I LOVE this topic. I take a lot of photos of shadows. I think they can be so beautiful and thought provoking. Here are some of my favorites, all in one post!
no filters, no settings change, all shot at once, with and without flash
I love shadows I can’t identify (or remember…no idea what these were!)
I love to see things popping out from the shadows.
And then of course, there is the whole dedicated activity of AVOIDING the shadows!
This is my second post for this challenge. Pauses and Clicks reminded me this morning of the whole challenge. Before I had focused mainly on the “strange and grotesque” part.
This series of photos I’ve been taking of Hydrangeas best captures the week’s theme for me but it wasn’t until reading the above post that I got how truly beautiful this amazing plant and it’s blossoms are….until their very end.
How in the world does THIS…
…Become THIS???
The “Transformation” is both invisibly slow, as well as lightning fast. I took these pictures from April to June!
Here is a Transformation slideshow.
But for me, the lesson didn’t stop there. I had planned on showing the photos of Hydrangeas at the end of their life to demonstrate how something so lovely can transform into “ugly”…but I read her post this morning and it completely changed my perspective.
NOW, I can see how the Hydrangea becomes MORE beautiful as it ages, stunning even…
And, since I’m always looking at life through the lens of Generations, look what else I found!
Multi-Generational Living at it’s finest!!!
Thanks Pauses and Clicks!
(Now if I can just apply this lesson the next time I look in a mirror!)
PS Today is November 4th, 2016 and when I walked outside, here’s what greeted me!
…is “to change in appearance or form, especially strangely or grotesquely; transform.”
And one of our instructions this week for the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is to”create a gallery, with a series of photos showing a metamorphosis in progress.”
Well, I haven’t shared my beautiful (or maybe grotesque…eye of the beholder and all) BUGS for a while. You can read about them here:
https://chosenperspectives.com/2016/07/16/chosenperspectives-on-details-for-wpc/ and here
But for today’s topic, here is a slideshow showing their transformation. (By the way, the featured image at the top of the page is of a pile of eggs. They are not normally on my carpet but this photo is of the remains of the one and only unsupervised encounter between my bugs and my cats. Even though it is Halloween I won’t torture you with details of how those eggs got from the laden belly of the mature female bug onto the rug…oh wait, maybe I just did!)
Here’s another photo to show the range of growth I get to witness.
And here is a reaction of some family members to one of the less pleasant consequences of having Giant Spiny Australian Leaf Bugs around.
Tiny poops but they are very dry and have no smell…
These creatures MOLT three times during their lives. It took me many years to actually witness the process and it is amazing! What they leave behind after the second and third molting is the opposite of transmogrifying. (You don’t want to know about the first molting. Oh wait. I keep forgetting it’s Halloween! They EAT IT!!!)
The molted skins are PERFECT in every detail, right down to the tiny claws, spikes and antennae!
an empty skin
I guess you could say my experience of having these bugs as members of our pet family has Transmogrified ME! I have gone from that stereotypical image of squealing in terror while running for the nearest table to climb on over a tiny house spider or a beetle …to writing this post.
