After adopting and raising a cockatiel, I started seeing glimpses of the wonderful world of birds. The way they communicate with each other and with people, their ability to fly so skillfully, their playfulness, intelligence, gentleness, delicacy, unique personality, amazing abilities, and the magic of their feathers, are things I treasure and enjoy.
I can spend hours feeding birds in the wild, exchanging calls, playing with them and taking their photographs. A regular of the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, it feels wonderful to visit and be recognized and welcomed by the flying inhabitants.
I never cease to be amazed by the wonder of my feathery friends. Some of the most content moments in my life have been around animals, great and small.
After adopting and raising a cockatiel, I started seeing glimpses of the wonderful world of birds. The way they communicate with each other and with people, their ability to fly so skillfully, their playfulness, intelligence, gentleness, delicacy, unique personality, and amazing abilities are things I treasure and enjoy.
Some of the exotic birds in this page I have met at sanctuaries, wild-life rehabilitation centers and zoos. Though ideologically opposed to zoos, I am grateful they introduced me to birds so amazing and unique, birds from far away places. I do appreciate the effort of some zoos to give birds a large environment to fly and interact with people. But I still do wish they were free to fly, the way they were supposed to!
The amazing cycle of life of a butterfly, the miraculous metamorphosis, the gentle fluttering in the sun, the dreamy floating, the beauty and the gentleness, the lightness of being…a miracle in front of the eyes of a photographer a butterfly is!
”FROM THE CHRYSALIS”
My cocoon tightens, colors tease, I’m ’feeling for the air; A dim capacity for wings Degrades the dress I wear.
A power of butterfly must be The aptitude to fly Meadows of majesty concedes And easy sweeps of sky.
So I must baffle at the hint And cipher at the sign, And make much blunder, if at last I take the clew divine.
-Emily Dickinson, 1924
Seeing Chicago downtown for the first time was love at first sight. The wonderful skyline, the gorgeous buildings, the beautiful parks, the lively lakefront…Moreover, experiencing the people, the rich cultural life, the downtown life…What an amazing feast for all the senses!
After some twenty years the love is still there and the thrill of discovering new places in downtown Chicago to photograph is alive.
"…And then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?"
- Vincent van Gogh
Though I always enjoyed aquatic flowers, Chicago Botanic Gardens has allowed me to spend long, uninterrupted hours to photograph a great variety of lotus flowers and the dragonflies that love to visit them.
Growing in murky waters, the lotus bloom is protected and able to open without any signs of mud on its surface. Its leaf is a miracle of water-repelling engineering, with its waxy and bumpy surface. The lotus plant is able to regulate its flower’s temperature so that it can attract certain insect pollinators. It is also able to go into a rest period of hundreds of years and then rebloom.
Beautiful, unassuming, naked, immaculate, peaceful, open, the lotus flowers are a joy to observe and photograph.
Dragonflies are magical as well. Nearly all of their head is eye, so they have incredible vision that encompasses every angle, except for what is right behind them. They have two pair of transparent membranous wings and tiny veins. Each wing can work independently. They are incredibly skilled at flying and very intelligent in their hunting. They help people by controlling fly and mosquito populations, therefore being very helpful in aquatic garden areas.
And they are so compelling to photograph, with those wings of magical delicateness and intricacy and these superb eyes!
“My wish is to stay always like this,
living quietly in a corner of nature”
— Claude Monet
Orchids are as mesmerizing to look at, and interesting to study. With more than 25,000 species of documented orchids, one is continuously amazed by this stunning and intriguing flower.
Orchids have bilateral symmetry (if you draw a line down the middle of an orchid flower, the two halves are mirror images of each other), just like human faces. They are masters of attracting insects to pollinate them, as their reproductive system often takes the shape of the insect they want to attract.
And their leaves are no less unique: they are designed for water conservation. They have a heavy waxy coating and stomata (openings through which the leaf breathes) that help prevent water loss during breathing.
Delicate, exotic and graceful, pure and fascinating, fragrant and mysterious, they will always attract my photographic attention.
