Yucca tree (Yucca brevifolia) in Mojave desert.

For many years, I lived next to a large duck pond just outside my back door and it was not uncommon to see me set up on a nearby bank. After some time, the local inhabitants seemed to accept my presence and felt safe to get closer for a better look like this curious duck.

southern China

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.

Wild raspberry bushes in northern Indiana

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

almost looking like someone dropped a jar of jelly, this is actually a closeup photo of a dark red Asiatic Lily. toward the base of each petal are two tiny rows of fleshy-hairs that when magnified, look like dripping jelly. one of the hair rows is the dark red feature going diagonally across this shot, and a glimpse of the second row in the upper-left corner. the 'hairs' in this shot average 0.0087 inches in height, so 115 of them lined end-to-end would equal an inch.

northern Indiana woods