It is said that variety is the spice of life. That is true of our photographic lives as well. For proof…..see below.

In my opinion, this big, powerful black and white is dripping with mood. It’s a mood that lives in the past, and guides us on a tour through time. Murray Fox is the photographer, and the Australian Outback is the location.

Let’s continue our trip through the world of monochrome. This Gerard Blacklock image is of the school that states that simplicity rules. This elegant shot utilizes an old but trustworthy compositional style where lines lead you to places, and less is more. The black and white treatment helps to minimize the picture even more. There are no colors to complicate. This is a very effective use of black and white. There are a couple of leaves that rest on the pier, and they breakup the scene just enough, without blocking our journey through the picture.

Jim Zuckerman remains one of the best of what I call, the hard-core professional photographer. Jim knows what he wants, and how to get it. He leads photo tours/workshops throughout the world. If you are open to any photographic subject, and you have a personal vision that you want to accomplish, my guess is that Jim can show you how.

Taye H. Meyer created this comical, yet beautiful image of a Sea Turtle. The photographer’s ( or viewer’s) point of view here is sensational.

John Maslowski made this beautiful “color on black” image of a Stargazer Lily. His use of two blossoms, composed perfectly is what makes this shot. One or three would have been inferior in terms of composition. The use of color (the flowers) and negative space (total blackness) is right on.

I know not the photographer of these two pictures of bees, but these images and others reside in a Flickr group that can be found at the web address https://flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/with/16905342265/ . Exquisite detail is order of the day.

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Memories From The Field

I published my first segment of memories from the field in my last post here on Earth Images. It was my remembrance of a day spent with a Snowy Owl and a friend at Horicon marsh NWR, here in Wisconsin. In future MFTF, we will take a little tour of the country as my memory resurrects information, but today’s pictures were made near, or at home.

My friend Phil and I ran into (not literally) each other down the road a piece at Illinois Beach State Park. The Eastern Meadowlarks had just returned (2010) but they weren’t being very cooperative. Bird photography takes persistence, and I usually don’t mind that, but time was short on that particular day. Phil came to the rescue with his I Pod full of bird calls. He placed it on the ground and within 60 seconds we had a beautiful male Eastern Meadowlark singing his heart out. There was nowhere to place the speaker except on the ground, and that gave me my first and only pictures of a meadowlark singing on the ground. I can actually say, that I’ve actually never seen another image of a Meadowlark singing on the ground. This image or one just like it, was published in a birding magazine. Simple things become special, if we recognize special when we see it.

What about when you know you’re not going to hit the road at all? Well, it might not be quite like a day in the Serengeti, but every once in a while there is nothing like sitting in your own backyard, having a cool drink ( just water for me), and shooting birds (in the photographic sense). On a nice day in March of 2012, I spotted the most uniquely colored Common Grackle I have ever seen. They are always iridescent and you can often find a variety of colors and tones in their feathers, when the light hits them just right, but this is outrageous. This bird and others made a day at home seem like an adventure. In fact, I can still remember many of the pictures I made that day.

Every day spent out making pictures, is worth remembering. Including those in our own backyards

God Bless,                                                                                                                                       Wayne