While summer is still with us, I wanted to share some recent images from other photographers of nature’s littlest creatures.

This cool shot of a spider in backlight was made by Paula Sanchez. Light, including its direction, can take an ordinary picture and transform into something special.

This is a very nice image of a Monarch Butterfly on a flower. The out of focus colors in the background do a lot to add artistic flavor to this image.  Facebook pal Jessica Kirst is the photographer.

I love side lighting or backlighting when the background become rendered black. Andreas Kay created the picture and I love the fact there is enough side light to separate the black edges of those wings from the background.

Guillermo Chacon deserves the credit for this classic composition of an amazingly colored dragonfly.

This awesome head on view of a Batavian Jumping Spider was made by Simon Lai. I know spiders are not always popular with image viewers but I think they make some of the most dramatic subjects.

This wonderful shot to two members of the fly world in love (lust?), is a favorite of mine. Chennai is responsible for the image and close-ups like this that are laden in detail are popular with everybody. I’m going to make every photographer/artist who reads this blog angry and say that he/she has great equipment. It is the resolution that leads me to that conclusion, but of course, Chennai obviously takes painstaking care in her/his technique, and art as well.

In the midst of all of the beautify and wonder such as what you see above, summer will end and most of nature’s littlest creatures will not see the spring. I made this rather ordinary image of a withered old Tiger Swallowtail in 2011, just about this time of year. I would imagine that this once beautiful creature had already passed along its bloodline to a new generation of butterflies. God Bless all those little critters that make our lives colorful and bright.

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Silence

We live in a noisy world today. I am not speaking of man’s creations but of man himself. Man yells on the radio, man yells on TV, man certainly yells on the internet, and occasionally we yell face to face, even with our friends. Somebody, I know not who, came up with the concept of noise pollution in the late 1960s. They meant cars and trains and other machines, but maybe they should have thought about we humans, as a primary source. Our voices, whether the sounds come from our mouths, or from our fingers on a keyboard (like now), just keep getting louder. Everybody is screaming look at me I am mad. I know how they feel, I am angry (and sometimes noisy) too. Just the same, there is a time for silence. I once loved the roar of racing cars, but not every minute of every day.

Lyrically, one of my favorite songs ever written is Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence. When Paul Simon penned those lyrics he was pointing out that silence can be not only lonely, but it spreads like a disease. “Silence like a cancer grows”. He wrote that song in the sixties and it is possible that even Paul might agree that noise can also like a cancer grow. Eventually the volume switch becomes broken, and words become “just so much noise”. I do admit, that I have been guilty of too much silence, and too much noise.

I love silence. Not every minute or every day, but in the midst of a noisy world, it is indeed golden. It has been said that silence speaks volumes.

“A man is known by the silence he keeps” Oliver Herford.

Proverbs 17:28  Even a fool, when he holds his tongue is counted wise: and he who shuts his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

I will take into consideration today’s theme and follow my own advice and close here.

I know what you‘re thinking, silence at last.

God Bless,                                                                                                                                                  Wayne