Winter Tree

Winter-Tree
Winter Tree
This great tree has been a bit of an obsession for me to try and do justice to. I have returned here many times now and come away with nothing I felt happy with.
I was passing by it after taking the image of my neighbour sitting on the bench in the loch and noticed the the light was good and there was a light covering of snow all adding to the soft light and mood.
I left him warming up in the van and grabbed a couple of shots.
Hope you like the image and please critique or comment if you have time as I greatly appreciate feed back

Vanishing Point

Vanishing-Point
Vanishing Point
My first image from a recent trip to visit the awesome Humber Bridge! A great day and I'm sure I'll head back.

Towards The Sea

Towards-The-Sea
Towards The Sea
Baltic Sea, Nienhagen
 
Lee Filter System, Haida ND 3.0

Sea of Broken Dreams

Sea-of-Broken-Dreams
Sea of Broken Dreams
There are times when taking a dip in Lake Michigan is a good idea. This is not one of those times. Growing up in northern California, I was used to seeing a thin layer of ice on the puddles once in a while during winter. That certainly didn't prepare me for the ice formations on Lake Michigan in winter. I'll never tire of looking at these unique formations.

Red Hartebeest

Red-Hartebeest
Red Hartebeest
Yet an other shot of a safari trip I made in Nairobi National Park

Puff of Pinwheels Macro Monday

Puff-of-Pinwheels-Macro-Monday
Puff of Pinwheels Macro Monday
What may be weeds to you were magic for me. I used to call these puff flowers and I'd blow on them and make a wish as the seeds blew away. I love the amazing spinning pinwheel design inside.

Magic Eye Mercury

Magic-Eye-Mercury
Magic Eye Mercury
On 9 May, at 11:10 GMT, Mercury will begin making its way across the face of the Sun – an astronomical event known as a transit. During the transit, which will last for several hours and be at least partially visible across most of the world, the planet will be seen as a small black dot silhouetted against our star.
 
To mark the event, this week’s Space Science Image of the Week allows Mercury to take centre stage. Mercury is a remarkable planet: it is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System, with an orbit that is both the fastest and the most eccentric. It boasts fascinating surface geology, including countless craters, ridges, highlands, plains, mountains and valleys.
 
This image offers an intriguing view of Mercury’s Kertész crater, as viewed by NASA’s Messenger orbiter. Reminiscent of a ‘Magic Eye’ optical illusion, the image may show one of two things: either a mound bulging out of the planetary surface, looming towards the camera like a dome, or – correctly – a crater that dips into Mercury’s crust.
 
After a short while, the orientation of the image may appear to flip. This effect is sometimes referred to as the crater illusion. It arises because our brains are used to interpreting shadows as arising from a source of light being overhead. But for many satellite photos of terrain the shadows arise only when the light source is almost horizontal to the surface and this sometimes leads to us misinterpret the patterns of light and shade.
 
Within this crater, the smooth, rippling slopes – one illuminated, the other in shadow – burrow into the surface of Mercury until they reach a relatively flat patch, which is the deep floor of Kertész. The features scarring this floor are the crater’s central peaks, which rise up to stand hundreds of metres above their surroundings.
 
Kertész is roughly 33 km across and located in the western part of Mercury’s Caloris basin – at up to 1500 km across, Caloris is the largest basin on the planet, and one of the largest in the Solar System.
 
Kertész is an interesting crater: it is flooded with a 30 m-thick layer of melted rock thought to have formed during the initial crater-forming impact (known as ‘impact melt’). This layer is heavily indented with small pits, hollows and depressions, and covered in unusually bright deposits. These are thought to be the result of rocks evaporating due to Mercury’s scorching surface temperatures, or perhaps mineral deposits unearthed by the impact melt.