No hard feelings?

The other day, The Girlfriend and I visited the NC Botanical Garden, mostly to check out the sculptures by local artists that they feature at this time every year. Well, she was checking out the sculptures I had been through a little earlier, solely for read more

First mud, part 2

I’ve had a small handful of posts (how many is that? What do posts mass? How many fit in an average hand?) in the works for several days, trying to get enough time to sit down and work on them, so this is evidence of them to some extent – there’s going to be a lot of photos in this one. But some of that is due to conditions, too.

It is perfectly expected to be mired in the lingering read more

They are if I say so

I have a tendency to lump reptiles and amphibians into the same general classification, including within my stock categories, even though either is just as close to, say, badgers – the phylum Chordata is the last common point for all of them. But fine – you want me to make a separate post to break them all out? Is that what you want? Because I’ll do it if you want.

On a trip to read more

Various and sundry


It occurred to me, as I was thinking of this title, that I wasn’t absolutely sure of the meaning of “sundry,” and looked it up – it means, “various,” so this common usage is actually redundant and repetitive. However, I also like the alternate concept of “sun dry,” which is how my clothes were at least half of the time, so we’re read more

Podcast: The mindset of a nature photographer


I decided to make this one the topic of my next podcast during an outing with a student, and so the images that accompany it have come from the same outing, in many cases illustrating something that I talk about in the audio. It’s not possible to spoil anything on this one, so feel free to browse ahead while my mellifluous voice (or something) purrs on in the background.

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Let’s take a herpetology break

Because you know we’ll be back to the arthropods soon enough…

All of these, by the way, came from the NC Botanical Gardens, just not on the same day. There are reptiles and amphibians to be found elsewhere of course, but the conditions in the gardens are pretty welcoming to them, and they have enough human contact to be less shy than normal.


On a fence where they’re read more

It’s official


… even if it’s nonsense for the most part. Today marks the first day of “spring,” as I am the very first to inform you of because of course you start your day right here. Most people associate spring with flowers and pollinators and trees in bud and birds nests and all that, of which we are slowly seeing the signs of here, just not today, which is read more

Defying the rain

The nice thing about going long periods without rain is that scheduling photo outings isn’t difficult – provided you can cope with the heat. The recent rains have changed this quite a bit, and I’ve had to switch several student appointments around due to cruddy weather. This past Saturday, we watched the weather reports on practically an hourly basis and chanced a botanical garden read more

Making up


I did almost no shooting this week, but made up for it a little on Saturday when I had two students, though all of these images came from the second session. This month will be a new record for images uploaded, mostly because of this post, but there may still be more.

The opening image is a monarch butterfly caterpillar (Danaus plexippus,) the first I think I’ve seen around here, and read more

Monday color 7


[These posts are usually lined up well ahead of time, so this one was completely written when I got the images in this post, which might actually be the same individual – they were taken not three meters apart.]

One of the images taken back on this day last October – I elected not to use it then. read more

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