It is slow and tiresome hiking through miles of these steep rows of sandstone walls. it's a very beautiful location, speckled with small trees and interesting formations, but relentless with it's heat and giant maze-like features. most of my time is used climbing up & down (and winding to & fro) than actual forward progress (if forward is even a possible direction).

appearing to be a nice artsy mosaic of tiles, this is actually a closeup shot of a Rose of Sharon flower. this particular shrub had white blooms with dark-pink patterns down in the throat. when you zoom in (way in) to where the pink and white meet, you can see cell patterns like this. (photo captures 0.05 x 0.03 inches of the flower petal so the height of this photo is the thickness of a credit card)

a fresh and perfect bloom of a yellow, white, and pink variegated rose

you'd probably believe me if i said this was a tentacle from some deep-sea creature, but it is actually a closeup shot of a common flower stigma (the tiny little stem sticking out of the center and captures pollen from the stamen). the stigma of a red gladiolus is only 0.025 inches in diameter (thickness of 2 playing cards) and this photo captures the very tip that protrudes farthest outside the bloom. (check out our "Balanced Gems" shot to see the neighboring anther part of the same flower).

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.

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.

occasionally when an Eastern Redbud tree (which has pinkinsh-purple blooms instead of the more typical red blooms) gets rather old, clusters of blooms squeeze out from every part of each branch, limb, and trunk. it's a great find if you happen to find one during the right moment of spring (then it's just a matter of getting the camera equipment up in the tree).

cluster of Dendrobium orchids in China rain-forest