beautiful rain-forest trees and foliage in southern Maui

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.

closely resembling a (well used) golf ball, this is actually a super closeup shot of a Zinnia's flower petal. the petals have a cool pattern of dimples each measuring about 1/1000th of an inch across. we then focused a ultra-tiny spotlight so that the shaft of light was the size of a human hair (smaller than a laser beam). as the highly focused light bled out through the relatively flat petal (see inset), it created the shading effect of a round ball.

cluster of Dendrobium orchids in China rain-forest

path through California Redwoods

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.

small forest on the side of a volcano in Maui