I photographed this Bewick’s Wren in 2011. It isn’t the sort of Buick you expect to see in a junkyard. The juxtaposition of Nature’s perfection with Man’s…..well, not so much, made for an interesting portrait. I used the image in one of my Haiku is for the Birds calendars. The haiku:
Collected junk heap
I’m sure I will need someday
Life is not waiting
Bewick’s Wren
And that is the last of my entries for this year’s Audubon competition.
Thanks for checking them out.
I forgot to submit this one last year. I made it the header on my webpage to remind myself to do so this year.
I photographed these Phainopeplas busy catching insects from their perch atop an oak tree. When I tiled together the photo of another oak tree with the sun coming through it, it seemed like a perfect match. I added the dragonfly because I liked the title, “Phainopepla and the Dragon.”
2016 Audubon entry #8
Phainopepla and the Dragon
I have always liked this reflection, or what I call, a “puddle shot.” It was among my first captures for the purpose back in December of 2006. But, I had not found a suitable subject to work into it until this Varied Thrush showed up on my patio near sunset just a couple of weeks ago.
2016 Audubon entry #7
The Klamath Refuge in Northern California is a great place for birding. It was a pretty foggy day when I took this picture. I didn’t think it was a particularly interesting shot until I filtered up the tule weeds in the background, and changed it to black and white.
2016 Audubon entry #6
Audubon announced the winners of their 2015 Photography Awards today. I did not win, but I now have a finer tuned appreciation of what they are looking for, so,….Next Year!
This is the photo of mine that was chosen as a semi-finalist in the “Fine Art” category–a new category for them this year:
Most of the the other images I submitted were new creations. This one I composed in 2011.
Here is a link to the Winners
You will have to scroll sideways (or down) to the fourth image to view the “Fine Art” winner. It is a Black & White of silhouetted gulls, cormorants, and terns. Very nice!
Here is a link to the Top 100 . All of them are awesomely spectacular bird photos. None of them come from the “Fine Art” category. It would be nice to see the other semi-finalists in the Fine Art category, but I can’t find a link to them.
I always thought the ads were the best part of the Super Bowl. In fact, I don’t think I have watched the actual game for at least 25 years. Maybe that explains how I missed the fact that Doritos has been running a contest for their Superbowl ads since 2006. Anyway, a Facebook friend clued me on the opportunity last week. The deadline for submission was last night. I had a lot of fun yesterday putting this together and I am looking forward to seeing Harry Lipz on the Jumbo-Tron. Just click the image below:
Harry Lipz Does Doritos
This is the second of two photo compositions I submitted for the Studio 360 Photo Remix Listener Challenge. You were supposed to incorporate one or more of the ten images they provided into a scene of your own. Here I used their pathway through the park, the crow, the marble head, the reaching hand, the derby hat from the man’s portrait, and some of their clouds (for the fog). I added some layers of my own cloud shots and my headless self running down the path.
……but I left without my……..Well, it wasn’t really mine to begin with.
This is the first of two photo compositions I submitted for the Studio 360 Photo Remix Listener Challenge. You were supposed to incorporate one or more of the ten images they provided into a scene of your own. Here I used the man’s portrait, the lady in the white dress, and the guitar. With a little 
editing and manipulation, I placed them into one of my “puddle” shots, along with myself sitting on a blanket holding a guitar method book that belonged to my grandmother. I replaced the woman’s left hand with Katie’s–holding the guitar, then placed a harmonica in her right. I used the oil paint filter in Photoshop to give the greenery an even more otherworldly dimension. Phun with Photoshop!
….I used to know that one.