A Closer Look At Life

I have been taking a closer look at the natural world again.here is the result.

Praying Mantis Baby

This Baby Mantis is about 4mm long not sure if it is a leaf mantis or a stick Mantis as it is so tiny.

Here I was looking for bark texture when I spotted this "face" in the bark.

This photo is one of those anomalies that one finds in nature.
Some people will see faces and some wont it just depends on one's imagination

Heat Map

I was experimenting with this type of photograhy when I came up with these colours just so "cool".

Hidden Secrets

Again this tree bark revealed some hidden secrets that white blob is a larvae of some kind.

Here I found this screw in the tree all I can think of the original farmer or miner might have placed it there while prospecting for gold.

Spider & Wasp

In this photo if one looks carefully into the crack on the right a spider and a wasp are faced off, i don't know which one is hunting the other.
One way or the other it will end up as a bad day for one.

Twisted Life

These vines growing in the forest just made for an interesting photo.
This photo is a three shot HDR with the shots 1 F stop apart.

The left over rain from the previous night just an interesting exercise in still life.










For the technically minded the Camera is Pentax K7
The Lens is a Tamron 100mm macroF2.8
Flash gun is FZ 360 with a bodged flash disperser  made from opaque plastic drawing sheet.


All Comments are welcome.

Water Birds And White Rino

 Been a bit slow this week about posting some photos. I have been going through some of the back log I found these from a couple of weeks ago that I completely forgot to post.

This cool customer just watched me carefully secure in the knowledge that there was 15m of water between us.

Avocet

Crested Grebe

Snack Time

 This crested Grebe came floating along then just ducked under the water and surfaced with his fish snack.

Flight of the Intruder

White Rino

White Rino

Mines bigger than Yours

This pair of Barn Swallows were taking turns in perching on this branch. The one on the perch wasn't giving it up at all, so the flying swallow kept buzzing him.

This Rino looks like he broke off the tip of his horn  most likely rooting around for some tasty root or some thing or creating a wallow for it self.




















This pare of White Rino were having a sniffing contest checking each other out, they tend to have rather poor eye sight so they use a very keen sense of smell to aid them.

These two Rinos were just socializing as you can see one has had its horn removed as an anti poaching measure, but unfortunately it seems that the poachers are complete devoid of morals and any sense of pity as they are now killing the Rinos without horns out of spite.

White Rino

To be able to get this close to these magnificent animals to photograph them is a real privilege, they look and behave fairly docile manner until they have a calf then they are the most aggressive creatures i have the honor of being chased by a couple of years ago a female Rino with a calf took exception to my car and chased it for about 500mm at the park speed limit the Rino was gaining on the car so needles to say we got good move on, once the Rino Cow was satisfied that that she made her point she left me alone and the car intact.