Wayne's Butterfly Garden

At last......a visit to my Garden from a Monarch butterfly!

Wayne's Butterfly Garden

The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is a large butterfly appropriately named for the vertical black stripes on yellow wings.  It is a frequent visitor to butterfly gardens and feeds on the nectar of various flowers including butterfly bush, lilac, milkweed and cone flowers.  The caterpillars feed on the leaves of tulip poplar, wild cherry, and sweetbay.

Wayne's Butterfly Garden

The butterfly for today is the "Pearl Crescent", a small butterfly that is common throughout most of the U.S. and southern Canada.   Plant some asters if you want regular visits from Pearl Crescents as the leaves of asters are what the caterpillars feed upon.

The photographs appearing on Ali's blog are usually available for purchase at www.backroadsandaliways.com/.

Wayne's Butterfly Garden

This is Wayne's 2nd year with a butterfly garden, and it is amazing the number of interesting and beautiful butterflies that come to visit. He keeps adding new attractor plants and feeder plants for the caterpillars, and every day seems to see a different butterfly. Many are very colorful, some are not....and, not all are attracted to flowers. Some like to feed on organic decay and visit the compost pile...trying to get decent shots of those with a more pleasing background is not always easy.

He will be posting new butterflies and a description of each in the upcoming days.
You can see more of our work at  http://www.backroadsandaliways.com/

This is the "Question Mark" butterfly.

The Question Mark butterfly gets its name from the white (silver) question mark in the center of the hind wing underside. Question Marks feed on animal droppings, rotting fruit and at sap flows, and are apt to visit your garden if you place some fruit in a strategic location.

September 10 at 4:40pm · ·

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This is my 2nd year with a butterfly garden and it is amazing the number of interesting and beautiful butterflies that come to visit. I will post photos of my visitors over the next several days.

Slow water

I'm back!  It's not that I haven't been taking photos, just busy trying to make a living.  I got to go to Great Smoky Mountain National Park last month - after discovering that it's in my backyard.  Amazingly beautiful place.  On our way home we went out the rutty, wet, hilly, muddy little one way road out of Cades Cove where there were many little, burbling creeks that crossed and recrossed the road.  I finally couldn't stand it and had to stop to take some pictures.

I think I've finally managed to capture "slow water."

Long time gone....

Wow, it's been too long since I posted anything, but not for lack of being busy with photography.  Trucks, railroads, flowers, getting threatened with arrest, shadows...the list goes on.  Oh, and taking up curling.   

This is a shot I took when I was directed down the wrong road in Pickens, SC.  This church and high power wires were off the road I was on by mistake.  I went back with camera a few days later.  It's titled "High(er) Power. 

Simple art

We were walking down the street in Comer, GA....just past Colbert, GA and this door caught our eye.  I don't know who uses it or why, but I love what they've done with it.  I've printed it on a metallic paper and it looks amazing.  So, thanks to whomever.

what is art?

A couple of months ago I was in a gallery in North GA and in a back room that was not being used sat a nice, folk arty chair.  Not on display.  Just sitting there.  I liked how it looked against the wall and the rug, so I took a photo.  I really like how it turned out and the slight optical illusion effect, but mostly just the composition and the color.  Somebody asked me if it was ok to use another piece of art in my art....What's the answer?  I think the answer in this case is that I am not using the chair or even it's artistic qualities as my art, but the room, the light and the color and the presence of the chair.  I welcome feedback on this.

AZ

One of us - but not me - got to go to sunny (mostly) and warm (warmer than SC) last week.  The desert southwest has a rare beauty.  This was shot outside Sedona.  Sky is amazing...colors are wonderful and warm.

January mix

We've been having the first "real" (read "icky") winter since I arrived in Greenville 5 years ago.  Not a lot of tolerable sunshine or warmish cloudiness for taking pictures, so it's been a good time to learn some new techniques. I've been working on water and found a nice, quiet place to shoot when we've had some (too much?) rain.

Interestingly, there  is a stand of bamboo near the little falls and suddenly Greenville can look tropical even on a chilly, soft day.

Something there is that loves a wall...

I guess it's me.  I find myself wanting to photograph interesting walls, and here's the latest.  I think the paint was applied to cover up graffeti, but it sure made an otherwise ordinary wall much more interesting.  This is along a lovely walking path in downtown Greenville. 

Agua

I've been reading a lot about photo technique and trying to learn to slow down water to get that wonderful motion look. I've tried several times but was not happy with the results.  I never took the written instructions with me, so after a lot of trial and error, and error, I finally learned my lesson on Sunday.  We had MORE rain over the weekend and the rivers were raging, so we headed to a favorite spot (as yet mostly undiscovered) to try more shots of water.  I was a little dismayed when we arrived to see just how raging the river was, but we gave it a shot.  I still wasn't having any luck - tripod and all - when I looked at Wayne's picture and saw it was exactly what we were looking for.  After taking a look at his camera settings, I changed mine and instantly had more luck.  We spent the next several hours taking waterfall shots around the Greenville area.

I've got more to learn, but I'm so happy with the 1st days results.

painting a wall

We were in Clayton, GA for a few days and came out of the biting cold to have a delicious pizza at Zeppalins.  This is a wall that caught my eye.  The first shot is as I took it - hand held, no flash.

I've played around with it a lot but probably don't yet have the perfect finished product.  Most people prefer a very colorful version.  It's quite fun to work with something so basic and see what it becomes.

Time flies

Here it is the next year already and we are way behind posting photos.  So, here is one from New Years Day taken from the top of Black Rock Mtn in north GA.   It was a beautiful day - warmish down by the Chatooga, but really cold and windy at the top of the mountain.  Lots of nice views in the winter, but this was one of the nicest.  Very little adjustment here.  The trick was to sit on the cold, wet ground behind a post to block the sun so I could take this view of the the receeding mountins to the south.