About 3 minutes’ worth of sheet lightning in our Colorado front range neighborhood, captured with my Olympus E-M1II’s Live Composite mode:
EXIF:
E-M1II, M.Zuiko 7-14mm lens
14mm, f/2.8, ISO 200, roughly 180 frames of 1 sec. duration each
We’re still in that fortunate window of time in which our daughter isn’t quite old enough to think of the Stock Show as “uncool,” so we made it downtown for the Mexican Rodeo (now officially the “20th Mexican Rodeo Extravaganza”). Unfortunately this means the show was longer-than-usual on extravaganza and shorter-than-usual on rodeo, but we still enjoyed ourselves.
With some fast glass, the Olympus OM-D E-M1 is proving itself to be quite the sports shooter. Here, with a Panasonic 35-100 f/2.8 zoom, I captured an interesting mix of expressions on the horse’s and caballero’s faces. It almost looks as though they’re in the middle of an argument — and given that this was part of the bucking bronc competition, I suppose you could say they were.
Seen at the Denver Zoo:
The Blue-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon malimbica) is a tropical bird, and hunts insects along the edges of rivers and streams in the rainforests of western Africa.
A little alcove off the “Big Room” at Carlsbad Caverns, the “Dolls Theater” does not lack in detail or depth. Â Should you visit, make sure to take a (small) tripod and cable release — this image was taken at f/18 with a 3.2 second exposure / ISO 400:
A.k.a Pohe Haole (Tropaeolum majus), brought to you by the Limahuli Garden & Preserve (part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden system) on Kaui, Hawaii:
The Limahuli Garden and Preserve is a neat little place to stop by should you ever find yourself up on the north end of Kauai (get to Hanalei, then continue west until the road ends).  Beautiful views, lots of great plants and flowers to see and shoot, and you get a bit of history in the mix as well.  Nasturtium was introduced to Hawaii in the 1800s, so this was shot in the “Plantation era” part of  the garden.
I spotted this scene late at night in New Orleans:
I’ve taken to paying attention to what ceiling light fixtures look like from below — it’s not how they’re intended to be viewed, and you’ll often see an interesting geometry as a result. This one just made me laugh — it started as a nice symmetric six-sided thing, but has lost any pretense of regularity (as seems to be typical of New Orleans). Meanwhile, over on the left, where two bulb holders are a bit spread apart from where they originally were, an alarm bell sits between them and balances the composition.
So, crooked but still balanced. The sepia tone, by the way, was naturally there — about all I did to this shot was correct a little pincushion from the close perspective.
Some tiny little flowers I spotted during Doors Open Denver 2012, at the Governor’s Residence:
These were tiny little things (maybe 1/4″ across) and were located just off the side of a pathway — glad I spotted them!
I spotted this little scene up in a tree at the Green Gulch Farm, near San Francisco, California:
The spider didn’t seem to mind the soggy weather a bit. Should you find yourself in the San Francisco area (in particular, in Marin county), we’d highly recommend a stop at Green Gulch Farm. The people there are friendly, and it’s a wonderful quiet place for a stroll (even on a wet day)…
So a few months back, we got a late afternoon dusting of very sticky wet snow — the immediate result was an odd vertical ridge of snow on top of all our trees’ branches. So lit only by our porch light, I had to grab a shot of this unusual scene:
It took a little help from Topaz Adjust to bring out the contrast in what’s admittedly a very abstract image…
Another quick reminder to be open to images even when / where you weren’t expecting them:
I caught this image when my daughter and I were walking around looking at the balloons at this year’s Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. One of the trinkets on sale at the fiesta’s concession booths was a battery-powered bubble blower. Here, a kid had just run past blowing bubbles — thanks to an overnight rain, the grass was still wet, so the bubbles didn’t pop on contact with the ground.
The technicolor reflections make for a fun (semi-abstract) shadow self-portrait…