Your best Photo's for Everyone to see!

You bastard... replied before I could fix it.

 

Damn those Yankees....especially the ones from California

 

OK, so I reread the title of this thread, and see the words "best photos". So, I'm pulling out a few of my best. All of these are digitized versions of 35 mm slides (Kodachome), and resolution suffers during that conversion. Someday, I'm going to buy a high quality digital cam with good lenses (instead of the little Sony pocket cam I'm using now.)

First, here is camp 3, four days in from the trailhead, in a recurring trip I took during the '90's in southern Colorado's Weminuche Wilderness, west of Creede near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. I walked into this spot yearly for 8 years. Sometimes I went solo, sometimes with a girlfriend, sometimes with other friends. One year, we were in for 16 days. Some of the best days of my life were spent in this spot. This is near a cirque lake called Rock Lake, just a tiny bit west of the continental divide. The peak in the background is The Guardian, eastern most peak of the Grenadier Range, another day's walk to camp 4. (This link is not my pic, but offers nice context of the Grenadiers.) I hauled a lot of camera gear --- 35 mm cam, lenses and tripod -- into there to get pics like this.



Next is probably the best photo I've ever taken. It's a tiger swallowtail imbibing water from a spring in central NM near my dissertation study plot. There were dozens of these butterflies drinking the water. They weren't after the water, but the salts in the water. They drank for a LONG time, absorbing the salts, but passing the water. You can see a drop of water forming on its anus. They were totally mesmerized during this process. I got within a few inches of this one, set up my tripod, and got multiple shots over a 10-minute period. This image was the July insect that year in the annual calendar of the Entomology Association of America. (I was an entomologist by training from undergrad; by this time, I was shifting into ecology.) A friend now owns the original print.



Finally, below is "Dusty", a prairie rattler (about 4 - 5' long) with a distinctive light coloration that lived on my study plot for 7 years out in the desert. Prairie rattlers are relatively docile compared to the much larger, more aggressive diamondbacks found in the mountains nearby. I saw this one multiple times -- at least once per summer -- along with several others in the area. But Dusty was distinct. This shot was done with the same 90 mm Tamron macro that I shot the butterfly with. This was an early morning in June when it was sunning itself to warm up; it was torpid. I was very cautious setting up the tripod -- -- but oddly, it never even rattled. I wondered if it knew me by then, and knew I wasn't going to kill it. (?) Anyway, setting up this shot took about 10 minutes. After I grabbed a few shots, it had had enough, and slithered into a nearby group of yuccas.

 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem Israel

Interior of Church of the Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem Israel

Interior of Church of the Holy Sepulchre Jerusalem Israel

Israel ... Dont Remember off hand...Garden of Gethsemane??

Camel Meat Shop, Hebron Israel

Prayer notes in the Western Wall, Jerusalem Israel

 

One favorite from my BC adventure:

 

Man, that's stunningly beautiful. Conditions were perfect, beautifully framed.

What camera?

 

It was quite the sight to wake up to, that's for sure.

The camera was actually my phone (Note4) - but I didn't realize until after the fact that the resolution was set to 5MP for the whole trip

 

oh that looks familiar.......refresh my brain? Duffy Lake at the west side?

 

Brother Reno for the WIN!

WOW

 

Reno for the win.....damn man,.....what camera you using? the crow on branch is amazing

 

My handed down Canon Powershot SX40 HS. And yeah, that raven one is one of my all time favorites.

Here's another from that set.

 

It's the north end of Arnica Lake on the Phillips Ridge trail.

 

A couple of Oklahoma sunsets




This was from my recent trip to Zion National Park. One of the most beautiful places I've ever been



For veterans day the local VFW went and put flags on my university's library lawn. One for every service member to die since 9/11

 

This guy charges $300 HR to rescue sand cars/RZR stuck in the middle of the sand dunes (Glamis, CA)




Stumbled upon a falconer on my quad in the middle of the desert near Wickenburg, AZ

 

What a majestic looking chicken.