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Lens-Artists Challenge #225: Wildlife Close to Home

/ Leya / 58 kommentarer

”Stop. Look. Listen. Doing those three things will help you discover the abundance of wildlife you have nearby.” I will follow Anne’s advice…

This summer we were fortunate enough to have a couple of Hummingbird Hawkmoths in our garden – guess if I was happy! An astonishing little creature that is not often found this high up north.

I love my bees and bumblebees of course, and since I planted even more flowers favourable to pollinators, they are increasing.

This little friend is a guest every summer, and while our plumtree was still alive, the hedgehogs feasted on the fallen fruit.

This Grass snake met a harsh destiny due to climate change. The sun warmed up too early and the snake was lured to wake up and venture out of its winter home. They go stiff when the cold returns, and there is no food either. I couldn’t do anything for him.

It is always a joy when this golden gem, the green rose chafer, visits my garden. Its flight is rather clumsy, but the sight of him is a true joy.

I am no spider enthusiast, but in a net of pearls it is OK with me.

This beautiful red kite was lying under a log in the forest. I don’t know how he got there, but they say this species often fight each other, so I guess that might have been his story. We took him to a gamekeeper, but he could not be saved. His wings were too damaged and he could not fly properly after a week, so he was unable to feed himself.

The nearest lake has its beautiful inhabitants, and of the mute swans there are several pairs. Cold winter mornings make them something extra.

”From squirrels to birds, wildlife is around us. What non-domestic animals live in your neighborhood or nearby?” Let us see your wildlife. Remember to link to Anne’s original post and use the Lens-Artist tag.

And, special thanks to Sophia for her interesting Exposure challenge. I hope you had fun with it – I certainly had! Next week we are pleased to tell you that our guest host is Jude of Cornwall in Colors. Visit her beautiful site for more inspiration.

Looking forward to seeing you – until then, stay kind and cool.

Thursday Thoughts – Enjoying the Last Autumn Colours

/ Leya / 24 kommentarer

I walk as much as possible in the forest before the last colours are gone. I know too well what is waiting – grey November. This walk was last week – and there was no wind or rain. Only stillness and the occational, faint, sound of a bird. Mostly robins now.

I love the way the colours change with the light and the surroundings. Inside the denser parts of the forest, the leaves are still green. Closer to the meadows, the light is brighter and the yellow and brown colours dominate.

When I walked out of the forest and onto the gravel road, the sun came shining through and the slender young birches glowed. They are waiting for next year’s Spring festival.

On the right side of the road, an old gate is standing alone, protecting a seemingly abandoned house…

…immersed in a haven of colours.

A few days later, most of the leaves were gone. I am grateful for this day of harmony – something to remember in grey and moody November.

Lens-Artists Challenge #224 – Exposure

/ Leya / 59 kommentarer

Sofia leads us in this interesting challenge – Exposure. Please visit her beautiful site for inspiration! Now, it is up to you how you work on exposure. I prefer using aperture when photographing, but for this challenge I decided only to play with changing the exposure settings while editing. In general, I find that the easiest way to get the look I want. The idea here is to see how the mood of any photo depends on its exposure.

First, some of my high key flower images. I used to be rather obsessed with that some years ago.

What is High-Key Photography?

In short, high-key images are those that have few shadows and have the subject set against a very bright background. High-key images are often set against over-exposed backdrops and the average of all the pixels in the image is very bright. High-key is the opposite of low-key images that are defined by their darker tones.

But, I am cheating…I have this opportunity in one of my cameras, and I also use NIK. If you want to try it for real, here’s an explanation and a tutorial.

Hiking last week in the deforested area, made for sunlit roots and grass. The area felt desaturated – in a positive way.

I decided for monochrome before changing the exposure in LR. The low exposure was a hit for me. I could almost feel the beautiful, whitened roots come alive in the play of light and shadow. Please click to enlarge.

For this plumbago flower, I used Lightroom to create different exposures. You can see that in the underexposed image the light is softly shining through the petals, something you cannot see that well in the overexposed picture. Harmony.

NIK can make striking high key images, while the low key one with LR touched shadows gives another feel.

Different umbrellas

This fly agaric stood alone in the shadow, neutral exposure – with an underexposed image, you can make the ”hat” glow when editing in for example LR. More magic!

Landscapes – well, I don’t know what you prefer, but I prefer the ethereal look of the overexposed image.

Last, but not least, if you are a follower, you already know that I love double exposures. You can make them in Photoshop, but I am lucky enough to be able to make them in my camera. This image I have featured several times, but it is the one I think have turned out the best. So far. In the header – roses.

To sum it up, for me it’s aperture photography, but I often find that playing with exposure while editing gives me a wider range of opportunities. Good for me – I am not always fast in deciding how I want the final image to look. I think that underexposed images make for interesting edits and overexposed images can lift the photo to something ethereal.

Last week we had John’s creative challenge to lighten up our windows to the world. The variety of replies showed how every challenge can be interpreted in a different, personal way and that applies to this week’s challenge as well. We” invite you to play, think or just do your own thing with exposure, either on camera or while editing. and then show us the result.”

Please link to Sofia’s original post and tag with Lens-Artists so we can all find you. Next challenge it is Anne hosting, be sure to visit her beautiful site for inspiration.

As always, stay calm and kind.

LAPC #223 – Flights of Fancy

/ Leya / 64 kommentarer

John leads this week’s challenge, and it is no surprise it involves a ”flight”…

I was a little bookworm, a girl with my head full of dreams. Many dreams of foreign countries I read about in books and saw fascinating pictures of. Mostly special places in these books, not so much whole countries. I never thought they would be more than dreams, but then I met a young man as eager as myself to see the world. We started travelling together when I was 16 and he was 21. And we never stopped. Today I am very grateful that so many ”flights of fancy” from my childhood really came to fruition. Of course I have many dreams left, but in fact there is only one more great travel dream, and that is to see the cherry blossom and the wisteria tunnels in Japan. Somehow I don’t think that dream will come true – but it feels good to still have dreams!

Please go to John’s site for more inspiration!

I have picked three different ”flights”… big and small, and in two out of three there is a real flight involved.

One of my first ”flights of fancy” was this house. As a young girl I used to spend every summer in the public swimming pool of our village. And on my way to the pool, every day I passed this white house, surrounded by a big garden with lots of birches, apple trees, plum trees and pear trees. It was built on a bit higher ground than the other houses, and I also knew that one of the most handsome young boys in my little village happened to live there…

Little did I know that my boyfriend and I would buy this house when I was only 21 – and we have lived here since then, for 44 years now. And, it is still my dream house!

This image is from quite some years ago, when we had both Mille and Totti waiting for us to come home.

Another ”flight of fancy” was going to New Zealand. I had a pen friend when I was 11 (one of many…), and this girl sent me a calender with photos from both islands, North and South. I was so mezmerised, so in love with these extraordinary nature sceneries, that I started dreaming of getting there one day. In my mind, no other country could literally have ”everything” I loved: high mountains and glaciers, volcanoes and hot springs, magical forests and jungle, unimaginable animals…yes, everything. A dream which of course sounded absolutely impossible…NZ was at the the other end of the world – the New Zealanders are our antipodes.

Then there is another ”flight of fancy” involved too. I had always loved the novels of JRR Tolkien, and especially Lord of the Rings. Our children loved it too…so, finally we arrived in NZ, North Island around Christmas 2011. We travelled the islands for a month, and of course we had to visit Hobbiton! And do you know what – it looked just like in my dreams.

Yet another ”flight of fancy” started with a novel, James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. I dreamt of the magical Himalayas and mystical Tibet, but realised I would never get there. This was literally another world. But, in 2009 my family took the train from Beijing over permafrost and the Tibetan Plateau to Lhasa. It is the world’s highest railway, 5,068 meters at Tanggula. The cars are equipped with oxygen supply to avoid altitude sickness. Still today, we all think this was one of our greatest adventures.

Over the last years, our home has become a ”flight of fancy” for birds and insects, plants and hedgehogs. I try to make it my own Shangri-La, a hidden paradise behind birches, bird cherry and lilacs. I cannot save the planet, but I know I can be of great help to make this little piece of Earth thrive.

According to John, and to Dictionary.com, the idiom “flight of fancy” refers to “an unrealistic idea or fantastic notion, a
pipe dream. For example, ‘She engaged in flights of fancy, such as owning a million‐dollar house.’ This idiom uses
flight in the sense of ‘a soaring of the imagination,’ a usage dating from the mid‐1600s.”

I believe we all need imagination and flights of fancy to survive in this unruly world, so, keep dreaming…

A big thank you to Amy for a spectacular mountain challenge – and to you all for your fabulous entries! Now we are looking forward to seeing what was your flight of fancy (or someone else’s) that came to fruition? Please link to John’s original post and tag Lens-Artists.


Next week, Sofia hosts challenge #224 – Exposure. Be sure to visit her beautiful site for inspiration. Until next, stay calm and kind.