Penning Photography Daily

One from a 2004 trip to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

Karen and I will be heading there in a bit more than 24 hours. We’ll spend a
week on the beach, restoring in the sun, like these birds are after sunrise.

The whole week won’t be at the beach – I’m one to avoid sunburn. We’ll be
relaxing, taking lots of photos, and exploring the island again, and
surrounding areas like Beaufort, SC and Savannah, Georga.

But, we’re in no hurry to do any one thing but relax and enjoy each other to
the maximum.

When we are on the beach, my back won’t be to the sun like these fellas.
I’ll be looking out to the Atlantic Ocean horizon, soaking up it’s
restorative ambiance.

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Late night at work, but I got away around 7:30PM.

The building is a city block long.

The corridor runs almost that same length.

It presented itself to me and begged to be photographed tonight. The corridor did, that is.

I noticed later, the one broken light in the foreground. Funny, how I didn’t see it while walking under it perhaps many times. It’s darkness popped out as I was processing the photo.

How many things do I give a blind eye to, by not stopping and pay a bit of attention, open my eyes.

I was running an errand over at son Chris & daughter Jennie’s place tonight.

As I got out of the car, I did my now nearly automatic glance at the sky. I do that darn near every time I get out of a car now. Always on the look out for a photo.

The bright white clouds, broken by deep shades of blue – near midnight blue, were striking.

Let me be clear, it was after 8PM, and there was absolutely no sun up, several hours past sunset. The city lights were giving some illumination to the sky.

The contrast with the spare tree-limbs and those clouds, stopped me short.

As I left, I took time to fire off two frames.

Chris was, saying: “Are you really getting anything?” I told him, it all would depend on what the raw file showed. My faith was that I would pull something like what I saw out of the noise.

I think I did just fine.

This is a macro of a brown rice cake.

Could have been a rock landscape, as my Karen thought.

The ordinary, seen differently by looking at it up close.

This beautiful orchid was greeting me when I went into the Tropical Rainforest exploration room at the Washinton Park Botanical Garden.

I love orchids.

Besides their unique shapes and colors, one of my favorite mystery authors, Rex Stout, had his main charecter, Nero Wolfe have a deep affection for orchids.

Nero Wolfe, in his fictional multistory brownstone in New York City, had the entire rooftop devoted to orchids. There were rooms of various temperatures and humidity for different strains of this beautiful flower. Wolfe would rigorously keep to a schedule in the late morning and afternoon of tending to his ever evolving orchid collection.

I can’t say that I’ve ever grown an orchid. My only attempt ended in an early demise of the poor plant. But I do love to drink of their beauty.

This very large green leaf, was pointing towards the waning sun, and being lit up by it.

I was in the exhibition hall of the Washington Park Botanical Garden, taking photos of the glass infusion display, and wandered further into the attached hall. There was a tropical rainforest exhibit there. In one area, there’s a glass walled “research station” set up. It was full of tropical plants.

This one large-leafed plant was right next to a vertical bamboo pole. I pointed my camera up at the underside of the leaf and here you are.

The sun was beating down in golden light upon the top surface of the leaf. The underside was showing the ribs and veins of the structure of the leaf in full detail.

Photosynthesis in action. Light + Carbon Dioxide into food.

At the end of the day, the sun, approaching the horizon, caught my attention.

The sun wasn’t going to set for another 15 minutes or so, but the line of clouds, just above the horizon, was going to block the view.

The sky was full of magnificent cloud-banks. These type of clouds always provide a great canvas for the sun to paint it’s pallate of colors upon.

Someone remarked to me yesterday that they noticed that I like to take photos of the sky & clouds. You betcha!