Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: baby

(2 notes above) I was creeping around looking for interesting subjects when I noticed something very small that was flashing at me. Peeking closer, I saw an impossibly small spider waving back and forth in the breeze. I could barely get close enough to see what it was except that I recognized the posture which is undeniably "crab spider." When these spiders are in hunting mode, they always look like they are saying, "Yesterday I caught a bug THIS BIG!" LOLOL, oh how they make me giggle! I found a bunch of neat images today, but none of them could hold a candle to this picture which I took yesterday. And so, here is my cute little friend for all of you to coo at and love along with me! I know that everyone just LOVES spiders!!! :D

Once I got over my fear of spiders, I began to appreciate them and even to think they are adorable and totally cute. Finding this itty bitty baby crab spider trying to be invisible on a stem of dried grass brought out a chorus of coos from me. I was especially happy because the sun was at just the right angle to make its translucent body glow. Finally, I added a texture to the background to give it a bit more interest.

One day in September of 2012, I found a baby orb weaver spider on my front porch. Over the next year, I watched this baby get her first meal, survive a freezing winter, grow to adulthood, find a mate, make an egg sac, and finally, I saw her crawl slowly away under a bush to die. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this beautiful Cat-Faced Orb-Weaver, and I cried my eyes out when she died. Maybe just a spider to most, she was my little friend, and I missed her terribly in the months that followed. In fact, revisiting her pictures now pulls hard on my heart strings. I feel like I should be embarrassed that I feel sad as I look at all the pictures I took. How can a person become attached to a spider? I did though, and I feel pretty darn lucky that I got to know a spider well enough to cry over its death. This is a picture of Roscoe's children, hatching out of the egg sac she made and protected until she was too weak to do so. Seeing all of these kids brings a tear to my eye. I wished that some of them would have stayed around, but they all left after a few days. What a great experience it was to know my friend Roscoe. :) If you'd like to see Rocoe's story in pictures and tales, please visit her album here My Friend Roscoe

This darling baby frog was a rescued tadpole from our seasonal pond. It dries up before all of the tadpoles can transform into frogs, so before that happens, I transfer them to a plastic wading pool and give them the extra time they need to finish developing into frogs. I adore these little guys and what awesome photography subjects they make! :)

(4 more pictures in notes above) One day in October of 2012, Steve came into the house with a plastic box and asked in excitement, "Guess what I found in the shop?!" I had no idea, so it was a wonderful surprise to discover that he'd captured a baby Gopher snake! He knew I'd like to see it before he released it, and naturally, pictures were in order! After a few minutes of happy clicking, we brought the box outside, tipped it on its side in the meadow, and quick as a flash, our young friend slipped out of sight in the bushes!

Note: my latest garden article is up! :D Part 9—Dreams of a Big Flower Garden: We Have A Pumpkin Patch!! A few years ago, Steve and I went to a nearby county fair and we had a lot of fun taking pictures of the farm animals. One of the sows had an enormous litter of piglets and we spent a long time cooing at their cuteness! I learned something today about the word "Ungulate". I always thought it meant "hooved mammal", but that's not entirely correct. Wikipedia gives this definition: "Ungulates are a diverse group of large mammals, most of which use the tips of their toes, usually hoofed, to sustain their whole body weight while moving. The term means, roughly, "being hoofed" or "hoofed animal". As a descriptive term, "ungulate" normally excludes cetaceans, as they do not possess most of the typical morphological characteristics of ungulates; recent discoveries indicate that they are descended from early artiodactyls, and thus are directly related to other even-toed ungulates such as cattle, with hippopotamuses being their closest living relatives. As a result of these discoveries, the new order Cetartiodactyla has been proposed to include the members of Artiodactyla and Cetacea, to reflect their common ancestry; however, strictly speaking, this is merely a matter of nomenclature, since it is possible simply to recognize Cetacea as a subgroup of Artiodactyla." I had no idea that whales were considered to be ungulates!! My apologies for not being around much lately. The garden is keeping me very busy, along with everything else going on right now! Explored on June 11, 2014, highest placement, #2.

You can also find me on Facebook ! Well, it's taken me longer to get my gusto back, but as February has changed into March, the world around me is waking up and with it, so is my passion to capture what I find. I've been out to take pictures just twice now since the beginning of the year. The first was about 4 days ago, but I wasn't happy with my pictures, though they were not horrible. A couple of days ago I went out again, and there were many things for me to find on my little walk. At one point I was staring intently at the underside of a piece of bark and noticed an incredibly tiny snail shell, about 1 mm in size! I wanted to see if I could get it in focus, and while I was taking pictures, I realized that that shell had an owner, and it was slowly turning away from me! I couldn't even SEE the antennae! I got some other nice pictures too, including some cool mushrooms and other neat things. It was a lot of fun to discover that after two months without a single picture, I have been able to pick up where I left off! Hooray! :) I thought that the best way to get me back into uploading pictures on a regular basis again would be to start a new project, so I'm doing an A-Z project! It isn't going to be daily, but it will be fun to keep my eyes open for potential subjects!! :) Explored on March 2, 2014. Highest placement, #2.

3 more picture in a note above! :) A couple of months ago, I found out about a very special horse show happening just 30 minutes from my house! This show is for Gypsy Cobs and Drum Horses , which are very uncommon in the United States, so the opportunity to see a show full of them had me bursting at the seams in anticipation! :D And, it just so happened to be on my birthday weekend!! (9/29 is my 49th birthday!) I have been so excited while the weeks passed, and finally the day for us to go arrived!! Steve and I got up at 7am this morning so that we could be sure to be on time for the first class, and I got to sit and watch all the classe and take pictures of the horses. It was such fun!!! Going around to the stalls was fun too. It was a fantastic day and I came home with lots of pictures, as did my husband! :) I picked the above image as my Picture of the Day because this baby represents so much of what I love about these horses: spots, an interesting color, fun face markings, and a blue eye! What a gorgeous baby!!! (By the way, this image has a textured background as well as a frame from Jerry Jones, called PaperBox . THANKS JERRY!! :) Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century and the greatest black philanthropist in American history. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. Wikipedia: Oprah Winfrey Explored on September 29, 2013. Highest placement, page 4.

I went over to check out the group of almost-dead milkweed plants today which are growing at the edge of our yearly burn pile, and I saw some motion on the ash and charcoal. I found myself staring at a baby Fence Lizard, otherwise known as a "Blue-belly Lizard"! It had a 1" long body with another inch for its little tail. Can you say cute?!! SO ADORABLE!!!! I managed to get some pictures, including this one! The light direction was harsh and contrast wasn't the best but thanks to using RAW format, I was able to correct many of the problems in the image! :)

2 more pictures and one text note above! :) I've been working on a little seed project which involves gathering seeds from various flowers that I have growing here. I have many, many poppy seed pods to collect seeds from and today I spent some time on that. When I was done pulling poppy pods out of a cup, I poured the seeds at the bottom into my hand and... why, there was something crawling around! I peered very closely to see, and... awwwwwwww... there I saw an itty bitty hunting spider about the size of the letter "o" in this sentence! So cute!! I placed him on a napkin and ran for my camera! I took a bunch of pictures with both my flash and with just natural lighting, and hoped that I'd get a few good ones to share. When a creature is THAT small, it's not easy to get crisp focus on the spot you're hoping for. I always try for the eyes because that's where we are first drawn to when looking at an animal. But at this size, the only way I can really be sure is to stare with my naked eye to see how it's positioned and then try to get a clear picture focused where I think the eyes are. It really is amazing to me how great this 100mm lens is. Combined with 21k pixels from my 5D Mark II, I have the luxury of being able to crop in quite closely. What a combination!! To give you an idea how tiny this spider is, it's crawling over shell embossing on a paper napkin! So amazing to me that something I can barely see can be captured so large! You know, we actually have a special lens adaptor, called the Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro conversion lens, which is a 2.5x magnification lens, but the problem is that the dof becomes so ridiculously razor thin that it can be challenging to get the focus where you want it. We've had the lens since I've had my Mark II, but I haven't bothered even trying to use it because I wanted to be extremely comfortable with my 100mm before trying to tack on this potentially frustrating lens. Do you think it's about time for me to give it a try? :) I think I'm ready! The fact of the matter is that I need to begin practicing with this lens because SOME DAY when I have some extra money, I want to get Canon's amazing MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo lens. It's manual focus only and has razor thin dof, but the results are INCREDIBLE when a person can learn to use it well! So...time to begin practicing! :) WISH ME LUCK!!!! *tremble* Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for forty years, twice as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws schism of 1846. In the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, the concept of One-nation conservatism associated with him, with its emphasis on obligations to all classes, was highly influential in Britain. Wikipedia: Benjamin Disraeli Explored on August 17, 2013. Highest placement, page 2 (#44)...

Can you believe how incredibly tiny this spider is? Literally only about 1mm in size!!! As an adult, it will only be about 1" including legs. Not large but still, such a little baby!!! I think this tiny spider is so cute that :D I want to hug him and squeeze him and take him home and call him George!

When I showed this picture to my husband, he thought it was a piece of fabric! :D When I told him it was a paper napkin, he just about fell over! They are quite smooth with little embossed shells here and there. But at a macro size, you can see so much texture!

Some of the poppys I have are extremely small, growing only a few inches off the ground. This one's head is only about 1/3" in size, and when I took a really close look at it, I saw an itty bitty Swift Crab Spider sitting on it!! I took a handful of pictures, hoping that one of them would turn out well. SUCCESS!! :D (thank you for the ID Leapfrog Art ! :) My dear pod sister Mags pointed out that this poppy looks like it's leaning back in horror from the spider on its face and it's flailing its arms in fright! "GET IT OFF ME!!! EEEEEEEE!!!!!" ROFLMAO!!!

One day about a month ago I looked under a log and I found this strange looking thing (shown in the center). I brought it home and put it in a container and waited to see what would come out. I could see there were eggs inside (each is about the size of a small letter "o") but I didn't know what they were. I was guessing maybe some kind of beetle. Every week I would look to see if anything had hatched, and then yesterday I looked and squealed in joy--the eggs had hatched!! All around the inside of the plastic container were itsy bitsy spider babies!! So cute! This morning I took the container outside and opened it up and while the hatchlings began to crawl out, I took pictures until the very last one was gone! What a fun experience that was, and how interesting to find out that spider eggs don't always come in an egg sac!

This image was taken at the Josephine County Fair on August 20, 2011.

This will be my last entry for now of my visit to the High Cascade Emu Ranch ! I couldn't resist sharing one more chick picture! Also, below are two more images: one of them is a ceramic tile painted by my friend Nancy Magruder , which she presented to one of the owners of the emu ranch. The other image shows some of the major products sold from emus... Do you know about emu oil? Emus have a pad of fat on their back which is very unusual and has some pretty amazing healing properties. It helps tendonitis, arthritis, muscle aches and pains. It may be expensive but a little bit goes a long way, and it has the ability to penetrate deep into your skin and muscles, temporarily dulling or completely removing pain. It's amazing stuff and it works wonders for me and Steve. Emu oil has been used by Aborigines as a traditional medicine to treat fevers, coughs, minor pain, arthritic joints, bruises, cuts and sores. However, emu oil is also one of those things that many think is a hoax. The FDA has not given emu oil approval and granted, there are a lot of companies out there who make ridiculous promises about the use of emu oil. What I CAN tell you is that for years, Steve and I have been using emu oil for muscle and tendon soreness and it DOES work. We have used products from High Cascade Emu Ranch and also the product "Blue Stop." It does need to be reapplied after several hours but it works incredibly well.

Steve and I got the opportunity to go on a private tour of the High Cascade Emu Ranch back in May, and we even got to visit the nursery! In fact, everyone who wanted to hold a baby Emu was given the opportunity, and we were allowed to hold our chick for as long as we wanted! Kay, who is one of the owners of High Cascade Emu Ranch , gently picked up one baby after another out of the brooder and nestled each into our protective hands. Then the room was full of cooing and sounds of pure bliss and peeping babies. Here is a picture of Steve cradling his baby, lost in love. Below you will see a picture of one of the photographers, Amanda Richter , and a picture taken by my friend Nancy Magruder , of me, showing us in pure bliss with our little babies!