Many northern states like Montana have an abundance of colourful stones delivered by glaciers long ago. These happen to be at the edge of a lake under a few inches of water. The entire beach area and bottom of the lake (as far as I could see) was covered in this manner and the stones just under the water provided great rich colour with minimal wave distortion. To be able to shoot straight down and not have any perspective in the stone pattern, I stood in the water and waited for the ripples to disappear before capturing this neat texture image.

a pleasant combination of rocky cliffs and thick forest in southern Illinois. i was lucky to find a very large fallen boulder to climb up on to get above the brush and capture this view.

from the beautiful and tropical Wailea, Maui

female brown bear taking it easy (Aleutian Islands)

This is one of many pools of water from underground hot springs at Yellowstone. As the water spreads out at the surface, it cools and allows a variety of different algae to sustain life. In this case, the algae that survives in the hotter temperatures is blue and green, and the somewhat cooler algae appears red and orange, forming a circular rainbow pattern to mark the temperature ranges of the water.

resident of Indiana wetlands

the amazing colours and complex patterns hosted by a lovely peacock

beautiful rain-forest trees and foliage in southern Maui