Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: spider web

(+4 insets!) (view large!) :) Holy Toledo it's cold out there today, YIKES!! A mere 27.6°F/-2.4°C--that's the coldest it's been all winter! Maybe that's not Polar Vortex Cold , but my fingers and toes have a prominent opinion about it: One Lap is the Limit! Heh…I managed to get up to the top of our hill for a lovely sunrise picture with my phone and down to the front gate to grab our garbage can (pick-up was this morning at 0'dark hundred). There I saw a pool of water that froze in several stages. The appearance reminded me of white malachite and out came my phone for another picture! Then it was up the drive with the garbage can, the handle burning cold through my gloves into my complaining hands and then I flung myself into the house and became one with the heater to warm my hands up. (You can see an inset of the pool of water along with another frozen pool I photographed a while back with a neat formation) What the heck's the deal with extremely low temperatures?! It's just crazy how fast cold can affect you if the temperature is low enough. This begs the intellectual question: how much more does the temperature affect us when things become extreme? What I mean to say is, there's basically no difference to us when the change is in our comfort range, say 60-70°F/15.5-21°C. Big deal, who cares…we can tell there's a change but it doesn't really matter. But as we get further away from our comfort zone, how much more does this mean? For instance, does the difference between 30 degrees and 29 degrees affect us 1%, 5%, 10%, etc. Do lower numbers make this difference more extreme? Does 10 degrees and 9 degrees affect us 5%, 10%, 20%? I should look this up. I bet there is a difference because 27 degrees is FIERCELY COLD and 30 degrees is not NEARLY as cold to me. I found a partial answer! It depends a lot on how much fat you have stored on your body and how well-adjusted you are to that temperature. So, someone who has more padding is going to be much more comfortable in the cold than a lean, athletic person. I didn't find the exact answer I was looking for but I did find a very interesting article that talks about what it feels like to be in -50 degrees vs. -20 degrees. My opinion: I would like to NOT be in those temperatures, thank you very much! :D I was kind of surprised the frogs weren't singing since they seem to enjoy these ridiculously cold temperatures. However, all was quiet down at the pond this morning. In amusement, I pictured froggy popsicles, each with a "ribbit" ready to go but their vocal sacks were frozen so no noise came out. Give them time…it should warm up to 32 degrees down there soon enough and they'll be able to squeak something out! LOL. Tenacious little buddies. :) Since it's so cold AND because it's the day to post my Happy Fence Friday pictures, I'm sharing an image of a very frosty fence, featuring a gossamer necklace touched by Jack Frost. This I found on our deer fencing a month or so back when we had a lovely day of heavy frost. I'm also sharing another frosty barbed-wire picture from my photo shoot last week. :) Pam, can you remember the coldest weather you've walked around in? One year it got down to 8 degrees I think, and venturing outside was a very shocking experience. We wanted to know what it felt like… and then we didn't! Out…and yep, that's REALLY COLD…and inside again! :D What about you? For me, it's a struggle because I know the photography opportunities are amazing the colder it gets but there really is a potential danger of frostbite. I hope you've never been in a situation where frostbite was a real issue for you. I've been lucky in that regard but I've also never been stuck in a place that's too cold and I can't get out of it. Sending a nice, warm *HUGGGGGG* your way on this very cold day! :D Explored on 2/8/19, highest placement, #1.

(+1 inset!) (please view large to see the dew drops!) It was another very foggy, chilly day and even though I was bundled up, my feet and hands still got very cold during my walk. It was lovely though and I enjoyed seeing the grass twinkling with dew drops as I made my way up and down our driveway. On my last lap I noticed something sparkling on the road and thought it seemed too light to be a leaf. Bending closer I could see that it was a feather that was completely covered in dew drops! Amazing! I hadn't planned on taking any pictures outside today because I'd be working on my Macro Monday images but I simply HAD to get pictures of this feather! I soon returned with my camera and got lots of shots from many angles--I managed to get some very nice ones which I'll be sharing soon! Since I was outside I couldn't resist the temptation to wander off the road a bit. I had something in mind…spider webs. Yesterday I'd taken some pictures of dewdrops on a strand of spiderweb and I wasn't really satisfied with the outcome. I'd brought my macro flash but discovered the batteries were dead and the slight breeze ruined most of the pictures I took. Still feeling a bit disappointed, I wanted to find some more webs now that I'd replaced the batteries in my macro flash. Instantly I found plenty of strands to photograph, so tiny and fine that I would have had a hard time seeing them without the dew to make them stand out. At one point I looked up and OH!! A whole web was sparkling back at me, how exciting! I think dew-covered webs are some of the most beautiful things in nature and this one had such a lovely shape. Once I got back inside I copied my pictures over to my computer but I noticed a problem with the use of my flash. The reflection of light in the droplets worked fine in the pictures I'm sharing today but It was much too harsh in my other photos. I need to put diffusers on the flashes to soften the reflections. It's too bad because there were lots of pretty strands of "water pearls" but the pictures need to be retaken. Live and learn, right? For today's main image I decided to use the cropped version because the dew is larger and prettier. I have also included an inset of the whole web so you can see how cool it is. :) Pam, I did a search on your stream for "web" and found a delightful picture and story about Esmerelda that you shared back in 2014. It was wonderful to read again. I also enjoyed our back and forth commentary about your picture and story. I think you would have loved the spider webs I photographed today because they were almost invisible and not scary at all! :) Still, like I'd said then, I do not like spiders crawling on me, and feeling spider webs clinging to me gives me the heeby-jeebies! If they are strong webs and I walk through them and they are all over me…you'll hear me screaming from Oregon and soon you'll see me running past in a blur! :D Here's hoping that your day was as good as can be. :) Explored on 1/28/19, highest placement, #1.

1 more picture in a note above! :) Today I took a walk into part of our lower forest with a plan in mind. I was hoping to find the one fern plant which I know of there, and it grows on the side of the seasonal stream bed. Our lower forest looks very different than it once did, because I spent months clearing buck brush and dead trees out, piling them up into habitats for animals. Now, instead of being an impenetrable, ugly mess, the lower forest is open and beautiful, filled with Oak, Manzanita and Madrone trees. So when I found a very large, mossy tree on the ground, I was quite surprised. Following my eye down the trunk, I saw that it had broken off the base of the tree about three feet up and looked as if it had been dead for a while. I walked up to the trunk and peered inside. At first I didn't see anything but a leaf, but moving my head, the light reflected on droplets below, and straining my eyes in the dim light, I could see the droplets suspended on an invisible web! If I could get my camera to focus on the droplets, my flash would light up the scene and I thought it might just be awesome! It took me a bit of time to find focus, but eventually I was successful, and got a bunch of different apertures to choose from. I hoped that the 2.8 images would be clear because the illusion of droplets floating in the air would be just that much more cool. And...they worked out!! HOORAY!! As it turned out, I have done almost nothing to this image except cropping and adding a very slight vignette! Saul Bellow (10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. Wiki: Saul Bellow Explored on December 31, 2013. Highest placement, page 6.

As I studied the lichen for just the right frozen droplets, I discovered many fine spider webs here and there with frozen tiny droplets on them! I enjoyed trying to get crisp images, and this picture turned out the best! :)

[best appreciated at full size against black] A month ago, Steve and I went to a place called Lost Creek Reservoir, where we hoped to find some cool mushrooms and other interesting things to capture. I found this beauty popping out of a patch of moss by the side of the trail, and I didn't even notice the lovely web until I saw it on the LCD screen when I was checking for clarity. I think it looks a little bit like a gauze skirt! :) I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :) NOTE! If you're a new visitor, I hope you'll take a look at my profile to find out a little more about me and how important all of you are to my experience here on Flickr! www.flickr.com/people/sfhipchick/ This image was taken in January, 2012.