Another beautiful and large butterfly in Malaysia. It's wings are simply huge when they flap by. They're relatively common as long as you don't mind being perched motionless in the middle of a flower bed and waiting for one to land in front of the lens. They are more properly called a Ricepaper butterfly, but most locals know it as a Tree Nymph.

Indiana wetlands

For many years, I lived next to a large duck pond just outside my back door and it was not uncommon to see me set up on a nearby bank. After some time, the local inhabitants seemed to accept my presence and felt safe to get closer for a better look like this curious duck.

peeking through the trees toward Horseshoe Lake mostly covered with lily-pads and blooms

This is the remains of Bristol Lake in the Mojave Desert. After the water evaporated and lake bottom began to dry, the variations in temperature caused the drying surface to crack and the soft elements underneath to ooze out between the cracks, forming little walls. The surface is extremely hard and rock-like and the jagged walls are strong and sharp.

home grown soda bottles? well, not quite. laying across the bottom of the photo is the edge of a daisy's stem, and the 'bottle' is a single hair/fuzz (1/60 of an inch in height) protruding from that stem. daisy plants have bristly stems (in between soft and prickly) so the fuzz has a larger diameter making it more stiff, and as we recently discovered... it's also hollow and uniquely shaped. to add a little colour, we placed a small piece of yellow tractor-feed paper as a background, so that the out-of-focus hole created a nice glow on the horizon.

the surf is definitely 'up' today

northern Montana