Janet Brien's photos

Just a few miles from our home are the beautiful Upper and Loweer Table Rock plateaus. Every spring the rain turns these plateaus into large marshy areas with pools of water everywhere. The flora and fauna are wonderful to see, and some are unique to the Table Rocks. Steve and I ventured up to the top for a photo walk back in March 2012 and enjoyed photographing the special environment there. These buds are probably a common, very tiny flower called Spring Sandwort, and when I saw these buds surrounded by water, I couldn't resist taking pictures! It was a challenge to get this image and not fall face-first into the muck!

Using a macro lens reveals a fascinating new perspective, and will often surprise you with these fresh views. How common, boring and ugly dandilions are...to most people, anyway. Detested, yanked out, and scorned, these enemies to the lawn perfectionist are actually quite beautiful, when seen through a macro lens. I quickly fell in love with these flowers, and all others which make these seedheads of parachutes. This was a picture I took in May of 2012, to show how exquisitely perfect these lovely seedheads truly are. Explored on January 10, 2012. Highest placement, #10.

In August, 2012, Steve and I visited the Jackson County Fair and were delighted to find out there was a bird show taking place throughout the day. We had an fantastic time, and I got so many pictures that I was never able to post them all. This one is a favorite of mine, and I'm so happy to finally show it to everyone! :) Chris Biro is an educator, conservationist, and rehabilitator of parrots, and all of his birds come from rescue situations, including this pair of Blue & Gold macaws. It is a true love affair between Chris and his avian friends, and he gives them all something rarely heard of in the pet bird world: the gift of free flight. I would like to invite all of you to visit my album for Chris Biro's remarkable Pirate's Parrot Show , and please take the time to read the information under each picture to learn more about this ambassador and conservator of parrots! There are also links that will take you to his websites if you'd like to know even more!

A couple of years ago I decided to turn our overgrown raised bed into a proper flower garden. It was a huge project and my reward was an amazing display of flowers that simply took my breath away every single day for months on end. These lovely African Daisies were grown from seeds, as were all the flowers I was so lucky to raise. As well as yellow, I got orange ones too, and I will have to share the pretty picture I captured of a yellow and orange one side by side. If you are interested, I wrote a series of posts about my raised bed garden project !

Here's a magical scene that I discovered on the first day of my 365 project back in 2013. Walking around in the snow that day, I found so many lovely subjects to capture...such a wonderland. This pair of sporophytes--which are the reproductive parts of moss--were peeking up out of a mound of snow, complete with a melted droplet on top! :)

Back in Feb 2012, Steve helped me take my first long-exposure images with my 5D Mark II camera. It was a lot of fun to press the shutter release and just stand there for ages before the shutter finally closed and took the picture. I liked this one for its dramatic sky. Incidentally, the pine needle shown in my previous image was on the tree you see here!

On January 1, 2013, I began my 365 Project. I remember the day so clearly. How excited I was as I wandered around on our snowy property, looking for just the right picture to be my very first. Along the way I found a snow-covered pine tree and managed to get this image!

I am officially in love with this project, and this image is my illustration. How is it that I never posted this one? I think it must have been that I didn't want to post too many similar images and back in October 2012, I was taking countless pictures of droplets. There were always more new pictures to post and I just didn't get to this one! Until now. Hooray for my Daily Archive Photo project!! :D NOTE: I will be getting back to the great joy of visiting all of you, commenting, and reacquainting myself with your marvelous photography within about 3 weeks. However, it's going to take me a little while before I tie up some projects going on around here that are keeping my participation at a low ebb for now. I can't wait to say hello, so please stay tuned! :) I'm very excited to be back!!!

I used to be terrified of spiders, but when I realized they were more afraid of me, I became curious about this much-maligned creature. This little guy is a jumping spider, and they are inquisitive, bold arachnids that can leap a surprisingly long distance! These are my favorite type of spider and can be found all over the world! Explored on January 3, 2016. Highest placement: #4

The day after Halloween 2012, Steve and I went to Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon to take pictures. This was a very pivitol day in my life as a photographer. Comparing the pictures I took with my Canon SX30 Super Zoom camera to Steve's Canon 5D yet again made me so upset that I finally had enough. I could see that no matter how hard I tried, I would not get the quality of image I saw with Steve's camera, and so on this day in 2012, I put my foot down. I demanded we purchase a SLR for me. A week later I had my precious Canon 5D Mk II, and the rest is history! This was one of the pictures I took that day. I have 22 pictures in that folder, and looking them over, I can see that they aren't the same quality as a 5D. But they are still very nice pictures and my technique was fine! :) Thank you all so very much for the overwhelming response to my return to ipernity with a new project! I am so touched!! You are all so amazing and wonderful!! *big hugs all around* A big thanks to Heidiho for letting me know that 2016 has 366 days because of Leap Year!! HOORAY!!

Happy New Year, and welcome to my new project! For a while now, I've been thinking about my backlog of pictures. We all have them. You know what I'm talking about...multiple hard drives, entire terabytes of images that need to be looked at and processed. So many cool pictures that we mean to work on, but in the end, life gets in the way. Time passes, and the pile of pictures grows larger. I wanted to do something creative this year with photography but I didn't want to tie myself down with a monster like my past 365 Project. (That entailed taking a new picture and posting it every single day for an entire year.) I kept thinking about all the pictures I haven't posted, and all the zillions of pictures that are just sitting in mothballs. Then it hit me: 365: Daily Archive Photo! This project lets me post pictures that I've processed but never publicized. I can pick through folders and process old images. If I don't have extra time, I won't even write about the image! My first picture just has to be a mushroom image! This is one that I processed some time ago but never posted. I didn't want people to get bored with all of my mushrooms so I tried not to post too many. Unfortunately, that meant that some of them never saw the light of day!) Behold this adorable little mushroom with mossy bokeh galore! I'm so happy that I can share my tiny buddy with the world! Explored on January 1, 2016. Highest placement: #11.

Have you ever wondered what happens to a green leaf that is exposed to extreme heat but isn't burned? You are looking at a leaf that had been green. Fire approached but only the extreme heat hit these leaves, causing the water within to boil and create the blistering of the surface. Although this leaf did not burn, it turned black and was dry as a bone. These leaves look to me as if they are cast from bronze.

The fire fighters cut down many smoldering trees and I found droplets of resin in the cuts of some of them. Catching the light just so created a pretty star!

Walking on our hillside among the ashes and burned trees and bushes, there glimmers the stark white remains of snails, their shells bleached from the damage. This contrast was very interesting to me and beautiful in its own way.

Ravaged by the fire that roared up our hillside, the forest that grew there was totally devastated. So many old trees, all gone. It is a horrible tragedy, but when I look at the ruin around me there, I am reminded that this is all a part of nature and an important part of the ecosystem. (There are also dead madrone trees behind and to the right.)

It was a curious thing to look at the trees and to find that the fire didn't burn everything in its path. Instead, the damage came from the incredible heat from the fire, which singed the leaves and left them totally dry, and yet with a beauty of their own.

Although the hillside appears totally barren on first glance, I knew that I would find surprises of life returning almost immediately. This is some sort of fungus that I found growing under a burned branch. Tiny and beautiful, each eappears to be a little 1/16" fur coat!

This is another ruined shell that I found. So many are scattered on the hillside in every size from the head of a pin to a quarter.