sunset above the clouds near hawaiian islands

This beautiful moment was captured on Navajo's land in Arizona. With permission from the Native Americans, I visited their sacred and amazing canyons. It's a bit windy topside so there is a constant shower of sand pouring in. In just a few minutes, piles of this ultra-fine sand begin to build up on our shoulders, pockets, and equipment making the day-long adventure quite memorable. When the sun is at its highest, it illuminates some of these sand showers to appear as magnificent beams of light.

an up-shot of the large clusters of dates on this Phoenix dactylifera in Kauai

when large brown bears come out out their winter slumber, they're hungry and are looking for the easiest food available. bears favor easy food that does not require a chase, battle, or conflict, and salmon meets those requirements quite well (also good news for me behind the camera). it is common to see these bears standing in a stream waiting for their meal to attempt to swim by. this one perched himself atop a small falls where the salmon have to jump to beat the down-rushing current.

looking straight-down on top of a lovely pink hyacinth. The fragrance is quite strong and i can understand why the French like to use these Mediterranean flowers in their perfumes.

this is a piece of abstract art that was created on another planet - yes, really! on the occasion that a planet blows up (usually from a massive collision), the various substrates fly off into space and sometimes find their way to earth as a meteorite. typically these are either rocky (from the planet's mantle and crust) or iron-nickel (from the core), but on very rare occasions, earth receives a piece from the in-between boundary layer where crystals have formed. this is a closeup photo of a pallasite meteorite, looking deep into the olivine crystals formed on another world. we zoomed in to view about 1/20 of an inch (about the thickness of a DVD), and used very bright and finely focused lights that illuminated every bubble and imperfection to refract an assortment of extra colours... after all, this is from another planet, so we have to make it look as other-worldly as possible.

a moment during a fireworks display that reminded me of palm trees.

appearing to be some seaweed gently swaying under water, this is actually an above-water decorative grass (green foxtail) that has those fuzzy tops resembling caterpillars. this is a closeup shot (capturing 0.1 x 0.16 inches) of the seeds and fuzzies that dance in the wind atop this tall grass. the seeds can be seen as large light-green pods with dark-green stripes (like a melon), and the fuzzy strands can be seen in light-green branching off the main stem in the middle, and eventually fade to brown as they reach their end.