edge of a corn crop in Indiana

well, not actually a mountain, nor made of anything hard like crystal – this is actually a very closeup shot at the edge from where a flower petal was torn. the tear left little shards of protruding flesh that when brightly lit, the whole thing glowed like an ice sculpture. this particular shard measures 0.046 inches tall (less than the thickness of a DVD) and you can see the elongated cells of white and purple that made up the flower petal.

Once again, I was on my way back to my hotel after a beautiful day of shooting natures fine work. In my rearview mirror, I saw some very dramatic clouds and light working their way into a masterpiece. I pulled over, grabbed some gear and hiked off the roadside a bit to find a clearing other than the highway. It was a woodsy area and to my luck, I quickly come across a large pond. Not only did it offer me a great view of the sky, but it supplemented it with some lovely reflections. I waited for the sun to just barely hide behind the next set of passing clouds and then I got to work. A few streams of light burst out only to add to this gorgeous moment in time. Much like when we were kids and laid back to see things in the clouds, these two predominant clouds remind me of moose antlers. Virtually no one else saw my unique point of view, so I refrained from publicly titling this scene "Moose Ears".

closely resembling a (well used) golf ball, this is actually a super closeup shot of a Zinnia's flower petal. the petals have a cool pattern of dimples each measuring about 1/1000th of an inch across. we then focused a ultra-tiny spotlight so that the shaft of light was the size of a human hair (smaller than a laser beam). as the highly focused light bled out through the relatively flat petal (see inset), it created the shading effect of a round ball.

an 80-foot waterdrop along the McKenzie River in Willamette National Forest

Wind blowing across the desert is dropping in ultra-fine sand like a constant dry rain. It is gently piling up everywhere on us and our equipment, but when the sun reaches its highest point, the light illuminates the raining sand and produces these shafts of light.

unique purple lily blooms in southern China

Sunset over ocean at Wailea, Maui