March 29 - Emotions

This makes me want to hug him... but I took a photo first ;)

March 28 - Embark

When at the national independent schools' rowing championships with my two youngest, all the crews were all up at dawn to embark on their program for the day (just messing around in boats really... :P ) The team were well prepared and despite being from a small school, walked away with several wins.

March 27 - Electricity

Electricity - Las Vegas eats it up and the wind turbines in the Mojave desert help to channel power to this city of lights...

March 26 - Elaborate

Elaborate - a word that St Petersburg's Hermitage museum epitomises. Intricate and rich in detail - involving many carefully arranged parts - complicated in design...

Look up and you see the chandeliers, almost lost among the rich detail of the ceilings, walls and galleries above. Look down and you see incredible parquetry floors and intricate mosaics - and that is before you even start on the amazing display in the galleries where you can stand within centimetres of masterworks from past centuries. To explore the Hermitage in detail would take weeks, we had just one day but it was an amazing place.

March 25th - Edible

These tubs of fruit in the farmers' market drew my eye for the colours. I have experimented with processing today, just for a challenge and because I have finally caught up with my daily posts. The fruit has a pastel drawing effect with PS filters, not as effective in the small images as when they are enlarged. I think it suits the subject.

March 24 - Eating

The corellas just love a field full of thistles - or even just a nice thistle patch near the fence - they pull off and eat the seed heads. They were all sitting along the neighbour's fence in the second shot, a veritable feast in progress...

March 23 - Duty

Duty - this soldier on guard duty at the Kremlin didn't look quite right, in a uniform more befitting the 1940s than today... Soon we realised why - a film crew setting up below our vantage point soon started filming sequences of cars arriving and leaving, and women walking on the crossing nearby. Later we saw groups of 'soldiers' and their 'girlfriends' preparing for a dance - it was an interesting wrinkle in time :)

March 22 - Dusk

Camping by the lake, this white-faced heron was hunting along the shoreline at dusk. I was sitting quietly enjoying a glass of wine, picked up my camera and didn't even have to move from the seat to get this shot :) bliss

March 21 - Dream

Time for some PS play - my daughter has this sign in her room, so I merged it with a photo of the full moon - Dreamy eh?

March 20 - Downtown

There's not much 'downtown' where I live, so I have taken another from our trip to Russia last summer. Downtown Moscow can be spectacular, with ornate classic buildings of past centuries - and it can also be ugly - from an era where cheap concrete structures were hastily erected 'for the people'. There are areas just like this downtown in most big cities, almost beautiful in their ugliness and with a strange attraction for photographers.

March 19 - Domestic

Houses in the Rusian countryside are often decorated with beautiful colour and carved timber details. In this village, all the homes also had a well for water, which usually reflected the style of the home, with painted and carved timber surrounds, or the simpler 'log cabin' feel. It was great to get off the tourist route and go to local shops and walk around the area, though our (lack of ) proficiency in the cyrillic language meant that conversations were very limited :)

March 18 - Distorted

Husavik in the north-east of Iceland in Skjalfandi bay is touted as the whale watching capital of the world. Needless to say we saw dolphins and puffins, and lots of seasick passengers (not us) on the whale watching boat ... but no whales - we did see part of a whale in a nearby museum for which Husavik is also famous, but you will have to google (Husavik museum) for that!

Back to the theme - I have always loved the distorted images in reflections and the harbour at Husavik is wonderful for reflections - in fact almost any stillwater harbour in the world is great for photo-play. Yes it was summer and yes that is snow and ice ;)

March 17 - Distant

The Warrumbungles is the remnants of an ancient shield volcano. You drive in and camp in the caldera, with the spectacular formations circling in the distance. It is inland from the coast and provides a rare environment for many of Australia's birds, animals and wildflowers. It's also the site of one of our most famous observatories, Siding Springs.

If you look in the last image, the dome of the observatory is visible in the distance as a bump on the top of the ridge on the right. (whew, covered the theme!) The other photos, I couldn't resist adding - the view from our campsite with morning mist in the distance and the Breadknife - one of the most spectacular formations in the park, a 90m high dyke that stretches for 500 metres. This is taken from a vantage point nearby (well, nothing is nearby if you are walking... but it gives a good view) We are planning our next trip to this beautiful place - more discoveries await :)

March 16 - Disorder

We set up camp as dark fell and in the morning, found this disordered pile of bones and stuff just outside the door, which on closer examination wasn't disordered at all - it's a spotted bower bird's precious collection of bones and shiny things - carefully placed there to attract the females to his bower 'stage' where he can perform his show.

In the first photo you see the bower - in the second, his tail is just visible... in the third, he is walking around near the campsite, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get a nice close photo - this is on full zoom.

The back of his head has a bright pink patch of colour, which you can see in the last ,very enlarged, not-very-clear image.

March 15th - Disguise

The sulphur crested cockatoos came to the campsite every night to keep us company, see them sitting along the posts - is that last one wearing a disguise? LOL.

March 14th - Discovery

The coast walk from Bundeena in the Royal National Park is a spectacular one, with massive coastal cliffs of honey coloured sandstone, heathlands with hundreds of birds and the occasional unexpected discovery such as these little groups of mushrooms, pushing up from the sand. It was raining during the walk and when I downloaded the photos, I discovered a reflection of the photographer in one group of mushrooms - hmmm...

March 13th - Destruction

Nature is so destructive! In Australia we regularly see destruction by fire, flood and cyclone, and I have some photos in my files of all of these, having lived in places where they happen regularly, but she also destroys slowly... fungi breaks down the trees until they are gone and man's constructions slowly yield to the elements if not maintained and repaired...

Both photos from our latest walks - the fungi in Mt Tomah botanic gardens and the boatshed in Port Hacking, Royal National Park.

March 12th - Desire

Desire ... I remember a line of a poem - something about 'a flower that bees prefer and butterflies desire' - and I love this image of butterflies on a flower that I took in France - especially the little ant that is wandering along upsidedown under the flower... so this is my interpretation of the theme for today :) Still trying to catch-up!

March 11th - Design

The Garie Beach surf club building is designed with wide verandas, sheltered by slat screens which protect from wind and sun, yet still allow a view of the beach. It was an overcast, rainy day and I preferred a conversion to soft B&W to the original, washed out greys

March 10th - Depth of Field

Depth of field in a field (apologies in advance)...

Freshly cut hay is nice and sharp in the foreground while the hills behind are softly out of focus.

March 9th - Delicate

Flanders poppies, backlit by the sun show the delicate hairs on the stems and buds and the translucency of the flowers. Grasses amongst the poppies add a different interest.

March 8th - Debris

Still trying to catch up from our week away - so I decided to use two of the images from our walks for this theme - one from a beach walk - a tyre and a burnt log washed up on the beach together makes for an interesting juxtaposition of man's debris and nature's - while on a forest walk in the mountains, the image is a contrast, but similar, showing a fallen artifact of the mining heritage of this place, among the leaves that litter the forest floor

March 7th - Dead of Night

Leaving Rekjavik in the middle of the night I took this photo from the bus - this is about as dark as it gets in Summer... (SOOC image)

March 6th - Daybreak

My kids' rowing team training meant many early mornings at the lake for me, so sometimes I took a camera instead of a book (or a pillow) and had a wander around the shore as dawn broke. Other times I was out on the water as well, such special memories. This is as it came from the camera with a 50% soft light layer.

March 5th - Dangerous

The faded red sign says 'read the signs' and the sign says "Danger - beware of mechanical dog" so should we be worried? We stayed away from the opal mine anyway, but the signs were a magnet for the camera, though I didn't spot the dog :(

March 4th - Damaged

This walking track near the town of Wentworth Falls had been damaged in a recent fire. The ferns are making a comeback - such a vivid green against the blackened ground - and even the boardwalk section here has been burnt at the edges. With some of the boards recently replaced and some still missing, there is still repair work to do, but the track was an interesting walk for an hour or so, despite the rain.