Leaves

All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades
but the word of our God will stand forever.

(Isaiah 40:6b-8, English Standard Version)

Unusual Suns

I have so many sunset/sunrise pictures, it's hard to categorize them. Yet the category in this post, "Unusual Suns", isn't too big, but still has some pretty neat pictures.

The picture below is one of my favorite "unusual sun" photographs. As the sun was rising that morning, there was a layer of clouds making it appear that there was only half of a sun. Therefore I titled it "The Half Sun".


This next picture is one that I got from the field, looking west as the sun neared its setting. The sky was either thinly cloudy or thickly hazy, I'm not sure which, but the sun was shining through it, so I titled this picture "Hazy Sun".

This picture, which I titled "Big Sun", was also taken from the field at sunset. As it neared the horizon, something about the clouds or the atmosphere caused it to look unnaturally large. Not like really really big, but bigger than normal.

I actually took this unusual sun picture just the other day. I was out in the woods on a very cloudy day, and looked up to see what looked like a very bright moon. Since I had my camera on hand, I got this picture and named it "Cloudy Sun".

Of all the subjects I have photographed, none surpass the sun in variety and beauty. Though the sun itself is always the same, it never looks the same. The clouds are always different, or the weather, or who knows what. I guess the same often is true of God: though He Himself never changes, He often appears more glorious in different ways because of the different situations in which we view Him.

Snowflakes

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. That one snowflake picture from the "cold" post got so many comments, I just had to do a whole post of them. I was planning on waiting a while before posting it so it would be fresh and new, and thus hopefully preserve the beauty of the snowflakes, but I'm about to start taking some extra classes for school, and may have significantly less time for blogging. So. . . I went ahead and put it together.

He gives snow like wool; he scatters hoarfrost like ashes. He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs; who can stand before his cold? (Psalm 147:16-17, English Standard Version).

Psalm 113:3

Birds

For where we live, I don't do anywhere near enough bird photography. Our yard is teeming with birds, so you'd think I'd get more pictures of them. But I don't! It's pretty sad. And they're so much fun to get pictures of too. It does take patience though. The birds pictured below are the only ones that I have gotten in a year. I hope to do more bird photography, and more wildlife photography in general this year.

This bird is called a Cedar Waxwing. We don't seem them very often, only two or three times a year, but they sure are pretty.

This was taken early last year during our big ice storm. It's a Blue Jay, common, mean, obnoxious, and yet beautiful. But you can't help but love him when he's puffed up like that!

These were three crows or something perched on a tree just to the west of our house. I got the picture from our front porch.

This is a vulture, or buzzard, that I photographed as he swooped over the trees on a cloudy fall day.

This is a Titmouse. We have lots of them, but they're very cute.

This is a Blue Bird. This and the next picture were in my last blog post, but since they were birds, I figured I should post them anyway. I did crop them to make the birds easier to see though.

This is a Downy Woodpecker. I love these little guys!

This is a Purple Finch. They mostly only show up in winter time, but I like them too.

I like taking pictures of animals, and birds are a little easier than, say, deer, so hopefully they'll be showing up a bit more often in the future.

Hunting with Canons

Yesterday, January 1, 2010, my brother, Tyler, and I went hunting. It was a beautiful day, but a bit cold for my liking. Nontheless, we gathered up our gear and went out to go do some shooting. We headed west first to the field behind the stone wall (see map at the bottom of the page). Here we shot several great pictures, including the one of Tyler hunting pictured at the top of this page.

We began on the north end of the field, and then began to move south, shooting as we went. We got several good photos, as the terrain, colors, and vegetation all around were simply gorgeous. The wheat was gold, the sky was deep blue, and the clouds were soft and gentle. It was beautiful.




Then we returned to the woods and got some pictures of the dirt. It was neat because the dirt had been wet, and when it had frozen it had aparently expanded, risen, and formed all these little columns of frozen dirt. Very cool. So we shot that a few times, and moved on.

Speaking of freezing, check out this frozen drop of water we shot. It was pretty neat. Both Tyler and I have gotten pictures of dew drops or rain drops on blades of grass before, but here was a frozen one! It's so intricate with all the little air bubbles inside. God is so creative, isn't He?

At this point we were were pretty far to the west of our house, and we crossed north again to the drive way in pursuit of a flock of Blue Birds, which we don't see to often, much less photograph. This was the first real wildlife hunting we'd done that day. We finally got a few pictures, but most of them were out of focus and blurry. But both of us got one that was acceptable.

After the Blue Bird we photographed a nearby Downy Woodpecker.

And then we were joined by our hunting companion, Elsie. Look at how brave she is, crossing that massive canyon (known to us as the drainage ditch). Heh heh. She is such a funny cat. Well, we headed across The Field in a southerly direction, but didn't really get any more great pictures. But it was a really fun time. It took little more than an hour, with one break in the middle to warm up inside. And by the end, we were ready to go inside and warm up again! It was a beautiful day for hunting, but very cold!

Cold. . .