Sometimes you need to twist your head if you want to give yourself a good scratch. Here is an egret at Black Hill Park in Montgomery County in Maryland.
This great blue heron is standing on ice while giving itself a scratch. It must feel good!
The twist in this egret’s neck seems a little unusual to me from this angle. It may have to do with the position of the wings.
Here is a bird among the twisted branches of one or more trees in winter.
The twisted branches of the trees can sure look like a mess from a distance in the woods in the early morning light. The sun has not quite hit the level of the trail in the following picture.
The turn in the trail appears at a distance in the following picture.
Category: Weekly Photo Challenge
Insignificance
Taken on the C&O Canal towpath near the Monocacy aqueduct.
Also submitted for the weekly photo challenge.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Unlikely
These days, it is quite unlikely that you will find me in the kind of of situation you see in the picture below. This picture was taken near LAX, during a time when I used to frequent that part of the world for work. Even then, it was quite a fluke to be be in a position to take a picture like this.
And then, it is probably unlikely that Wonder Woman would ever be stopped by a storm trooper. She would have been too quick for him. Also, any sensible person knows that they are from different times in history, err.., story telling. I am not sure she could rescue anybody in the shape that appears to be in. And the storm trooper should probably be fired. He looks quite harmless. This picture was taken on Hollywood Boulevard.
This was a unlikely sight for me – a waterway near Minneapolis full of dead fish and a few rusted vehicles buried in the mud. But apparently, fish kill are not that unusual in Minnesota. I do not know the story behind the buried vehicles.
How likely is it to see two planes in the configuration seen here? Take a guess as to where this picture was taken at.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Lines
I personalized this week’s challenge in its interpretation – to try to find pictures from various recent travels that derive a significant part of their character from the presence of lines in them. I was moderately successful, I think!
This is a picture from the window of our hotel room in Reno, NV, during a trip early in 2017.
This is a picture of a hotel in Mammoth Lakes, CA. The lines on this hotel came to life in the early morning light.
The lines on the sand dunes of Mesquite Flat in Death Valley, CA, are the only natural ones that I have in this collection of pictures. You will notice that these lines are the only ones where there are curves that are obvious. (There is probably a lesson somewhere in there!)
A couple of months later we visited the New England area. This picture shows the lines on one of the trains on the Mt. Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire. The engine is at a different angle than the carriage because it is stopped at the edge of the slope.
Lines and angles dominate the picture of this covered bridge over the Ammonoosuc river in Littleton, NH.
The lines on the Icefields Parkway dominated my six day bike ride through the Canadian Rockies in the later half of 2017.
This picture was taken in St. Louis, MO later in 2017. It should not be difficult to guess what the subject matter of this picture is.
This picture was taken at Middle of the Earth, just outside of Quito, in Ecuador on the equatorial line in November 2017.
This picture is of a corridor in the Design Hotel in Chennai in India at the end of the year. This is considered a “boutique hotel“.
I love the lines on the Boeing 787-9 that we saw at Charles de Gaulle airport on our way back from India.
The lines of the roof at this gas station in Effingham, IL, caught my eye during a road trip earlier this year. Yes, we had some late-season snow in our part of the world, but it is all over now!
A Strange Month of April So Far
This is the time of year when things normally begin to warm up in our part of the world. This is the time of year we see signs of Spring all around us. It also becomes a season for allergies. But the early part of the month had us experiencing a snowstorm instead as we drove through the Midwest. This was the scene on the road in the morning the next day as we drove back home to Maryland after the storm.
Back east, the cherry blossom tree in our backyard looked miserable compared to past years. The blossoms looked thin and sparse. Things then started to improve as we approached the middle of the month. There was an awakening of the blossoms. There were even a couple of warm days to go with this.
This phase of Spring did not last too long. A heavy snowstorm hit parts of the Midwest once again last weekend. It also got colder here in the Northeast, and we got a significant amount of rain that put an end to nature’s show. We now have white stuff on the ground and flying around all over the place, and it is not snow! Strange weather! I wonder what we have in store for the rest of the month.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Smile
Some people have a natural instinct to smile when their picture is being taken. Others do not. I wonder if she had to ask the person in the kayak to smile for her.
The person who is the focus of the picture that is being taken is not smiling, but I hope you are. (This is the naked cowboy of Times Square.)
Some photographers do have delightful smiles themselves.
I love taking pictures of kids because of their smiles.
I hope that at least some of these pictures brought a smile to your face.
Sunrise and a Sunset in our Neighborhood
We have some spectacular sunrises and sunsets in our neighborhood when the conditions are right. The sunrise events happen right outside our front door, and the timing is good for pictures this time of the year. All I have to do is grab the camera and open the front door, or go to an upstairs window. This was just a few days ago.
I can capture a decent sunset from the back of the house, but the view is partially blocked by the houses behind ours. Capturing it in its full form requires me to go to another part of the neighborhood. This is exactly what I did last Sunday.
Favorite Place
The subject of this week’s challenge is an easy one for me to tackle, and obvious to folks who know me. You will find me any free weekend exploring some section of the 184.5 mile long C&O Canal towpath. Last weekend took us to a section near Point of Rocks for our Sunday walk.
The branches of the sycamore tree stand out in winter.
There are the locks and lockhouses,
the aqueducts,
and the Potomac river (which looked especially blue that morning).
The mergansers come around only in winter.
The bridge at Point of Rocks looked stunning in the morning light
and this almost looks like a piece of art when the endorphins are flowing on a lovely morning like the one we we had!
A Time and Place for Everything
The subject of this week’s photo challenge, “I’d Rather Be…“, suggests a sense of wanting to be in a different place doing something different. Yes, I would rather be be exploring the world like I was fortunate to be able to do last year – California, Nevada, Missouri, a bike ride in the Canadian Rockies, Ecuador (including the Galapagos), and finally India. But when I see a sunrise like this in front of my own home, I also realize that one does not necessarily have to wander far from home to experience the wonders of this world.
Out Of This World
This week’s photo challenge proved to be somewhat thought provoking for me. I was not sure exactly how to approach it. In the simplest sense, one is almost always trying to take outdoor pictures that are noteworthy and perhaps “out of the world”. In another sense, one also tries to capture outdoor images with the camera that are unusual, and that may seem out of this world. But nothing is really out of this world in the real sense, is it? How often does one take pictures out of this world? Does this picture of the moon and Venus qualify?
Looking through my archives, I realize that I have already posted a bunch of pictures in my blogs that could fit this theme – pictures of the skies and the earth that seem like they are not of this planet. Here is one that might not have appeared before. This was taken in the area of the Smoky Mountains. The planet is on fire in the morning light. The town of Gatlinburg lies below us.
All in all, it was tough figuring out what tack to take for this week’s challenge. In the end I decided to go with pictures that could be considered out of this world to some people, but may be more commonplace to others in their own circumstances. Here goes.
This is the fruit of Queen Anne’s Lace. This wild plant is quite widespread close to where we live, but I am pretty sure it would seem to be something out of this world for some of the natives.
I wonder how many people have taken the time to notice something as simple as what is seen in the picture below. Even the simple things can seem out of this world once you open your eyes, and perhaps your imagination.
And then there are things that could seem exotic to some of us but are not so unusual in other places. I have already forgotten which part of the world this flower is originally from.
Would something like this, a mud pool, be considered out of this world? You can see them in New Zealand.
From this perspective it might be difficult to recognize that the picture below is that of the face of a snapping turtle. Look at the eyes. Isn’t this out of this world? We actually came across this creature in the park not far from home.
Splattered Brains 