Nature in Bear Creek Provincial Park

As we wandered around the park, there were signs of nature around us, altho the kids outnumbered the nature signs!  Oh, well, I’m betting that as we get further north, there will be less families out on vacation – the trip we’re on is too long for a family vacation, and in all likelihood, the kids would probably prefer DisneyWorld!  Take a look at my idea of a fabulous small world…..

 

Isn’t this a beautiful butterfly?  He was just sitting on the orange blossom blooms enjoying the dappled sunlight.  Altho I know he didn’t know I was there, I felt as if he was posing for me!

 

Now, this guy was another story!  He definitely didn’t pose for me, and it was difficult for me to capture him.  He kept cawing at me, but when I’d raise my camera, he’d fly off to hide among the tree branches, and then caw at me from another location.  I did finally manage to capture him, but a regular photo image just didn’t seem to “fit” somehow, so I played with it until I found the appropriate painting type effect which allowed him to stand out from the leaves much better than he did in person!

 

Here are some of the orange blossoms that the butterfly was enjoying.  I’m fairly certain this is what they are because they also bloom close to home, up in the Sandia Mountains.  There was something about this image that I loved, but I wanted to make it a bit more special, so I applied a crayon type drawing effect.  Doesn’t it look like it should be enlarged to poster size?

 

There’s something about red and green in nature that gets me every time!  Add the berries and it’s a photo op that just winks at me until I can’t ignore it – LOL!  I liked the colored pencil look for this one, just to add a bit more artsy-ness to it.

 

Whenever I’ve seen this in the past (last year at Yellowstone, for example), I have always thought that this was the end of the bloom, and the seedlings were in the process of redistribution for next year’s growth.  But, I just realized that this IS the bloom.  Take a look at the image below.  It’s really not much from an artistic perspective, but I didn’t take it for that reason.  I took it so you could see an open bloom (bottom of image) and the bloom as it’s just starting to open (top of image).  I’m used to flowers having color and more substance to them, but for this one, it’s the delicate wispiness that’s its claim to fame.

 

Enjoy!