home grown soda bottles? well, not quite. laying across the bottom of the photo is the edge of a daisy's stem, and the 'bottle' is a single hair/fuzz (1/60 of an inch in height) protruding from that stem. daisy plants have bristly stems (in between soft and prickly) so the fuzz has a larger diameter making it more stiff, and as we recently discovered... it's also hollow and uniquely shaped. to add a little colour, we placed a small piece of yellow tractor-feed paper as a background, so that the out-of-focus hole created a nice glow on the horizon.

the amazing colours and complex patterns hosted by a lovely peacock

in June 1967 a special type of meteorite called a 'pallasite' was discovered in the Magadan district of eastern Russia (near Seymchan). it is one of only 61 known meteorites of this type and it contains olivine crystals mixed in with other metals and rocky materials. we noticed a tiny spot that really sparkled in the light, so we zoomed in and photographed it (seemed like the proper thing to do at the time). this photo is 0.03 inches wide which is about the thickness of a credit card and just big enough to capture this most interesting area.

The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco is a fantastic setting for many great images. I saw these two swans swimming about and set up on the nearby shoreline. As with most animals, you really must do a lot of waiting for the right moment (unless you are lucky enough to come across one that responds to verbal instruction). There were many fair shots, but each time something was not quite right, so I very patiently waited, slowly panning the camera to track their movement and making adjustments along the way. In as little as a half hour, there was finally a moment when they both stopped eating seaweed and faced each other just long enough for me to complete my work.

amongst the ruins in MachuPicchu

a Cinnamon Fern in bloom

This is the main center area of MachuPicchu. The "D" shaped structure near center is the Temple of the Sun. For some reason it was worthy of a complex curved wall, unlike all other surrounding structures.

unique purple lily blooms in southern China