Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: dead

Ravaged by the fire that roared up our hillside, the forest that grew there was totally devastated. So many old trees, all gone. It is a horrible tragedy, but when I look at the ruin around me there, I am reminded that this is all a part of nature and an important part of the ecosystem. (There are also dead madrone trees behind and to the right.)

This is another ruined shell that I found. So many are scattered on the hillside in every size from the head of a pin to a quarter.

I found this pea pod glowing warmly, the sun shining through and illuminating the seeds inside. The texture and tones are amazing to me--it's very hard to see this unless the sun is shining through the pod! I was very happy with the bokeh too! That's another thing about macro photography that you may not know: unless you take the time to study every picture just after you take it, the bokeh is largely an unknown. After literally over 100,000 pictures, I'm finally getting an small idea of what I might expect, but it takes forever to translate crisp surroundings into bokeh in your mind. Two years in and I'm finally beginning to learn this "language." I think the myriad facets of macro photography are endlessly fascinating and I love that there will always be a neverending world of education waiting for me!

1 picture above in a note! :) You see these two interesting looking things? They are both halves of a single pea pod after it's split open and released its seeds! For a better understanding, roll your mouse over this picture to see the previous picture I posted. That is a dried pea pod just about to burst open and spray its seeds everywhere! After the seed are released, the edges of each half will naturally begin to curl into this interesting shape! Isn't that cool?!! The background of this image was desaturated a bit so that the pea pod would stand out better. One of the problems of taking picture in a meadow of dried grass and weeds is that the subjects tend to have the same tonal range. By selecting the focal object and placing on its own layer in Photoshop, the background can then be manipulated separately. Having the subject on its own layer also allows me to apply sharpening filters or whatever I like to enhance the object in subtle ways, further separating it from the background.

How's THIS for cool?! When wild pea vine tendrils dry up, they are very tiny and hard to see, but once I found a one, I was able to locate more all over the place! This pair of tied up strands was a wonderful find, full of curling goodness! :D Because the tendrils are blond and the background was light beige, I changed the background color to a tinted monochrome and then added some vignetting to add depth. I then gave it a sandstone texture to give it a more tactile quality.

1 more picture above in a note! :) The other night I got up to use the bathroom in the dark, and on the way out, I kicked something with my foot. I turned the light on and found this awesome looking wasp. It must have found its way into the house and died, but I thought it was too pretty to just toss in the trash. Before I took pictures, I washed the dust off as best as I could, and when I looked at the images, I realized it still had droplets of water on it! I decided to turn this into a textured piece, and I had so much fun with this picture that I made the other one into a textured piece as well! :) Thanks to Jerry Jones for Notaclue 1 and Fire Damage 10-21-09 TOTD # 87 From Wiki: The blue mud dauber is a metallic blue species of mud dauber wasp that preys primarily on black widow spiders. It does not build a nest, but uses nests abandoned by other mud dauber wasps. Like other mud daubers, it is rarely aggressive. If you would like to know more about this beautiful wasp, I found a fascinating page about this wasp here: Bug Eric's Wasp Wednesday: Blue Mud Dauber

I was amazed at the beauty of this wasp, and I was so happy to capture the iridescent colors in this image. I had no idea a wasp could be so pretty! Thanks to Jerry Jones for October Square Set # 11 and Sunrise

4 more pictures in notes above! I decided to take a day off from practicing with the Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro conversion lens and walked out into one of our meadows to see what I could find before the 100 degree heat drove me indoors. First I found a fly that was zooming around the Star Thistle flowers. I thought it would be fun to see if I could get any pictures clear enough to share, and I got lucky! (See my next two pictures) Then I walked a little further to another Star Thistle and as I was studying the stems and flowers, I noticed movement. It was an odd but pretty little fly who I have two pictures of as well! Finally, I headed up along our "granite valley" and saw some interesting weeds, but thought, "Oh, these won't look like anything!" But knowing how often I'm wrong when I say such things to myself, I took a few pictures. Three of them were so nice that I had a hard time choosing which would be my Picture of the Day! :D This is a perfect example of serendipity: a happy accident! :D José Manuel Durão Barroso (Portuguese; born 23 March 1956) is the 11th and current President of the European Commission and a Portuguese politician. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 April 2002 to 17 July 2004. Wikipedia: José Manuel Barroso Explored on August 20, 2013. Highest placement, page 2.

This image was taken with our Canon 5D on our property in Southern Oregon on November 4, 2011.

These are such bizarre looking plants! We have lots of them in our meadow, and every one has an interesting shape! They can grow as high at 6-7 feet tall!!! This image was taken with our Canon 5D on our property in Southern Oregon on November 4, 2011.

I thought this was really cool looking with its interesting texture and frond formation. This image was taken during my trip to San Francisco during September 12-15, 2011.

(for those of you who are interested in seeing my San Francisco trip images, I have uploaded 7 pictures in this batch [11 yesterday, 10 and 11 before that]. Thanks everyone for your comments and your visits to my photostream! I hope you enjoy the show!) Here is another view of the tree I showed yesterday. Really awesome looking tree skeleton, especially while the fog drifted through the branches! This image was taken during my trip to San Francisco during September 12-15, 2011.

This image was taken during the Rogue Valley Photography hike to Mt. Ashland on August 7, 2011