Meta work can be a lot of fun, and also a little different. I took a recent photo of mine (from January), set it as my desktop background, positioned my mouse, then focused in for a macro shot. I really like how the honeycomb texture of my laptop’s LCD monitor came out. The juxtaposition of the mouse pointer next to a piece of architecture, in the sky nonetheless, makes for an interesting and less than usual composition.
The olm is a cave salamander completely adapted to the dark environment where it lives. It has no eyes, and is completely without pigmentation. Early discoverers thought olms were baby dragons. These salamanders live in a group of caves in the Balkan mountains.
Do you know what animal has the strongest punch in the world? Look no further than the stomatopod, an ocean creature that punches its prey to knock it out.
Have you ever seen a giant snail? Given the various parasites all snails host, I’m not sure I’d play with them. This brave woman’s got a giant snail on her arm. Yuck.
This horse is amazing. It’s called Blue Hors Matine, and the rider is Andreas Helgstrand. I have never seen a horse move like that. Even the commentators are left speechless.
The bower bird is a truly amazing animal. It builds an elaborate nest, complete with assorted objects of various shapes and colors, in order to attract a mate.
If you didn’t think crows could use tools, think again:
Have a look at this fantastic battle between a herd of water buffalo and a pride of lions. If you watch till the end, you’ll see how the buffalo attack the pride in numbers in order to retrieve a captured calf. The poor thing not only has to resist the lions, but a crocodile that grabs onto it from behind as well. It’s a heroic battle, and that little calf is a true survivor.
Sometimes, I wake up and skies like this one greet me. How can I pass on taking a photo when I’m faced with such beauty? I cannot, will not, must not.
Taken in North Bethesda, MD.
I got home one afternoon just as a summer storm was about to break the heavens open. I had a choice: do some consulting work, or set up my camera and get some photos. The camera won.
Got all sorts of great photos of the clouds wrestling with each other during the prelude to the wet show. As the rain started, I decided to do some high speed photography as well. Set my 5D to 3200 ISO, put it in Aperture Priority mode and the aperture to f/2.8 (the largest my 100mm lens could do), and had lots of fun capturing raindrops in mid-air. It helped that I knew my 5D would go all the way up to 1/8000 secs on the shutter speed…
It looks as if I’ve photographed a wet window pane here, but trust me, those raindrops were caught in mid-air, as they were falling downwards.
I thought it’d be fun to process this photo differently, and to turn it upside down. So the raindrops are falling upwards here. 🙂
Photos taken in North Bethesda, MD.
This was taken from the roof of the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington, VA. I’d just finished a meeting and asked a favor from John, the hospitality manager: could he please let me go up for a few minutes to take photos? He kindly agreed, and he, along with a security guard, escorted me through the labyrinthine corridors of the top floor onto the pebble-lined roof.
What a gorgeous view that hotel has! I quickly took a whole series of photos, and I still need to post-process quite a few of those. I really like this one, as it shows the sun just about to fade over the Virginia hills while the old Potomac River goes on about its business.
Raoul Pop 