It’s not literally a Macro shot but a close up from the telephoto, of some recent bird-feeder visitors. I caught sight of these yellow claws so zoomed in for a close up.
Oh man would I love a macro of these guys’ feathers! Beautiful, subtle iridescent colors!
I don’t know who they are…a dove or pigeon of some kind. Anyone?
Or this one…I collect the feathers of our local acrobatic flickers…so pretty.
Another kind of waiting….
I would call this Fun Fotographing Fungi.
And one more discovered the next day…
Creepy, huh? I’ll show you Creepy!
Many will find my bugs Creepy but I have fallen in love. I know, quite hypocritical, given my distaste of their distance relative at the top, eh?
And I have been posting a lot lately about this Fungi Village growing right outside my bedroom window…Freaks me right out!!! I swear they are creeping closer and closer every day!
But today was the creepiest by far!
I’m starting to see faces on some of them!
CREEPY!
OK, there ARE words after all. I am used to the sweet, tiny Disney-like mushrooms at the top, but I just want to know if anyone knows what in the world the rest of these are, and if I should sell my house and move away from these before they take over??
I thought of the same series of photos for both challenges so here is the amazing experience I had this week on a mountain top outside Spokane, Washington. Both sites have such amazing contributions each week. Check them out too!!
It almost became a joke for all of us witnessing the gift of this sunset. Every few seconds someone would say “Look at the SUNSET!” and sure enough, we’d turn to look and it was a completely different one from just minutes before!!
What an amazing experience.
The atmosphere was aflame!
And I can’t help but feel for the people down in California right now facing a differnt kind of atmospheric flame.
So the whole Time Marches On thing is in my face right now…well, the face of my whole neighborhood, actually.
My chosen theme for this Open Topic Challenge from Nancy Merrill is Experimenting with Telephoto Photography. I’m hoping it can help me see more clearly into the distance (and the future)… and maybe understand it better.
When I bought my home in 1976, there were only 4 other houses, all with horse acreage, on my long dead end street. Now there are 25 homes…and although, we still have a few chickens, there are certainly no horses. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the 40 plus years I’ve lived here but the trend now seems to be for a builder to come in and tear down anything from the 1980’s and before, and build these whopper new giant homes. I’m only partially complaining. We’ve gained a wonderful new group of neighbors, and luckily, all of our lots are still over-sized enough to accommodate a 3,000 to 4,000 foot home fairly well.
But sometimes heartbreaking things happen in the process….especially to the old growth trees! I have addressed this before and here is an example: Tree
Right now there is a wonderful little red and white farm house, barn, and matching well on the lot behind me facing the next street over. It’s been there since the late 1940’s. They are about to tear it all down (of course) and are building an 8,900 square foot house with a huge wall (not a fence…a WALL) around it. (None of the older homes in our neighborhood have fences. It’s wonderfully wide open.)
I should also say we live on a fairly tall hillside, and many of our homes have western views (if only partial) of the Olympic Peninsula and mountain range…beautiful!
Back to my complaining about so-called Progress…
So this McMansion builder, who is going to level the cute red farm house, first came in and took down 6 or 8 HUGE, beautiful trees along the western border of the property…assuming for the VIEW, right?? But I had to go over there and see just exactly what view would be worth murdering all those trees!
What follows is my telephoto experiment.
Here’s what’s most interesting to me. Remember, I am experimenting with telephoto photography, using the feature on a relatively inexpensive Canon point and shoot.
The whole time I am taking these pictures, I think I am shooting the Bellevue Skyline.
But I am actually capturing a blend of downtown Bellevue and the Seattle Skyline some eleven miles west of us.
And when I got TOO close, I accidentally got this shot! (which I kind of like!)
It was hazy that day, so all I could see clearly, in my clearly biased view, was that this builder guy had killed all those trees so his buyer had a view of our famous, rapidly growing, “tech-centered” city. All I could see was the combination of two city’s massive, view-blocking high-rises!
Then, later that day at Sunset, I got this shot…Bellevue, Seattle AND the Olympic mountains, which are 65 miles away (as the crow flies).
Oh……OK, at least from another person’s perspective, maybe I get it…….
I’ve been saving photos for this challenge for a while so here goes:
One of my favorite places to Pull up a Seat (if I can’t be right next to the Pacific Ocean) is on my sister’s porch….especially at, but not limited to, sunrise. Nothing like having your morning coffee on this porch in the early summer.
But then there are benches all over their property for sitting and becoming one with Nature…
Or you can be like Ola, the Wonder Dog, and plant yourself on one of the bridges over the pond between the house and the gardens and green house. (Although this might be better titled “Pull up a BED“.)
Ah, but the memories of me with my grandsons pretend-fishing off these bridges…Maybe that’s my favorite.
I love seeing where other species choose to Pull up a Seat.
Then there’s our friend Mark who has a very boring selection of where to Pull up a Seat…
At our Mountain Retreat, someone has chosen to Pull up a Precarious Seat, but for very good reason!
They were putting in a new glass roof over our other favorite place to Pull up a Seat…our Porch Swing!
It looks out over a beautiful valley.
I always hate when this time comes each year when the porch seat gets tied up to make room for firewood…
Then I just remember all the different butts that have planted themselves here.
Three Brothers
Then there were two…
And I know James is not looking forward to being just one…
But he’ll have so many memories to savor…pulling up this particular seat!
