Nikki's Photography

I was just coming home from shopping so I missed capturing the double rainbow arching over our neighborhood after a short storm. Both ends were visible, and rare sights like that are so electrifying! I hurried home to get the camera, then still managed a few shots of the golden glow accentuating everything as the sunset.

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Arbutus trees, first thumbnail, only grow in the Pacific Northwest, here on Salt Spring Island, B.C. and in parts of China, nowhere else in the world. They are popular carve-your-name-in-the-trunk trees because the bark heals into a soft well-defined scar. A few trees on the island have been abused like this. Still, they couldn’t take the beautiful away! Groups of three and four Fluted Swallowtails spiraled in and out of the sunlight as I walked down the mountain road on Salt Spring Island. Fortunately one briefly settled on a fir tree.

Just off the ferry at sunset, Washington, North Carolina

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Alain and I flew to North Carolina for three days – a little business trip and I tagged along—he threatened to take my camera with him and I was sure I could not manage without it! We drove around the eastern countryside between Raleigh and Washington, NC through old, old towns. It takes a looong time for wooden doors to shred, and a looong time for conditions to be just right for vines to sprout then twirl round and round, entwined and squished between panes of glass …old, old farms: tobacco, cotton, peanuts.. and an interesting gas station.

There is a lot of history in North Carolina – fossils, settlers and Civil War history. We stayed at Kitty Hawk (first flight – Wright bros.) and walked the shores at various places along the narrow coast of the Outer Banks. We watched the sun rise and dolphins feed – too far away for good photos, even with the telephoto. As soon as the sun rose they swam away.
Along Cape Hatteras, groups of Grackles ate ripe grass seeds, bouncing up and down on the stems, their bodies too heavy for the tall grasses. Just off the 2 1/2 hr. long ferry at Swan Quarter, and sunset with a short, wide rainbow after a storm that we managed to escape and watch from the better side.

NO OLF – we were curious about this sign in many people’s yards. The following website shows a video describing how the U.S. Navy has purchased over 30,000 acres of land near the eastern North Carolina coast, planning to move their pilot training program from Virginia. Part of the huge controversy is that over 75 families would be forced to leave their homes, many of them farming that land for generations. The human issues are enough, but the cause and effect on the wildlife and ecology would be drastic and irreparable. Thousands of ducks and large flocks of snow geese that feed in the area annually would no longer have sanctuary. The large birds would also be a danger to the jets.

On Pony Island a large sand crab tried to buff up and look tough, but it was quite vulnerable there out in the open; all the other crabs scurried into holes but this one stayed, trying to hide in footprints, which offered no protection if we had been birds looking for a hearty meal. Great fun to watch the behavior for a while. It’s clearly outlined crab-shaped shadow following it everywhere, creating a few graphic photos that are perfect resource material for drawings and paintings but do not stand alone as good photography because it was moving so fast.

“Rude Awakening”…making way for new, large condominiums along White Ave. in Edmonton, Alberta

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Parts of the I30 and I35 highways (Texas) were closed as a series of explosions at Southwest Industrial Gases Inc., located next to downtown Dallas, sent flaming debris into the air for more than half an hour, July 25th.

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Grain Elevators, Sweetgrass, Montana

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Cumulonimbus clouds over Montana landscape at sunset

Arriving in Newcastle, Wyoming after driving through a wicked lightening storm…didn’t stay at this old hotel but love the classic mid-century sign of the Stardust Motel. Earlier that evening, forest fires burnt not too far from the highway. Smoke in the atmosphere made the sunset spectacular. Third photo – Granite Creek Canyon, Bighorn National Forest, Wyoming

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Nebraska scenes 1. Morrill, Water Tower 2. Windmills in Comstock 3. central Nebraska landscape 4. Nebraska – Wyoming border picnic table at sunset 5,6, and 7. Lazy U Motel, Broadwater, Nebraska 8. agricultural jewels 9. Elevators and truck loading

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Lazy U Motel, Broadwater, Nebraska

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Driving by abandoned homesteads and farm land in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

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Milkweed brighten highway ditches in Kentucky, USA

Firewheels – Gaillardia – en masse! Andrew Brown Park, Coppell, TX

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Freshly painted red benches along Lake Chapala, improvements for tourism in San Crystobal de las Casas, Mexico

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