Yellow Stickered

Or, how I spent Christmas day, 2011.... One of the lesser known archaeological sites of Cyprus, largly because it completely unsignposted! The site yielded the largest known single piece stone pot. The original is in the Louvre, leaving only this replica and the remains of a second vessel, seen on the left of the picture. The image was shot in infra-red in the early afternoon of Christmas Day. I has trying to capture some of the isolation and barrenness of the ruins. I like the way that the very high contrast of the image is reminiscent of the lunar landscape.

The Cat from Kato Paphos

I came home from my dad's last night to find the sky really clear, and the weather still quite warm. I armed myself with my 150-500mm zoom, a 1.4x teleconverter, and my trusty Benbo tripod, and took a few snaps from just outside the front door. I am particularly pleased with this one of the planet Jupiter, showing three of its four moons. From left to right, the picture shows Ganymede, Callisto, Jupiter itself, and Europa. Io, the fourth moon, is behind the main planet. I'm not some sort of psychic when it comes to knowing one moon from another. The good people at www.skyandtelescope.com have a handy little calculator that shows the relative position of the moons at any given time.




17 Day Old, Waning Gibbous Moon
According to my computer, the moon was 403516km from me and my camera. I'd check it myself, but petrol is expensive these days.

At least there was some fungi to photograph!


I couldn't resist this. By getting in very low to the ground, I hope to have given a feeling of space and depth to this micro-landscape.

Our house has a colony of bats in the gable. Tonight, this little one was found newly deceased outside our front door. As you can see, he/she was absolutely infested with red mites, so my dear wife was none too keen on me having it in the house to photograph! One can only marvel at the delicacy of such a tiny animal, about 45mm in length. The foot, shown in the top photograph, was about 5mm across. It is incredible to think that it can sustain the weight of the bat at rest.

Much as having bats can be a nuisance (it is a pain to have your windows soiled with bat urine!), I think they are lovely little creatures, and I really like giving them a home.