this is an extreme closeup shot of a silicon wafer that has shattered. like most hard & brittle materials, the broken fragments have scalloped patterns along the shattered edges (like broken glass). this particular fragment's pattern resembled a lightning storm and shows off an area of 0.0055 x 0.0037 inches (averaging out to the thickness of a sheet of paper).

A white dicentra plant bathed in morning sunlight.

High in the Urubamba Mountains, lies the recently famous ruins of MachuPicchu. The peak off to the right is WaynaPicchu. After a lengthy steep climb up damp and slippery rocks, it provides a nice overlook of the ancient city. Many photographers stand on the hill on the left side of this photo and capture a portion of the ruins; I chose to climb to a neighboring peak and shoot down over the entire area. The stepped plateaus going down the side were farmland and between each level are stone steps protruding out from the wall.

This large Bird-of-Paradise bloom gave me quite a challenge. I was hiking in a tropical rain-forest when i saw glimpses of this beautiful bloom. The only trouble was the best side to photograph was rather hidden by thick foliage with no practical way to get closer. I found a peek-hole through the network of leaves, but it was very high, so i stretched the tripod to it's full height and then more so by greatly decreasing it's base to obtain just enough height to peek through this hole in the foliage. Then added a very large zoom lens on top of this very unstable camera setup. After waiting some time for everything to settle down from micro-movements (including not breathing on or near the camera), i was able to capture this exotic shot.

looking straight down toward the tops of foliage and a simple dirt (mud) road.

aerial view of clouds forming over Gulf of Mexico

appearing as a beautiful iridescent wing from a magical creature, this is actually a small portion of a single grain of black sand. we were exploring a small clump of sand for a good shot, and noticed a tiny colourful spot sparkling out from one of the grains of lava rock. zooming in much more, we discovered this 'wing' shape measuring 0.0058 inches long (equivalent to the thickness of a sheet of paper). the entire grain of sand at this level of magnification, would fill 20 of these photos.