layers and layers of spire-shaped mountains in ZhangJiaJie

Whenever I'm in the mood to photograph butterflies, I try to seek out large clusters of small deep-throated flowers. They seem designed just for the mouths of butterflies and during the right season, it can make for some great photos. Typically, I setup near these flowers with all my readings made in advance and hope for something like this beautiful Clipper butterfly of the Philippines to land in front of me.

JiuZhaiGou Valley, China

certainly appearing to be a pile of gemstones, this is actually a extreme closeup shot of a flower anther. within the middle of a gladiolus flower, you'll find four long and narrow stems protruding from the center of each bloom. three of these have a tiny banana-shaped pod (anther) on the end, and the remaining one (stigma) has three tiny fingers on the end. if you zoom into the anther, it appears something like a long canoe-like boat heaping full of cargo. zooming in more (and from the side), you can get a clear view of the 'cargo' of cells stacked up in the anther/boat. this photo is a tiny portion of that cargo and each 'gem' is about half the area of a human hair. (check out our "Sea Monster" shot to see the neighboring stigma up close.)

about a week ago, my finger got pinched and created a tiny blood blister. now it's coming off and i decided to photograph the remains using a very tiny lens. this photo captures an an area about .057 inches wide (about the thickness of a DVD) and is of the outer regions of the blister where the dark dried blood meets the surrounding tough dried skin (whitish areas).

a lovely and unique treasure discovered while roaming the hawaiian rainforest

some picture-perfect stalks of Imperial Fritillaria (lutea maxima) just waiting for someone like me to come by and capture them on film.

unique outcropping of weathered sandstone in Colorado