For several kilometers in the GuiLin area, there exist many of these uniquely shaped mountains. They are a pleasure to travel through and are ever-changing as the sun passes over. The locals have a saying concerning their beautiful surroundings; "I'd rather be a GuiLin man [person] than a supernatural being".

Banyan tree silhouettes and reflections in Horseshoe Lake (southern Illinois) during sunset

I'm hiking across the inside of a volcano crater and am loving the diverse assortment of mineral colours – every few minutes it seems like i enter a new alien world with unique soil and rock colours. The distant base of the clouds are over a mile in elevation, and they peak around 8,500 feet – the camera is just under 10,000 feet to capture this beautiful and unique land.

While hiking through the many woods in the valley, I came across a clearing packed full of ferns. Clearings between the groves of trees were common, but none were like this one. These ferns average five to six feet in height and were nothing short of spectacular. The sunlight filtered through the airy flora creating many layers of green as it progressed toward the shaded ground region.

a super closeup of an ant's head showing a portion of it's face along with half of it's lateral eye. visually, the entire head appeared a stealthy black, but the photography lighting caused the eye to glow a dark red which made for some interesting contrast. each of the micro-lenses on the compound eye, measure 0.00074 inches in diameter (1,350 of them would make inch). another interesting effect is how the translucent hairs acted like lenses and focused our lighting into little hotspots on the scaly surface.

edge of a corn crop in Indiana

This is a collection of some of the water drops flowing into the Yosemite Valley. It is difficult to take a bad photograph in this area, as the main valley area is surrounded with lush pines and giant cliff walls in all directions. The falls were abnormally robust this summer due to a previous heavy winter and wet spring.

appearing to be some seaweed gently swaying under water, this is actually an above-water decorative grass (green foxtail) that has those fuzzy tops resembling caterpillars. this is a closeup shot (capturing 0.1 x 0.16 inches) of the seeds and fuzzies that dance in the wind atop this tall grass. the seeds can be seen as large light-green pods with dark-green stripes (like a melon), and the fuzzy strands can be seen in light-green branching off the main stem in the middle, and eventually fade to brown as they reach their end.