More food for the spirit - our own pictures of the dawning spring!

[Nothing Without Hope]

I have figured out how to use TinyPic.com to host my photos as LINKS, so you can see the photo if you click on the link. So I'm going to do this for some shots I took at one of the local nature preserves - a tiny one just a few blocks away from my apartment - two days ago. This is the Boston area, and spring is just beginning! I'll post more here over the next few days, so come back and be cheered. I'll try to choose resolutions and sizes that will be big enough to see but small enough to fit on your screen. If you want me to email you a better copy, PM me.

I invite you to post your own pictures of spring. This is the season of renewal and awakening. With all the sadness and death, it's time to celebrate the return of life and color.

For the first photo, here's one of a tiny plant shoot coming up near melting ice - what caught my eye is that the ice makes the silhouette of a long-beaked bird head, neck and breast, and the young plant comes up just where the eye would be:
http://tinypic.com/2k381g

For the second, here are some wildflowers, the first I have seen (even the tulips in the garden are only about 4 inches tall so far(. I am guessing they are snowdrops. I was delighted to see about a half-dozen bees very intently gathering pollen and nectar. They paid no attention to me, which was just as well. I've trimmed this photo from the original and, as with the others, have lowered the resolution:
http://tinypic.com/2k36kk

For the third, here is what I am assuming is a muskrat, a very shy little brown swimming mammal I have watched - mostly very quietly from a distance in the pond - for two years now. Here he/she doesn't yet know I'm watching!
http://tinypic.com/2k3dic

For the fourth and last photo for now, here is the little brook - its name is "Beaver Brook" - flowing from the upper pond, which is home to the muskrat and to a very regal great blue heron and many turtles and other creatures, to the lower pond, which is a favorite hangout of ducks (mostly mallards, but some wood ducks at times), geese (Canadas) and a few watchful seagulls. The flow is down from what it was when the icemelt was at its peak.
http://tinypic.com/2k3eq0

Let me know what you think. Should I post the photos as larger images, or are these about right? In any case they are lower resolution than the originals to save on bandwidth.

I'll post more Spring pictures tomrrow. Please post your own, too!

[greenmutha]

1. Those are beautiful, Hope!

Here's a photo I took of the sunrise from my brother's front porch in Escalante, Utah last year in the spring:



And here is one I took in 2003 during our annual spring trip to Lake Powell in southern Utah:

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. Wonderful! I hope you won't mind if I ask you for these photos

especially the second one, as reference photos for my paintings. They wouldn't look the same in the finished paintings, but would be inspirations for parts of paintings. If you wouldn't mind, let me know and I'll PM you my email address.

There's something about rocks and water. Here's a photo I took early last spring at the old granite quarry, now part of a state park, near Halibut Point on the Massachusetts Coast. This granite was formed a very long time ago, before there were dinosaurs and when the terrain enclosing it was far away, probably on an island in the southern hemisphere.
http://tinypic.com/2khbgl

Down where the Atlantic breakers roll in, the weathered granite boulders and slabs take on a timeless quality, which is only appropriate given the immense age of their stone. This area is a traditional navigational landmark for ships - when they saw it, they knew they were near Rockport. The stones were evidence enough, and at night there was the lighthouse on the rim of the quarry.
http://tinypic.com/2khlao

[greenmutha]

3. You are welcome to use them for your paintings, Hope.

Southern Utah has been an inspiration for many artists and photographers. It is absolutely breathtaking down there. (I live in northern Utah, but most of my family lives in the southern part.)

Did you know you can save them to your computer just by right-clicking on them and then choosing "save as" on the drop down menu? Please feel free to do so. :hug:

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. Thank you! Yes, I know I can save them that way, but the images

from the monitor will be very low resolution and can only be printed very small. That's why I would prefer larger files, so I can have a better print to get an idea of the colors and shapes.

[greenmutha]

5. Aha! Okay... PM me your email and I will send them that way.

Do you want both of them, or just the second one?

[CC]

6. Not quite as nice as

yours Hope but did go out and get a couple pics of the maple tree buds. The daffodils aren't quite there yet but will be soon.










:loveya::loveya:KO :loveya::loveya:


KEEF

[WhirlyGirl]

7. They're great pictures but they are way overshooting my monitor screen!

(Only referring to the pics in the opening post. The rest are fine.)

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. Sorry! Tell me the max dimensions you can handle and I'll see about

getting them right next time!
:hi:

[WhirlyGirl]

9. I'm not sure how such things are specified . . .

. . . but the computer screen is about 16 inches, diagonally.

The other pics were just about right, but can handle a bit larger photo than that.

For your first pics, have to slide the picture back & forth to see it all -- which isn't the effect you want, I don't think.

[CC]

11. Hi Whirly

Hope you are enjoying some great weather too. To find out what your screen resolution is with out asking the SO you can right click on your desktop, left click on properties then left click on the settings tab. It will tell you there.

[CC]

10. Hi Hope

Only here for a minute as it is too nice of a day to be indoors. For sizes of your pics I always try to never go wider than 800 pixels or higher than 800 pixels. If someone has a screen res. of 800 x 600 then 600 is about as tall as they can go and see the whole picture. That's about the smallest screen res anymore. Screen resolutions of 640x480 pixels are rare now. You have great pics and I would rather see them bigger but then my screen is set at 1280 x 1024. But 800 ppi is good too and allows the details to show.

Hope that helps some.

[Nothing Without Hope]

12. Thanks, CC! I do want to include everyone and this makes it easier.

Mine is at 1680x1050, it's the new Mac G5 20" iMac, and I can't believe how much more beautiful images are on this screen than my old computer, which had finally gotten so out of date I couldn't upgrade to what I needed. Apple introduced a "30-inch cinematic screen" recently - there's no way I can get it, but I would love to see it some time. What a boon to movie makers and some graphic artists!

[CC]

13. Adding these two

one natural setting one studio.

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. Springtime with wildflowers in the Texas Hill Country - I remember this

from when I was a child in Fort Worth. It's glorious!

Some generous person has posted some very beautiful photos in the DU Lounge. They are not to be missed! Here's the thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=3028009&mesg_id=3028009&page=
Title: "Texas in the Spring time. Caution Picture heavy."

Spring is much slower to come and then to unfold here in eastern Massachusetts. I saw my first robin of the season today, and also my first red-winged blackbirds. Crocuses are now blooming, but tulips and daffodils are not even budded around here yet. And the buds on the trees - oaks and maples and others - are still in their tightly-furled winter state. It was warm and sunny today - that will encourage the plants and animals to begin committing to the season. The volume of the birdcalls at the little local nature preserve was definitely up from last week though not yet the full chorus that it will become. The red-winged blackbirds are making their statements, though.

The mallards aren't making all that much noise except when they argue, but they are pairing up and scouting around like young couples looking for an apartment for the kids. (Of course in mallards, unlike in geese, the males don't help raise the young.)

[Nothing Without Hope]

15. Signs of early spring in eastern MA, April 9 afternoon

Spring unfolds in a measured fashion that lasts over months here in New England, very different from in my native Texas. Each day of this protracted time, if you look you will see new signs of the turning season. Here are some photos I took of some of these signs two days ago at the tiny local nature preserve a few blocks from my apartment.

Mallards are pairing up. They only do that during mating season; unlike the Canada geese, they don't mate for life and the male does not help in brooding or raising the young. They are in their full, vivid mating plumage and are scouting out private nooks in pairs:
http://tinypic.com/4g0nbk

I saw my very first robin of the season. I think it was a female, because the coloring was not brilliant like some. But that upright posture between hops around the sprouting grass were unmistakable:
http://tinypic.com/4g0nrm

I also saw and heard my first red-winged blackbirds of the season. The songbird chorus has just begun to ramp up as the various species have started to arrive and start the courting and nesting cycle. Here is a confident fellow who may be one of the many kinds of warblers; I'll have to look it up:
http://tinypic.com/4g0pj4

Skunk cabbage has begun to sprout in marshy areas of the local reserve. It is amazingly lush and brilliant against the drab dead leaves; each leaf will eventually be bigger than a dinner plate:
http://tinypic.com/4g0pcg

The leaf and flower buds on the trees are still completely dormant as viewed from the outside. The wild roses and a few other early-sprouting bushes have tiny new leaves emerging, but the trees and most of the shrubs are still bare. That will change soon:
http://tinypic.com/4g0pk7

It's been warm and sunny most of the time this past week, sweater weather. That's set things cooking though few are obvious to the eye yet. But the show has started.