passing for an assortment of freshly mined diamonds, these rough 'gems' are actually grains of refined sugar. they are spilled upon a deep-blue CD case which gave us a nice colour backdrop and texture. the crystalline grains of sugar average around 1/60 of an inch.

Meet "Crusty" the sand crab on the coral-sand beaches of Guam. He was kind enough to not move while I setup my gear in very close proximity and capture this macro shot.

sun setting above the clouds near hawaii

One of my favorite locations is southeastern Utah. The area has many bizarre rock formations in all shapes and sizes. It is just after dawn and I'm on my way to a planned trailhead as I pass by these absolutely massive walls of rock. A few extra moments for this side trip won't hurt my plans, so I stop and wait for the sun to raise just a little higher. I grab a non-distorting wide angle lens and finish setting up in front of this wonder. The low warm light made this giant formation glow with contrasting shadowed edges, enhancing its texture and rich colour, making for a beautiful image to preserve on film.

Arizona wilderness

from the beautiful and tropical Wailea, Maui

I was hiking to the Paria wilderness in Arizona and parked my car in southern Utah, as far as the nearest dirt road would take me. On my way to the Arizona border (located at the "V" on the far left), I passed by a grouping of vermillion striped mounds that reminded me of a dessert of some sort. Perhaps it was just the heat and my desire for something cold to eat.

appearing as a beautiful iridescent wing from a magical creature, this is actually a small portion of a single grain of black sand. we were exploring a small clump of sand for a good shot, and noticed a tiny colourful spot sparkling out from one of the grains of lava rock. zooming in much more, we discovered this 'wing' shape measuring 0.0058 inches long (equivalent to the thickness of a sheet of paper). the entire grain of sand at this level of magnification, would fill 20 of these photos.