We may not get that, either.

younger American five-lined skink Plestiodon fasciatus showing evidence of regrown tail
Not even minimal effort of fartsiness here, just a close view of my first find, an American five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus.) The electric blue tail is a trait of juveniles, though this one was large enough I would have thought this would have faded by now, but we have clear evidence that it had dropped its tail sometime in the past and it was now fully regrown. Skinks can actually release their tails on their own, when it isn’t actually pulled off by a predator, and the detached tail will writhe exuberantly for some minutes, hopefully keeping the attention of the predator while the skink, now lacking some of the bright coloring, makes its escape. The tails will grow back, fairly quickly though I have yet to observe one dependably to see just how long it takes. It’s not overnight, but it’s within a season at least.

unidentified carpenter bees visiting blooms of fruiting purple passionflower Passiflora incarnata
Against one particular building is a trellis that hosts some abundant purple passionflowers (Passiflora incarnata,) including several ripening fruit. The carpenter bees, however, were still visiting the past-peak blossoms, and I really have to do some detailed macro work of these when they’re at peak, because they’re one of the more peculiar flowers in the area, ideally adapted to have carpenter bees doing the pollinating. You can see it here a little, the umbrella-like stamens arching over and facing down to introduce the pollen to the bees’ backs.

leaves and buds of a probable hibiscus plant
I think this is a hibiscus in the early stages of the flowers budding, but again, just the aesthetics. I tried to make sure the leaves filled the frame appropriately.

milkweed flowers with possible honeybee mimic pollinating
I’m quite comfortable saying these are a variety of milkweed flowers, but not too sure about that “honeybee” – the head and eyes don’t look quite right, and I think this may be a mimic, but it never gave me the opportunity for more detail than this. Still, aesthetics.

sluggish unidentified carpenter bee on wild bergamot Monarda fistulosa
The flower is a wild bergamot, of which I approve because it’s what makes Earl Grey tea (I mean, aside from certain kinds of black tea leaves.) The carpenter bee was almost motionless atop it as countless others serviced the flowers exuberantly, and why it was so still I can’t say, though I did see it feebly try to ward off interlopers. Rough night? Counting to 100? Got me, but we’re here for the detail of the wings, which caught the light just right.

And finally,

eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus on wild bergamot Monarda fistulosa blossoms
The bergamot appears again, this time being visited by an eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) – I believe, anyway, because they seem abundant around here and I see the black morphs from time to time, while the common yellow swallowtail does not have those. But let’s not forget about them aesthetics, the complementary colors all working together here. Who needs sciencey stuff when you have all that? Okay then.

Lazy swapping

Al Denelsbeck

I know people keep going on about this and it’s a bit tiresome, but it really is lazy to just swap out “ne” for “ly” and consider it a whole new month. “August” and “September” I can get behind, two entirely different words with almost nothing in common; you know you’re making changes when September comes around. With these two, you can only abbreviate them by dropping the last letter, a mere 25%, otherwise it can still be confusing. I propose we rename July to “Maxuary,” after a gerbil I once had…

Which means it’s time for the end of the month abstract, of course. “What could it be?” you ask breathlessly, to which I reply, Oh, for dog’s sake, calm down…

close up of blooms of wild carrot Queen Anne's lace Daucus carota
I’ve known these flower clusters since childhood as Queen Anne’s lace, which is somewhat curious in that it’s only known by this name in North America where we’re proud that we told the British royal family to get lorried, immediately afterward hanging on their every antic; elsewhere it’s known as wild carrot mostly, but Daucus carota for the pompous and pedantic. The deep purple flowers in the center are what the band took their name from, and exist mostly to make birds think there’s a bug there and waste time flying down to it, because the plant is easily amused.

But that’s not all that we have for the day! June yielded yet another that qualified, in the vague and formless structure of the term “abstract” in my head.

leaf of American sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua floating near surfline on Jordan Lake
Despite it being high summer, this leaf from an American sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) got convinced that autumn was nigh and dropped vividly into the water, likely to the sniggers of its brethren still greenly partying up in the parent tree. Wankers. But this meant that it stood out distinctly when I was out there chasing birds, and thus gets featured here today, with the foam at the water’s edge included as an extra element. But we need a closer look.

detail of dead leaf of American sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua
Not too shabby for being shot at 150mm with the Tamron 150-600, eh? I know you’re jealous, but if you’re nice to me, I’ll sell you a large print of the overall frame where you can see both the exquisite composition and the amazing leaf detail all together, and for an extra fee I won’t sign it and you can claim that you took it yourself in a casual, devil-may-care manner that therefore hints of even greater hidden talents and will surely get you laid. I’m that kind of guy.

Heartbreaking

Al Denelsbeck

I realize we’re in a culture that has more causes, charities, campaigns, and fundraisers for various ills than we can ever tabulate, and that this one is likely to pass under the radar, but seeing it in person is simply devastating. I’m talking, naturally (as always,) about Help Arthropod Color-Blindness Day, which is tomorrow (June 30th, in the Northwestern hemisphere at least.) Many people don’t realize how dependent insects are on interpreting the correct colors of their environment, and mean ol’ natural selection is doing its best to eradicate the sufferers. It’s not right that, as in this case, spiders should go hungry, or worse, fall prey to parasitic wasps, more than the average that they already do.

green lynx spider Peucetia viridans starkly obvious on purple coneflower Echinacea purpurea petals
Sure, I know, it’s bugs – why should we worry about them? But think where we’d be without insects? Okay, fine, we can do without bedbugs, and I’m slaughtering dozens of Japanese beetles every day to keep them off of the hydrangeas and Yoshino cherry tree, and fuck those goddamn fire ants. Yet without things like caterpillars, we’d have to do without ubiquitous children’s books.

And I hear you; evolution weeds out the poor fits, balance of nature, and all that. But if you’d met me in person and realized that I’m still alive and might actually have bred, you’d recognize that evolution isn’t the most efficient of functions, thank god. Listen, I know this doesn’t compare to the importance of Alien Abduction Day and National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, but look deep into your heart and ask yourself, Can I watch this spiky little bastard die just because it was Vivid Lime Green/Lavender Pink colorblind?

Well, can you?

Toldja

Al Denelsbeck

Remember when I said that a frog could be nestled within the canopy of the little potted Japanese maple on our deck and I might never see it? I mean, it was just a couple of days ago, a mere two posts back.

The next day (I’m a little slow on pasting right now,) I was watering that very tree and a green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus) erupted from within and landed on the deck, obviously a bit taken aback by the deluge while it was trying to sleep. I finished watering and then returned the frog to the tree, not trying to convince it to be anywhere, just releasing it within the leaves. This is what it looked like:

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus hidden within foliage of small potted Japanese maple
Oh, it’s in there all right, and I took pains to position myself so it was visible, but at this resolution, you’re not likely to see it regardless. Here’s a tighter, full-resolution crop:

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus nestled in foliage of potted Japanese maple, with bonus juvenile katydid
The immature katydid is just a bonus (and not spotted at the time,) but this gives you an adequate idea, I suspect. I took a moment to examine the other angles that I could exploit, but believe me, they were very narrow indeed.

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus nestled among foliage of potted Japanese maple
This angle shows a couple of scars on the upper lip, which makes me curious as to what produces them – I’ve seen much more distinct ones before, on a green (aquatic) frog, same approximate location. Is this from a predator, or burrowing into something unyielding?

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus nestled among foliage of potted Japanese maple
This is my favorite of the session, but it does give me the impression that I’m somewhere in the Amazon about to get blowdarted.

Yet as I took my leave, the frog, shifting position among the thin branches, gave me a friendly wave. Or am I reading too much into it again?

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus nestled among foliage of potted Japanese maple

My kind of summer weather

Al Denelsbeck

So, really last night now, we were receiving warnings of dire storms to pass through the area, with conflicting time frames, but I was ready for them regardless. I’m fine with sunny clear weather, and even lightly overcast days, because each has their own light quality for different subjects, but when the weather itself is a subject, good bracing storms are a lot more fun. Not too long before sunset, the sky was uniformly overcast but throwing out multi-level clouds with some nice shapes.

low-level cumulus clouds below overcast deck
This is facing east-northeast, the sun largely behind me, and you can see that the sun isn’t having much of an effect. I went inside for a short while, and we have only one window that faces west with any kind of view; as I passed it just a little later on, I saw the sky in that direction was suddenly brilliant orange. The neighborhood pond is a few minutes away, so even though I scampered right out with the camera, I could see the color fading even as I tried to get clear of all the trees in the neighborhood to have a nice view. It was fading as I got there, but not so much that all hope was lost.

stormy sunset colors over pond
Somewhere over the horizon, the sun had found a break in the clouds even as it was setting, and the North Carolina skies in this area (who I’m convinced are at least semi-sentient) had done their damnedest to try and clear completely before sunset, as is their wont, but the approaching storm was stronger. As the light changed, the clouds were also twisting and shifting at a pretty good clip, betraying that the high-altitude winds were much more active than the dead air down where I was. I played with some frames of opportunity.

twisted colorful sunset clouds surrounding pine branches
The fit was pretty good, really – how could I pass this up? Yet while the sky was so dramatic, it wasn’t really evidence of an active front yet, and the lightning tracker app indicated that electrical activity was still a ways off. I did a few photos of opportunity, but it was incredibly muggy out and I decided not to wait for the storm, which might still be another hour.

I kept an eye on the online tracker, and was back out just shy of an hour later, when the sky had gotten properly dark. It was certainly active then.

lightning stretching across sky
This is just faintly out of focus, and I think it’s because of the peculiarities of the Canon 18-135 STM lens, but I’m not going to go into technical stuff right now – suffice to say that I’d switched to manual focus because there was no light for autofocus, but manual focus is not entirely manual for that lens. Later images are fine, though.

There were three active cells within a 90° arc from my position, and it was tough trying to determine where I should be aiming, much like trying to decide which lane is fastest at the supermarket (and entirely unlike trying to decide which lane is fastest in a traffic jam because they are all averaging the same speed you morons.) I certainly missed a couple of good electrical discharges, but I got enough to make the effort more than worthwhile regardless. Even if they looked a little weird.

star pattern lightning display over house on pond
This is fairly wide angle and cropped only slightly, evidence of a multiple-bolt discharge centered on that one point. Also evidence that I can’t level the camera after all these years, but c’mon, it was dark (we’re going to conveniently ignore the fact that the 7D has a simple built-in leveling function that takes two button presses to activate.)

fanlike lightning pattern over trees
This was the second cell, and has been cropped to vertical to enhance that fan pattern from the lightning arms. It would have looked good on video, perhaps, because they spread across the sky like roots, but I knew that video would be largely grainy without any of the sky definition that time exposures provide. Most of these are about 20 second exposures, by the way.

convoluted clouds illuminated by lightning
This was the third cell, and you could almost stitch these above three images together into one complete panoramic, with this one being the rightmost. It produced a lot of bright flashes, but they were mostly hidden by trees from my vantage; had I moved to see this one better, the others would have been obscured. As it was, this lightning in this cell seemed mostly hidden within clouds anyway, though it did define those well for this frame at least.

The storms were getting closer, and while few ground strikes were in evidence, the activity was stretching more overhead, and I’ve had experience with that before; it was getting time to pack it up. I waited out one last decent strike, as long as it happened within two minutes, and I wasn’t disappointed.

lightning stretching across entire wide-0angle frame
This was the very last frame, which is a lot more cooperative than many storms that I’ve pursued. I’ve said it before, but I’ve missed a lot more lightning photos than I’ve gotten, because electrical storms are tricky and unpredictable, and even getting to a scenic locale when one threatens is very hit-or-miss – I’m lucky to have the pond so close by. Ideally, however, I want a very tall tower with a view to all sides, preferably where the mountains reach the sea at the edge of a tropical rainforest – with, of course, convenient shopping nearby that I could get to in my Lotus Esprit. All of this comes from people paying an appropriate amount of money for my images, of course…

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