this is a piece of abstract art that was created on another planet - yes, really! on the occasion that a planet blows up (usually from a massive collision), the various substrates fly off into space and sometimes find their way to earth as a meteorite. typically these are either rocky (from the planet's mantle and crust) or iron-nickel (from the core), but on very rare occasions, earth receives a piece from the in-between boundary layer where crystals have formed. this is a closeup photo of a pallasite meteorite, looking deep into the olivine crystals formed on another world. we zoomed in to view about 1/20 of an inch (about the thickness of a DVD), and used very bright and finely focused lights that illuminated every bubble and imperfection to refract an assortment of extra colours... after all, this is from another planet, so we have to make it look as other-worldly as possible.

Sierra Nevada Mountains in late spring as the snow begins to melt at this elevation

Although this can commonly grow into a tree it is officially classified as a shrub (cotinus coggygria) from Eurasia, and a really cool shrub at that. This was my first encounter with one of these and I was delightfully amazed with its colours. The leaves were a grape-purple on the top side with a more common greenish underside. When the sunlight shown through the leaves, they lit up a brilliant red, adding another odd colour to this unparalleled plant. I made sure to capture this wonder of colour on a bright sunny day with an equal amount of leaves showing their upper and lower hues.

this is a super closeup photo of a fallen lily petal. to the naked eye, the petal appears a pale plum colour, but when zoomed in with a bunch of light, we discovered that this flower was mostly white and only had colour running through these vein-like areas. the once juicy cells are drying out which is causing the puckers & wrinkles in the clear/white areas. the coloured 'veins' measure about 0.00042 inches in diameter (a tad thinner than kitchen plastic wrap).

The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco is a fantastic setting for many great images. I saw these two swans swimming about and set up on the nearby shoreline. As with most animals, you really must do a lot of waiting for the right moment (unless you are lucky enough to come across one that responds to verbal instruction). There were many fair shots, but each time something was not quite right, so I very patiently waited, slowly panning the camera to track their movement and making adjustments along the way. In as little as a half hour, there was finally a moment when they both stopped eating seaweed and faced each other just long enough for me to complete my work.

also known as 'the Grand Canyon of the Pacific', this is certainly a wonderful place to hike and shoot some film (as long as you don't mind the annual 240+ inches of rainfall).

The sloping sides of Bryce Canyon have a very unique variegated effect as the many layers of coloured sandstone errode away. I couldn't pass up such an opportunity to capture a good texture shot and grabbed a 600mm lens to grab the distant details.