Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Magical Light

This week, Amy has chosen magical light as the topic for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. From sunrise to sunset and any time in-between there are opportunities for capturing a magical moment when the light seems just right.  I’m not usually out and about that early in the morning but on one or two occasions I’ve managed to get some fairly decent shots as the sun came up such as when we were on the road in Nebraska or spending a few days in Mackinaw City.

Even when the weather conditions are less than perfect, there is still a chance that the light will provide some interesting pictures. The first image was taken at the Chicago Botanic Garden and the second in Custer State Park in South Dakota.

I always enjoy seeing the effect of light shining through the trees or through an overhead canopy of autumn leaves, as seen here at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle and River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook, Illinois.

I rely heavily on luck more than judgement when taking pictures and it isn’t always easy to come up with suitable shots for these challenges which is why I had to reach way back in the archives for this shot taken at Navy Pier in Chicago.  The sunset image was taken from the shores of Lake Michigan in Mackinaw City

I rarely take night shots but on this occasion the moonlight tempted me outside to capture this image.  For more on the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge go to #19: Magical Light.

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A Photo A Week – Reflections at Cantigny

The subject for Nancy Merrill’s Photo A Week Challenge is Reflection and I seem to have captured one or two at Cantigny Park in Wheaton without even realizing it. Quite often, I’m not fully aware of everything that’s in the picture when I take the shot so sometimes it’s nice when something unexpected shows up, especially when I can use it for a photo challenge.

For more on Nancy’s Photo A Week Challenge go to Reflection.

Pull Up A Seat – At The Chicago Botanic Garden

One of the great things about the Chicago Botanic Garden is that there is no shortage of places to sit. Whether you like basking in the sun on sitting in the shade, there is a perfect spot for you. Here are a few images in response to the Pull Up A Seat Photo Challenge over at Photo Challenge of places we sit…or might sit…or art about sitting.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Big Is Beautiful

This week, the subject for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is big, really big!  Not only big but beautiful too, as Tina’s wonderful images show, here at BIG Can Be Beautiful Too!.  It’s a strange thing but despite my life-long fear of birds, I’ve discovered over the years that I am far less afraid of large birds than I am smaller ones.  This enabled me to get surprisingly close to a pair of sandhill cranes in Wausau, Wisconsin recently. They didn’t seem to be afraid of me either so things worked out very nicely.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge – Places People Visit

This week, Cee is looking for colorful pictures of places people visit for her Fun Foto Challenge, so yesterday I took a trip to my favorite place to visit, The Chicago Botanic Garden, to see what I could find. Last year, more than one million people visited the Garden which has 50,000 members, one of the largest memberships of any U.S. botanic garden.

Despite the cooler temperatures there were still a good number of visitors at the garden yesterday, all of us enjoying the sun and making the most of these last nice days before winter finally sets in.

With more than 380 acres to traverse, it would probably take most visitors an entire day, if not more, to see absolutely everything that the garden has to offer. There are, after all, more than 2.6 million living plants in the garden.

Here are a few more facts and figures that are worth bearing in mind while visiting the Garden. The Chicago Botanic Garden opened to the public just over 40 years ago. There are 27 separate gardens and 4 natural areas situated on or around nine islands with 6 miles of lake shoreline. There are 9 laboratories inside the Plant Conservation Science Center and the Garden is one of only 17 public gardens to be accredited by the American Association of Museums.

 

The Garden grounds are open from 8am to 5pm during the winter. There is a $25 parking fee on weekdays and $30 on weekends so if you live in the area and are likely to go there more than once a year I can strongly recommend purchasing a membership which gives you free parking.

For more information on The Chicago Botanic Garden visit their website at The Chicago Botanic Garden.  And for more on Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge go to Places People Visit.

In Search of Trolls

It was a gloriously warm, sunny day at the end of summer when we went in search of Trolls at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle. These trolls weren’t the nasty kind that invade the internet but the ones that hide in the woods. As you will see, we found six of them and saw some other interesting sights along the way.

It would appear that these trolls are not exactly friendly creatures as we soon realized when we came across this car crushed beneath a huge boulder. The perpetrator, a character named Rocky Bardur, was standing just a few yards away.

We came across a whole host of monarch butterflies among the flowers outside the visitor center after which we managed to creep up on troll number two, Sneaky Socks Alexa, who was waiting to spring a deadly trap.

Further along the path, a heron seemed to be pointing the way to Joe the Guardian who was standing on a hill overlooking the expressway.

I must say that going on this Troll Hunt encouraged us to take paths that we have never trodden before, giving us the opportunity to see familiar scenes from a different perspective.

I’m not sure if troll number four found us or we found her. Furry Ema certainly looked like she was up to no good.

Walking across Daffodil Glade, we saw a tree that looked as though a troll had breathed on it. And it wasn’t too long before we came across number five, Niels Bragger, lurking in the woods.

Little Arturs was easy to spot. He was taking a break in Bobolink Meadow. These 15 to 60 foot giants were created from recycled wood by Danish artist Thomas Dambo, and he has done a fantastic job!  The Arboretum hopes to keep them on display through to 2019 depending on how they weather. It will be interesting to see how they stand up to a Chicago-style winter..

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – A Once-Familiar Path

My photo files are overflowing with images of paths in various forms and places, both town and country, but today I made a trip to Crabtree Nature Center specifically for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge as I wanted to document a path that really had some meaning for me.  Mum and I used to visit Crabtree Nature Center in Barrington quite often, but in the eight years since she passed away I have rarely gone back there. I don’t know why. There are plenty of other places that we used to go to together that I still visit regularly but for some reason I feel uncomfortable taking this once-familiar path alone.

All living things change over time, and I was curious to see how Crabtree had fared during the intervening years. Would it have changed that much? I used to know this path like the back of my hand but would it still be like it was when we came here to see the spring flowers or rustle through the autumn leaves, very often talking nineteen to the dozen but also sharing a companionable silence as we made our way through the fields and woods.

As was nearly always the case, I was greeted at the head of the path by several chipmunks, chattering and skittering about among the dead branches. That much, at least, was still the same.

There are two paths that wind their way around Crabtree, covering only a small part of the one thousand acres that make up this sprawling nature reserve. Phantom Prairie Trail is about 2 miles long and Bur Edge Trail, the path that we usually took, is approximately 1.5 miles, the first part of which skirts Sulky Pond.  I was rather disappointed that there was no sign of any migrating birds. I had expected to see a few egrets at the very least but everything was totally still and silent on the pond.

The foliage on either side of the path had become overgrown, covering what once used to be a hide overlooking the pond, and the little causeway at the top of Bulrush Pond where we used to sit for hours sometimes, waiting to see a family of water rats or a beaver, offers very little view of the water now.  However, I did manage to find a turtle well-camouflaged with pond weed and a frog who gave me the cold shoulder.

Even in the last week of September, the mosquitoes were still rampant in the shade under the trees so I was glad to get to the other side of Bulrush Pond and out into the sunshine. I noticed that they have added quite a few more seats along the path but there was always one here where we loved to sit and talk or just look out over the pond.

The path zig-zags through tall grass and spent summer flowers, the milkweed pods bursting open to spread their seeds in the first passing wind, and one or two faded butterflies flitting about among the autumn asters.

 

The path gradually curves back towards the entrance to Crabtree. The observation platform that overlooked neighboring fields has gone but other than that there is very little that has changed.  The big difference now is that my best friend is no longer by my side to have a laugh or wonder at all the things that we have seen, like the time we turned and discovered a deer following close behind us down the path or coming across a huge snapping turtle lumbering back to the pond after laying her eggs or the time we found a nest of snakes among the fallen leaves.

Perhaps I’ll return to Crabtree one day but for now it was enough to have travelled down and become reacquainted with that once-familiar path.

For more on the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, which was set for us this week by Tina Schell over at Travels & Trifles go to #12 – PATH