Great photos, Mary.

Thanks everyone!
Since this is the Photography forum, I will chat a little about my pictures.
The tripod is because when I view the photos on the big screen, I can see they are not as sharp as should be, plus often I can now see I should have stopped down to a smaller aperture to increase the depth of field a little. The way they are viewed here it is not really noticeable and they look fine. I am not fully satisfied. Also, since this is Seattle, although it was 10-11 am while I was outside, the sun is very low and I had to crank up the ISO sometimes over 10,000 in the shade. A tripod would help with that.
For Joanna- here is what I did, no fancy manipulation required for the dark background. That white flower is a Choisya ternata, the "Mexican Orange Flower". The shrub is about 5 ft tall, and that flower (less than an inch across) is near the top so very convenient height! The shrub is on the north side of a 6 ft wooden fence (see full photo here) and the sun was shining through the tiny gaps between the boards (see what I mean about the low sun here? It was backlighting the iced flower. I have a 105mm Macro lens. Settings of ISO 400, f11, 1/400sec. Taken quite close, I think the camera lens was only a foot away or so. In the bigger photo here you can see the vertical lit areas that are the gaps between the fence boards, but because I carefully (manual mode) exposed to get the detail in the white flower and ice, the fence behind is very underexposed, it is actually grey untreated wood but looks darker.

@Pistil,

A neighbor down the road called me and wanted me to bring my camera and my big lens and sit in on a deer hunt with him...
This piebald roan whitetail doe is what he wanted me to photograph. He is asking all hunters in the area not to kill this beautiful doe. We hope she makes it through the season. The images are not the best quality due to low light conditions.



edited to add these two photos

She is beautiful-sort of an Appaloosa! I wonder how that happened.

She is very beautiful, I hope she survives the hunting season too.

Wow!

Walking the dog on this dreary, drizzly, chilling day and I stumbled upon this wildflower. It was wet from the mist and its gray-green leaves seemed to blend right into the bleak world around it. High, at the very top of the stalk, it was holding a perfect, bright, fully bloomed flower. It was as if it was screaming out to the cold, somber day, "I will not be stifled".

What a lovely pic, and sight on a gloomy, gray day!

There's white deer in mythology, I think usually called a roan. There must be some dire penalty for killing one because the advice to the hero is always to follow the white roan. I hope I don't have to go back through all that material and look this up - maybe I can forget about it by Monday.

I came across a folder labelled Named Place or Thing with some kind of neat pics:
water on a spider web


- name of an album by Quicksilver Messenger Service from early '70s














< Plato

Whitetail doe

We had the pleasure of waiting for 15 deer to cross in front of our truck Friday!


Cloudy day, but I still enjoyed this cardinal at the feeders.

Thanks to you Rose, we enjoyed your Cardinal too! We also enjoyed Plato, what a special looker he is!

I'm not a great photographer, but our son-in-law is awesome! He has just posted several pictures from around our small town in Iowa from when it was snowing yesterday morning. I hope it's ok if I share HIS photos!

All those posted cardinals inspired me to find these -









Edited to add - Great snow pics Ginny!

Great photos, Ginny and jm!

and thanks for the acorn Mika!

I'll pass the compliments along

Beautiful pics, Ginny! I especially love the first one with the horse-drawn carriage. Looks magical. Definitely pass along the love!