Nature

[Zhukov]

That butterfly one actually made me giggle a little.. before realising that I have turned into a horrid, bitter old man.

The dunes are cool, and the spider is.... ugh. Creepy.

The Doctor I LOVE apple picking. I used to be a Tasmanian cliche and do it as a summer job. My dad worked on an apple farm, and his father and so on. Nice pictures. Were you there to collect apples or photo opportunities?

Here is my waltz up a mountain:

It is tradition to lump a pile of snow on the front of your car so that people know you have been up Mt. Wellington. When you go around corners it slides off and hits cyclists, who then procede to write to the newspapers complaining about "icy death missles".


I didn't get any pictures from the bottom, but this is about half way up. That's the pinnacle.






On the top


We made a snow animal. I'm not sure what though.


It was very cold and windy up here, and it was swarming with packs of children who threw snowballs. We put rocks and bits of glass in ours.



Here is Hobart.



The End.

[MLE]

That last picture is especially stunning.

[Kitsa]

Beautiful!

We went hiking again yesterday. Same place as before.

[Zhukov]

It must be the lack of sleep but I'm really creeped out by not only The Hole, but also the bark on the tree. It still looks cool.

Your country has good leaves.

[Aaarg]

shagbark hickory!

ooh i should know the latin name for that. i know it's in the juglandaceae family but that's as far as i can go. (apparently it's carya ovata, yeah, that wasn't saved in my memory)

also i'm always so upset that i never visited the hocking hills.

also i need to go outside.

[The Doctor]

Originally Posted by Zhukov

The Doctor I LOVE apple picking. I used to be a Tasmanian cliche and do it as a summer job. My dad worked on an apple farm, and his father and so on. Nice pictures. Were you there to collect apples or photo opportunities?

A little of both we took our 3 year old and a couple of friends for some family type photos and the back drop is gorgeous this time of year. But also apples are delicious especially in pie.

Your pictures are fan-fucking-tastic, I respect the snow on cyclists, dam cyclists (shakes fists)

[Kitsa]

Wild honeysuckle.

[Zhukov]

Nice photos.

[The One and Only...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

NATURE YOU SCARY

[executioneer]

fast forward to 2:47

[Kitsa]

Like most of the midwestern US, we're having a massive snow/ice storm. It was actually sort of warm, then when we woke the next morning pretty much everything we had was encased in about a quarter inch of solid ice.



Each exposed blade of grass had its own coat:



The shrubbery by the front door is a block of solid ice:



The roof of our outdoor dog kennel when I inspected it (the dog has been and will be inside, the kennel is for summer play).

[Zhukov]

Wow, cool.


No pun.


Love the last photo.

[Kitsa]

Flowering moss:


Sort of neat mossy patch up on a mountain:


Bluets:


Bluets, side view:


Spring Beauties:


Apple Blossoms:

[Kitsa]

And then I went on my annual Cherry Blossom rampage, during which I like to think the trees sense me coming and say, "Oh, here she is with that damn camera again."









Petals blowing off the trees, with bees all around:







Soft focus lens filter:


And night photography, not one of my talents:




The slightly less showy Japanese Maple blossom (they're tiny, you sort of have to squint under the leaves to see them)



And this, which I took with a grainy filter and am very pleased with. Might even print him out big and hang him somewhere.

[Kitsa]

Springtime hike in the woods. I had a scavenger hunt list of flowers in my head and got most of them.

Going to break this up into 3 posts because there's one hell of a lot of woods.

Flowering buckeye tree:


Small cave:



Jack-in-the-Pulpit, which I hadn't seen growing wild in years:



Mayapples:



Red trillium:



Water bubbling from a crevice at the foot of a cliff. I don't think it was a spring...probably runoff, but it was neat to see it just bubbling and gushing out of the rock like that.

[Kitsa]

Trying to take a shot of some flowers on a mossy overhang, but it was raining pretty hard and the raindrops screwed this one up:



Base of a waterfall:




Mayapples and violets:



Mayapple army advancing:



Nodding Trillium:



Stream:



Some sort of phlox I didn't expect to see:

[Kitsa]

Deer path:




More falls:




Fern in a rocky outcrop:


Another deer path with a buckeye tree in flower nearby:


Another rocky outcrop:




Mostly dry streambed:






Obligatory rotting log photo:



Another shallow stream:


Smaller side falls:



Standing in a stream, probably getting diseases:

[Kitsa]

It was just in the news that a guy fell to his death from a 60 foot waterfall in the northeast corner of Ohio. He and a woman were wading, he fell, and she wasn't able to catch him.

It is sad and horrible, but you wouldn't believe how casual people are about going off-trail. That's one of my big pet peeves, especially at more popular trails like in Hocking Hills. I've seen people letting their kids climb dangerous cliff faces or just run amok through the woods like it's a playground. I don't know if they're assuming it's safe because it's public, or what.

That and people throwing a ball to see their dog jump off a 20 foot cliff to a pool of water below. I hate that too.

[The Leader]

You just hate fun.

[Zhukov]

I had to wait for my internet to become fast again before I could see those last pictures Kitsa, and they are really cool. I know you think you are a bad photographer, but you take great photos of cool things.


In the Northern Territory they had signs in just about every swimming hole (that wasn't crocodile/barramundi/something infested):

CLIFF JUMPING CAN CAUSE SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH

Didn't stop Italian tourists from climbing as high as humanely possible and leaping into shallow pools. No deaths though.

[Fathom Zero]

I like landscapes, but if I had to criticize Kitsa's photos, I would suggest better composition. Most of the subjects tend to be in the absolute center, which isn't very good? flattering? exciting? Whatever the word is, anyway.

This is a good guide!

http://www.photographymad.com/pages/...position-rules

http://www.ultimate-photo-tips.com/p...of-thirds.html

[Kitsa]

Thanks. Yeah, I'm working on that. Never claimed to be a brilliant photographer. I get so worried about capturing something that I don't take the time to mess around with composition.

Also, on that last hike Mr. Kitsa was being less than cooperative in regard to wrangling a toddler. I was trying to make grabs for her with one hand and take photos with the other, before she jumped off a cliff and became the sort of statistic I would tut tut over.

[Kitsa]

...also, remember (mainly with the plant ones) that I had a hell of a long drudge education-wise through the fields of botany, biology and taxonomy. I think in the back of my head, those sort of pictures are classified under "what it would look like in a field guide" vs. "art".

[Zhukov]

Yeah, I was going to say that with botanical photography you usually want the plant to be the centre and only focus.

[Fathom Zero]

Hey, far be it from me to tell you to do otherwise. It just that they're pretty pictures that can be even prettier. YOU DO GOOD, KITSA. I just felt that a good constructive critique would be nice.

I can't do nature - I don't have the eye for it. I just end up taking blurry pictures of animals.