April 17 - Fear

Fear - this one was a challenge when deciding what image to use ... so I decided on stretching skills with another composite.

I'm generally OK with snakes but Aus has the most deadly ones and some of them live here on our farm. I took a close up (with a long lens) of this eastern brown snake - the simple name belies the aggressiveness and deadliness of this reptile which is said to be the second most venomous snake in the world. This beastie was on the grass near our back door, so of course, safe inside and fear under control, I got out the camera! I haven't seen it since and with winter coming I'm hoping it just leaves for good.

Thinking about the theme for today I fished out the images and cropped one closely to just around the eye - added a few colour layers to give the right 'mood' to the image, then found a quote and layered it on top. Flattened and served up as my offering for today's theme.

It was creepy just working on this image ... I'm OK with pythons and such - even red-bellies are fine but these snakes give me the chills.

Ron's suggestion sent me back to the snake file to add the images above - the 'original' eye and one of about 2/3 of the snake - I guess from when it went across the top of the steps that it was at least 1.8 metres long (about 6')

February 22 - Comfort

When we go camping these days we mostly like to do it in comfort, so after years of throwing a tent in the 4WD, we bought a campervan (RV). Now it's like having a little luxury apartment when we go bush. It's nice to have a comfortable bed, shower and loo. The kids gave us a hard time about 'glamping' instead of camping, but they borrow it for their surfing safaris and road-trips, so it can't be too bad ;)

So in this first photo we had just set up in a bush campsite in the Border Ranges (on the border between Qld and NSW) it's happy hour and the wine is poured, the chairs are set up, the mozzie-spray is on the table and the carpet snake is comfortable in the corner ... oh ... maybe we are not so comfortable now ... let's just check on that snake ... yep, a beautiful big coastal carpet python. Took some photos (of course) and sat back with some wine and cheese ... now we were all comfortable again. The snake stayed for a few days, no doubt digesting whatever he had eaten before we arrived (a previous camper maybe?)