Tuliptree Blossom with Guest
Another Day at Work
Apis Workers' Party
Predator
Some of Your Beeswax
Sedum Bumbler
Look of Defiance
Chicory Bee
Bumbling Bees
Garden Cafe
Buzz By Here - To Infinity and Beyond
Pick Your Poison
Blind Side Attack
On a Mission
Honey Bee on Sedum
Covering the Cosmos
Center of the Cosmos
Three's a Crowd
Popular Spot
On A Pedestal
Big Harry Fireworks Display
To Impress the Girl
Different Perspective
Sweet Ride
Perfect Little Piggies B&W
Flipping the Light Fantastic
Festival of Flights
To the Crowd's Delight
Amish Go Round
Wondersome One
The Stars In Her Eyes
Tuesday's Child
Sleeper Hold
Considering the Next Move
Sugar and Spice
Front Porch Portrait
Caged Competitor
Early Adoration
Child In the Ligtht
Stroll Through the Weeds
Attention Grabbing
Eye Contact
On the Line
Eyes of Wonder
Rounding the Curve
Troubadours of Basin Spring Park
Down by the Creek
Sun Day
Catching Some Light
EAA Fireworks
Hear Me Roar
Pops Photos
Gold Fusion
The morning light provided a beautiful scene for a lone fisherman next to the lighthouse on Kewaunee’s pier.
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Crooked Spine Pine II
This is another view of my Crooked Spine Pine – a true quirk of nature. (See earlier post: Crooked Spine Pine – 2013)
Like Jack’s magic bean stalk, this pine tree is growing in a spiral at Potawatomi State Park in northeast Wisconsin.
It reminds me of a natural example of a rule of composition known as the Golden Mean, Phi, or Divine Proportion. It was made poplar by Leonardo Fibonacci around 1200 A.D. You can learn more about it in an excellent article from Digital Photography School.
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Zeros
Three vintage fighter planes circle back for another simulated strike during a reenactment of the attack on Pear Harbor. This was part of a spectacular air show at the 2013 EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Though I’ve had little opportunity, I could really get into aviation photography. I am not a pilot, but I love to fly and love all type of aircraft.
These planes are Japanese Zeros. Here’s some info gleaned from Wikipedia…
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was a long-range fighter aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The A6M was usually referred to by the Allies as the “Zero”, from 1940, the year in which the aircraft entered service with the Imperial Navy. The official Allied reporting name was “Zeke”.
When it was introduced early in World War II, the Zero was considered the most capable carrier-based fighter in the world, combining excellent maneuverability and very long range. In early combat operations, the Zero gained a legendary reputation as a dogfighter, achieving the outstanding kill ratio of 12 to 1, but by mid-1942 a combination of new tactics and the introduction of better equipment enabled the Allied pilots to engage the Zero on more equal terms.
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Cluster
This delicate bloom is known as Crown Vetch or Axseed. It is a summertime wildflower classified as an herb in the legume family. (The same category as peas and beans.)
These flowers seem to be popular with bees and butterflies. In the area I found this, bees were busy working the few flowers there.
On the downside, it is a serious invader of prairies and dunes and, apparently, it’s poisonous to horses.
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Shades of Dawn
The morning clouds were thick enough to obscure the rising sun but light enough to create a stunning, luminescent backdrop for the Kewaunee, WI lighthouse and pier on the western shore of Lake Michigan.
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Right at Home
This soldier bug seemed snug as a bug…in a marigold. These flowers are part of a potted arrangement my wife, Sara, put together to brighten up our driveway.
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Look! Up In the Sky! It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s…
…an Elephant…a Giraffe…a Shark…a teenie-weenie Cow…and other assorted colorful things.
Though they look more like creatively shaped balloons, these are kites – flying high at the Kites Over Lake Michigan kite festival at Two Rivers, WI.
The cow is my favorite!
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Orange Wave
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt
Thank you, Mr. Erwitt, because I don’t have much to say about this one. It’s a bend in a bit of loose plastic fencing.
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Crooked Spine Pine – 2013
FINALLY – We found it!! As you can see, this is a very unique tree. This tree has eluded me for years. Let me explain…
In 2006, while hiking on a trail through the woods, we came across this tree. It was in the middle of the trail, so we weren’t the only ones who’ve seen it. But I’m guessing most people didn’t look at it from the angle I photographed it, so they wouldn’t realize the cool curve of its growth.
I took a few photos of it. Sometime after that, I posted my best photo of the “Crooked Spine Pine” on Flickr. (That was before I had this blog.) It turned out to be one of the most popular photos I’ve ever posted. A number of people questioned its authenticity – accusing me of “photoshopping” it.
Back when I took the original photo, in 2006, I had a simple 5-megapixel camera. The photo of this tree was unique, but it really wasn’t a great image, technically speaking. Since then I’ve upgraded considerably.
For the last several years, I’ve been trying to find this tree again – to get better photos. However, I wasn’t sure exactly where it was. I thought it was at Potawatomi State Park, near Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. We spent a number of visits, hiking the trails looking for the tree. After having no success, I began to think maybe it was on a trail at Peninsula State Park, farther up Door County, near Sister Bay, WI. We had hiked trails and took photos at both parks. We also had to consider the possibility that the tree was no longer there – blown over in a storm or claimed by disease or insects.
We began to keep better track of what trails we had hiked on and in the process, we’ve hiked a lot of trails and even enlisted the help of friends, in search of this one tree. Recently, my wife and I spent a day hiking the trails at Peninsula State Park totaling about seven-and-a-half hours. No luck. So, maybe it wasn’t at Peninsula, but at Potawatomi.
Last Friday, Sara (my wife) and I decided to spend the day together. It was a nice day so we decided to hike the trails at Potawatomi State Park. We hiked the Hemlock Trail – about a two mile loop. While hiking, I noticed a spur off the trail and thought we should check that out some time. Hemlock turned back and we came along another spur that I thought might be the other end of the spur we passed earlier. We decided to head up that little stretch to see what was there and, low and behold, there was the tree.
In our search over the years, no doubt we had hiked the Hemlock Trail before, but never took that little detour. We were joyful to have finally located it, took photos, marked it on a trail map, took GPS coordinates. We will not have any problems finding it in the future. If you’d like to see it for yourself, hike the Hemlock Trail and take the bike trail in the northern part of the loop.
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Fini
“Fini” means “The End” in the French language. It’s the perfect title for this breathtaking view last Friday evening. The brightest point at the bottom of the frame is the last bit of sun slipping behind the clouds.
My wife, Sara and I were driving home from a very enjoyable day of just spending time together. As we talked, we both noticed the stunning sunset. I held off as long as I could before I had to pull over, grab the camera out of it’s case in the back seat and snap a few frames.
I typically try to include something of interest in the foreground of sunset photos (an old tree, the silhouette of a building, etc.), but the clouds and the color were amazing enough on their own. (At least, I thought so.)
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