Category: Critters

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Flickr a Day 143: ‘Oskar Running in the Snow’

Happy Caturday, and forgive today’s selection—the third feline featured in this series (see Days 38 and 51 for the others). Consider self-titled “Oskar Running in the Snow I” as a gift to my wife, who celebrated a birthday yesterday. She loves kitties.

Emmanuel Keller captured Oskar on Feb. 9, 2013, using Nikon D4 and 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. Vitals: f/5, ISO 250, 1/1250 sec, 200mm. There are four other pics in the series, and I almost picked IV for the snow spray but favored the first for composition (and Creative Commons licensing). Both equally appeal to me (and hopefully to you, too). Another I liked less but still considered is from a February 2015 shoot. 

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Flickr a Day 107: ‘Snowy’

When choosing photos for this series, I weigh many considerations, such as: Image quality and appeal, composition, and story behind the image or the one about the shooter. Today’s selection is soft and doesn’t represent the high IQ typical of Matt MacGillivray. But it’s a great shot superbly composed (or cropped) that is interesting. Bird and bricks? WTH?

Matthew works for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as a web application system architect. But birds are a passion, as his photography shows. He shot self-titled “Snowy” on Jan. 4, 2009, using Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi and Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6 lens. Vitals: f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/400 sec, 400mm.

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Luna Moths

On the afternoon of June 14, 2004, something quite remarkable happened in my Kensington, Md. backyard, about which I briefly posted on that day. My wife urgently called me from my basement office. Beautiful butterflies had taken up residence on my daughter’s snow sled, which she had dragged out and left for some inexplicable reason. I immediately recognized them as something better: Luna moths.

I was an amateur bug collector in my youth and teens (someday I should tell you about raising praying mantids). So interested, I came a hair’s width from majoring in entomology (e.g. study of insects) in college. I dissected a good number of animals during anatomy and physiology classes, but nothing grossed me out more than cutting open a cockroach. But I digress.