graduated sunset colours behind a silhouette of winter trees

it is rare that i photograph man-made things when i'm traveling around looking for beautiful things in nature, but artistic construction like this will make it into the photo collection.

JiuZhaiGou, China

Such a strong blue is a rare colour to be found in butterflies which makes the Blue Morpho an excellent find. This vibrant blue is very visible to their predators and so they rarely rest with their wings open to display these alluring colours.

Bamboo forest in China

following a simple trail through an Oregon woods, i enjoyed the surrounding environment of wildflowers, boulder outcrops, and thick forest. About a half-an-hour in, i came across Proxy Falls in early afternoon light peeking through the trees and in a few minutes found a good location to begin the camera setup process. While immersed in the constantly changing light readings, i heard another hiker nearby, but was only moments away from capturing this shot so i didn't break my concentration. After i captured the event, i was greatly surprised to notice a small crowd of 8 other hikers with cameras and tripods all encircled behind me shooting over my shoulders. I learned they were on a guided photo tour group and this was a good stop.

It was late in the day and I had been shooting a garden until my surroundings became dim. On my way out, I passed by a patch of primrose flowers next to a large boulder. I was amazed at their vibrant glowing colour even though the surroundings were in dull evening light. Being reasonably certain that they were not battery-powered, my only rationalization was that these petals were made of the same fluorescent substance on firefly tails. I returned the next day to shoot them in bright sun, but the flowers appeared quite average. So, I waited until they were once again in the dim evening shade and captured their neon colours on film.

this is a closeup photo of a computer chip that has been 'un-gracefully' opened so we could see it's innards. the warm and colourful section shows different layers of micro-circuity that have been ripped apart from our opening process (somewhere out there, the folks at Intel are cringing). the lava-like black area is the base silicon that has chipped and shattered (again from our opening process). this photo captures an area approximately 1/8 inch in height.