nature photography

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Nature animals

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Today I’m participating in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge and her theme is “nature animals”. I encourage you to click on each photo to see a larger view. If you like what you see, please subscribe to this blog to receive updates of the new photos I post, usually 3 to 5 times a week.

While spending a few days in Virginia, we visited the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, which features a lot of animals you find in Virginia. Of course you can find some of these animals in other parts of the country, but it was nice to be able to see a few of them up close, which can be hard when you walk around in nature.

During our visit, we spotted a few deer. They’re very well camouflaged in their exhibit.

This one really knows the most intimate spot to take a nap while spying on the visitors.

We were lucky to see real deer during our trip, so I can’t complain about the unspectacular shots I got of these. 🙂

My kids saw a real beaver for the first time and they were very excited. The only time I’ve seen a beaver before was when I lived in Connecticut. There was a park with a pond at the bottom of the hill where I lived, and the beaver couple that lived there would build a dam and a lodge on a regular basis, until the town took it down. This beaver wouldn’t stop swimming, getting out of the water, and going swimming again, so it was very hard to take a good picture of him.

Finally my kids got a chance to also see a raccoon for the first time. We do have raccoons here but they’re nocturnal so encounters are rare. The only raccoons we’ve seen are the road kill in the morning on our way to school. It was nice to see a live and healthy raccoon during our visit. Isn’t he cute? Every time I see a raccoon, it reminds me of the movie Elf. “Does someone need a hug?”

Close-up of a raccoon's head — Close-up of a raccoon’s head

May 14, 2014February 6, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal PhotosTags: beaver swimming in the water, camouflaged deer, Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, close up of raccoon head, deer in Virginia, nature animals, nature photography, photos of beavers, photos of deer, photos of raccoons, raccoon photos 8 Comments

Macro Monday: the zebra longwing and the tiger longwing butterflies

Today I’m taking part in the Macro Monday photo challenge. You can click on each photo for a larger view. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe so you can enjoy the new photos I post a few times a week.

I recently visited the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Butterfly jungle, which is always a fun event as you hope that butterflies will land directly on you. One of my kids was lucky enough to have that happen to him, as a blue morpho landed right on top of his head. We also managed to get a zebra longwing butterfly on our fingers as we passed it around from one person to the other.

Here are a few close-ups of two butterflies out of the many we saw. The others wouldn’t sit still for a picture. Even then the photos I took are a bit blurry, probably because I couldn’t stand still myself. The first is a tiger longwing butterfly, with black and white stripes on top of its wings, and black and orange stripes underneath.

The second is the zebra longwing butterfly, first with its black and white striped wings spread out wide open, and next with its wings closed, so you can see a few red dots underneath the wings. It was a fun experience for sure. Well, if you like butterflies.

Zebra longwing butterfly with striped wings

Zebra longwing butterfly with red dots underneath its wings

May 11, 2014February 6, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal PhotosTags: butterfly with black and white stripes, butterfly with orange and black stripes, butterfly with red underneath its wings, Macro Monday, nature photography, tiger longwing butterflies, Tiger longwing butterfly, zebra longwing butterflies, zebra longwing butterfly 18 Comments

Floral Friday Fotos: Red dogwood tree blooms

Today I’m participating in Floral Friday Fotos. You can click on each photo for a larger view. If you enjoy my photos, I encourage you to subscribe and receive updates when I post new photos, usually 3 to 5 times a week.

There are plenty of dogwood trees in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. and I was lucky to be visiting when the trees were starting to bloom. Although dogwood trees blossoms can be vary from white / yellow to pink, my favorite ones have to be the red blossoms. I saw one dogwood tree with red blossoms while visiting Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. I understand Jefferson himself planted most of the dogwood trees there so their age may explain why they’re so big.

You don’t often see trees with so many red blooms so it was a pleasure to photograph, even though the lighting was challenging since it was in the middle of the day, and it was a warm, sunny day. Perfect day to visit Monticello, walk the grounds and take pictures like these.

What’s your favorite kind of dogwood tree blossoms?

Floral Friday Fotos: Red dogwood tree blooms

May 8, 2014February 6, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Bloom Photos, Flower Photos, Plant Photos, Tree PhotosTags: blooms, dogwood tree blooms, monticello dogwood tree, monticello tree blooms, monticello tree blossoms, nature photography, photos of blooms, photos of flowers, photos of trees, red dogwood tree blooms, red dogwood tree blossoms, red tree blooms, red tree blossoms 10 Comments

Deer standing in the grass and trees in Virginia

Is that a deer? Or two? Or three?

You can click on each photo below for a larger view. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe so you can enjoy the new photos I post a few times a week.

During our spring vacation in the Mid Atlantic states, we stayed a few days in a guest house not too far from Richmond, Virginia. The area was very green and wooded, with homes spread far apart. We didn’t spend much time at the house but one evening, while I was doing the dishes after dinner, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a deer a few hundred feet away from the house. I grabbed my camera and told my kids to follow me as we slowly made our way around the house to see what was going on.

By the time we got to the other side of the house, there weren’t one, but two deer standing there, staring at us and ready to hop away. The sun had already set and it was a challenge to take a few pictures because of the lack of light and the far distance. By the time I managed to snap a few pictures, the deer’s patience had run out and they started walking away. That’s where we realized there were two more deer hiding in the trees behind them. We’ve spotted a mule deer here and there while hiking about San Diego but this is the first time we’ve seen four deer together so close to us. One of the many great experiences we took away from our trip!

Have you been able to get really close to deer before? Or would you rather stay away?

May 8, 2014February 6, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal PhotosTags: deer in Virginia, deer photos, nature photography, photos of deer 8 Comments

Sea jellies: Northeast Pacific sea nettle and spotted lagoon jelly

I said in a previous post I would share my amateurish experience on a photoshoot, so here it is! I encourage you to click on each photo to see a larger view. If you like what you see, please subscribe to this blog to receive updates of the new photos I post, usually 3 to 5 times a week.

A couple of weekends ago, I visited the SeaLife aquarium next to LEGOLAND California. They recently added a sea jelly exhibit (also known as jelly fish, even though they are not fish), which contains several tanks with various species of jellies swimming around. The lighting of the exhibit is very colorful, which makes it for a fun visual experience, but not so great for photos since many of the lights reflect onto the tanks, making for photos covered with many colored spots. The water tanks are cylindrical so people can view the sea jellies from all around. Again this is great for viewing but not so much for taking photos since you can see the people on the other side of the tank. If you’re patient, you can wait until they leave and find the right angle. Or you can play around in Photoshop as I did for one of the photos below since the background was very compromised.

There were several tanks with moon jellies but I won’t share any photos here because they didn’t come out well that day. I do have photos of moon jellies if you’re interested in viewing them.

These first creatures are called Northeast Pacific sea nettles. This is the second photo I took in the exhibit with my good camera.

And right then and there, my camera shut down because the battery was dead. Hum, no problem, I thought, I’ll just use the other battery I have in my bag. This would have been a brilliant idea if I had actually remembered to charge that other battery when it died a few weeks ago. So there I stood, dozens of cool sea jellies floating around me with no working camera. But wait, I had my cell phone camera with me. 5MP would work but how about the lighting? And that’s when I thought, what the heck, I have nothing to lose.

So here they are, the rest of my sea jelly photos, taken with my cell phone camera and retouched in Photoshop since I couldn’t change any settings as I took the photos. Even though a lot of the photos were blurry and useless, I’m quite impressed with the way these came out.

I love the golden brown color of their bodies, especially when it’s backlit as in the photo.

Golden brown body of a Northeast Pacific sea nettle

This next and last one is a spotted lagoon jelly, a smaller species of jellies. I took a lot of pictures of them but this is the crispest one I managed to get. However the background was horrible, between the many light reflections and several people standing right there. So I decided to delete the whole background and add one in Photoshop, almost black but not completely, with a light grain to match the not so perfect tank water.