The Days of Summer - Day Twenty-four through Day Thirty

This part four of my Days of Summer photography project.  Sometimes I get so busy with work and everything else in life that I forget to take time to get out in nature.  So I've given myself a photography project that requires me to get outdoors every single day.  Starting with the Summer Solstice (21 June 2018) and ending on the Fall Equinox (22 September 2018), I will get outdoors every single day to take photos.  One picture from each day will be shared here.  To see last week's installment click here.

I hope you enjoy looking at this photos as much as I enjoy taking them.


Day 24 (14 July 2018) - Queen Anne's Sunset

This image of the sun setting behind a Queen Anne's Lace or Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) bloom was photographed at Forest Hill Nature Area.  This has become my go-to location for photography for this project.  Forest Hill is located less than fifteen minutes from home.  If I didn't get anywhere else during the day, I can always find time to run to Forest Hill for a short photo visit.

Day 25 (15 July 2018) - Square-stemmed Monkeyflower

On Sunday July 15th I spent the afternoon at Chipp-A-Waters Park in Mt Pleasant for the second annual Chippewa River Water Festival.  The Isabella Conservation District had a booth at the festival and I was helping pass out conservation swag and literature.  I was also scheduled to lead three nature hikes through the park during the afternoon.  During one of the scheduled times, I had no takers so I went by myself with just my camera as a companion.  This Square-stemmed Monkeyflower (Mimulus ringens) was growing on a point bar along the edge of the Chippewa River.  There were probably thirty of these plants total - I normally find less than ten a year.

Day 26 (16 July 2018) - Wheatfields and Stormclouds

This picture was taken near the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Sylvan Solace Preserve wet of Mt. Pleasant.  Clouds are always a good photo subject.  So are fields of ripening wheat.  This location had both.  This is my second photo of a wheat field, but I think this image is more about the clouds than the wheat.   I also liked that I could get a picture without trees on the horizon.  (There are a couple on the far left of the picture, but they don't detract from the open horizon feel.)  About ninety minutes after this picture rainstorms moved into the area.

Day 27 (17 July 2018) - Waxing Crescent Moon

This photo of a waxing crescent moon was taken from my backyard at 10:25PM.  This picture has been cropped from the original to a square image.  I like the sharp lies of the crater edges where the sunlit side of the moon meets the half in shadow. 

Day 28 (18 July 2018) - Twelve-spotted Skimmer

Some days it's hard to pick a favorite photo to share.  This was not one of those days.  This male Twelve-spotted Skimmer (Libellula pulchella) was taken at Forest Hill.  When I spied it perched on this grass, back-lit by the setting sun, I knew it was a "winner".  This image has been cropped from a horizontal to a vertical format.

Day 29 (19 July 2018) - Cedar Waxwing

I spent nearly thirty minutes at Mill Pond Park watching Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) flying over the Chippewa River to snag insects out of the air.  Occasionally one would land on a tree limb about twenty feet in front of me.  This is one of about seventy-five picture of fur different Waxwings.  This image has been cropped considerably with about 1/3 of the picture removed from the left and 1/3 removed from the bottom.

Day 30 (20 July 2018) - A Hole in the Clouds

The final image of the week was another one from Forest Hill Nature Area.  I spent an hour photographing the setting sun, the moon, clouds, and a sun dog.  As we were preparing to leave I spied this patch of light peeking through a dark cloud. 

The Days of Summer - Day Seventeen through Day Twenty-three

This part three of my Days of Summer photo project.  To learn more about the inspiration for this project and to see the photos from part one and part two click on the following links:

     The Days of Summer - Day One through Day Nine
     The Days of Summer - Day Ten through Day Sixteen

 Day 17 (07 July 2018) - Snowberry Clearwing Moth

We normally think of moths as nocturnal insects, but many are adapted to daytime living.  This includes a group of sphinx moths known as Clearwings.  In North America, there are four species in the genus Hemaris.  All fly by day.  They mimic the appearance of bumblebees and the feeding behavior of hummingbirds - thus they are often known as Bumblebee Moths or Hummingbird Moths.  This one is specifically known as the Snowberry Clearwing Moth (Hemaris diffinis) after a favorite larval host plant.  This photo was taken at Forest Hill Nature Area.  This probably not the best image from the day, but I cannot resist the subject.

Day 18 (08 July 2018) - Japanese Maple

This image of Japanese Maple leaves was taken in front of our house.  I like the silhouette of the red leaves against the blue sky and the details of the delicate veins in the central leaf.

Day 19 (09 July 2018) - Impression, Michigan Lily

If the previous photo was all about details.  This one is all about impressions.  This Michigan Lily (Lilium michiganense) was photographed at Mission Creek Woodland Park.  This photo reminds me of an Impressionist painting with only the blooms pistil and one or two stamen in sharp focus.  The rest of the flower is clearly visible but much softer.  It's all about the light!

The name given to this photo was inspired by the painting that Impressionism was named after:  Impression, soleil levant (Impression, sunrise) by Claude Monet.

Day 20 (10 July 2018) - Sunlight and Basswood

The photo for Day Twenty is also all about the light.  In this image sunlight filters down through the canopy, shedding light on American Basswood (Tilia americana) leaves.  The sun itself bursts through a gap in the upper right of the image. This image was taken in Mt. Pleasant at Mill Pond Park.

Day 21 (11 July 2018) - Waves of grass

I am constantly drawn to subjects that show pattern and texture.  Choosing a photo for July 11th was difficult.  I traveled north along US 127 to North Higgins Lake State Park for a late afternoon meeting.  Before my meeting I spent a little time exploring the park and came away with images of the lake, pine trees, lichens, etc.  Most of these images focused on pattern and texture.  In the end, I selected this image because of the suggested wavelike motion of the grasses.  I could have easily selected three or four other pictures from the day,

Day 22 (12 July 2018) - Blue Vervain

This photo of Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) was taken along the Chippewa River at Chipp-A-Waters Park in Mt. Pleasant.  The individual flowers are small, but each plant can have hundreds of blooms over the course of several weeks in mid- to late-summer.  The sheer abundance of blooms makes this an important nectar source for native bees.  Although none appear in this picture, there were dozens buzzing around this colony of plants.

Day 23 (13 July 2018) - White Water Lily with native bee

My final picture of the week shows a native bee collecting pollen from a White Water Lily (Nymphaea odorata).  I took about two dozen of pictures of this exact flower at the beginning of a walk through Mill Pond Park this morning.  I came back near the end of my walk and there was a bee on the flower.  One picture and the bee was gone...

Trail Camera Pictures (29 May - 14 June 2017)

Yesterday I retrieved memory cards from my trail cameras.  Here are pictures from one of the two cameras.

As always, there were dozens of pictures of squirrels on this camera.

Black phase Grey Squirrel

Fox Squirrel

There were also many White-tailed Deer of all ages and sizes.

One morning a Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) showed up.  Frustratingly, it was too close to the camera so only its ears and the top of its head showed up in the picture!

Red Fox (just the ears are visible at the bottom of the picture)

A pair of fawns showed up on camera several times, both with their mother and on their own.  I assume the mother was just off camera when the fawns appeared on their own.

White-tailed doe and fawns

White-tailed fawns with no doe in sight

In addition to fawns, bucks showed up on a couple of occasions.  At this point their antlers are just developing.  One of the bucks (last year's fawn) had just little buttons, but the second buck (shown below) has antlers that are already beginning to fork.

White-tailed buck licking its hoof

The lighting in some of these photos is pretty incredible, especially in the early morning and evening when it slants in at a fairly low angle, lighting up the more open background and leaving much of the middle-ground and foreground in shade.  This combination of light and shadow adding depth to an image is know as chiaroscuro.  In Italian chiaro means "light" and scuro means "dark". 

Portrait of a Fox Squirrel - this image demonstrates the principle of chiaroscuro.

I did have one new species appear on the camera during this time period - a Woodchuck (Marmota monax) showed up on two consecutive days.

A Woodchuck crosses from right to left

A woodchuck perched on a log at the center of the frame

My favorite photos this time are this series of six pictures of one a fawn (one of a pair).  I really like the chiaroscuro effect of these pictures - it adds a feeling of drama as the fawn advances from the dark toward the light.

Sunset (05 January 2017)

Last night's sunset was quite dramatic.  Shara snapped a few photos with my camera while we were driving home from work.  Here is my favorite one of the bunch.

Sunset - 05 January 2017 (photo by Shara LeValley)

To learn why we see the colors that we do at sunset (and sunrise) please check out this post on Roy G. Biv and the wavelengths of light. 

Beautiful Clouds

I have several more wildflowers that I need to write up for my Wildflowers of 2016 list, but instead I want to share something different.

I came into work a little late this morning, which was lucky for me.  If I had left home when I intended, I never would have seen these beautiful cloud formations.

Although the upper cloud formations were nice, especially with the dramatic lighting, it was the low bank of clouds that really made this cool for me.

Those low clouds were probably less than 100 feet above the ground.  Although that low bank stretched for about a mile, it was very narrow (probably less than 300 feet wide).

I stayed for a few minutes and watched the clouds quickly roll to the southeast.  There is a saying that photography is all about timing. It's true.  If I had passed through 15 minutes earlier, those clouds would not have been there yet.  If I had been 15 minutes later, they would have already passed through.