Book Lover

How would you illustrate a book lover? Here is one idea. What do you think?

I love playing with paper especially when it is raining so hard outside and I cannot take any outdoor photos. I then turn to things inside the house. And since books and paper are aplenty at home, then I gravitate towards them naturally for some inspiration. I just fiddle with them and arrange them into different forms. The photo above is the result of "fiddling" around with books and paper. Tell me what you think.

Don't Delete Your Not So Good Photos, Play with them Instead

I have been trying to sort and clear my photo files since I already have thousands of photos in my computer drive. So every time I look at a photo, I have to make a decision on whether to keep or to delete them.

I always find it hard to delete photos because somehow I kind of have an attachment with them. Then I read one photographer who adviced - "Don't delete not so good photos right away. Check if you can still make something out of them"  

So I followed this advice and played around with some photos that I already marked "for deletion". Now I'm happy that I gave some photos a second chance because I came up with some interesting images after I used Photoshop filters. One of the results of this experiment is the photo above. What do you think?

Original photo before using filters

Garden Beauties

I was so lucky to chance upon these two beauties along the roadside. It's good I had my camera with me so I was able to capture this rather rare event.

I call this rare event because I hardly ever catch photo of a butterfly. Most of the time, they just fly away before I could even focus.

So from this experience I learned to always have my camera ready with me.

Wild Mushroom

It has been raining lately so this increase in humidity has triggered the appearance of wild mushrooms.

I found several of these mushrooms in our garden walkway and I just had to take some photos. Here is one of them. This kind is so fragile, it easily breaks especially once it starts to form new spores.

I love the raindrop that was caught on the mushroom's surface.

Wild mushrooms from our garden walkway

          

Cocoon, fully formed

The caterpillar's cocoon is now fully formed. It covers completely what used to be a caterpillar. Now I am eagerly awaiting for the day when it would emerge as a full grown butterfly. I guess I will have to wait for about 2 weeks or more for that.

I will keep you posted about this.

Caterpillar now fully enclosed in a cocoon

Caterpillar (higad) Preparing a Cocoon

As I mentioned in my last post, there are so many caterpillars crawling around in my garden. This particular type called "higad" here is just everywhere, there is always the risk of bumping into them and getting itchy all over. However, as I showed you last time, they are so colorful and symmetrical such that I cannot help but take more pictures of them.

Anyway, as I ventured out into my garden yesterday, I saw another "picture perfect" opportunity. I saw this caterpillar starting to form a cocoon around itself. It was moving ever so slowly as it formed threads around itself. It was my first time to see such an event so I excitedly took several shots again.

You can still see the bristles of the caterpillar and even its orange head is still evident. However, it is now enclosed in some silvery threads that definitely show the beginning of a cocoon. Isn't this exciting?

caterpillar or "higad" forming a cocoon around itself

Have you seen a "higad" (caterpillar) close-up?

For the past weeks and month, we have been having "higad" galore. There is an acacia tree in our front yard and this tree is one of their favorite hangouts. We usually encounter the "higad" hanging by a silvery thread from the tree. They are so small such that you usually don't see them before it's too late. Too late means you have them on your skin or your hair and of course your will get the allergic reaction. This is the reason why I always try to avoid them - I get itchy all over once they contact my skin.

I am however curious how these little creepy crawlers look like in close-up. So I got a small twig from our acacia tree and took photos of them. It's no wonder they are so itchy. Just look at their bristles! Ugh! They are so ugly yet so beautiful too. Their symmetry and color are fantastic. Don't you agree?