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Greetings!

 As the title implies, this week’s essay is about a wide variety of subjects all taken on the same day – specifically last Thursday.

 However, the first picture was taken the day before that, but is included because it features our new grandson, Matthew, who was just over 24 hours old when the picture was taken in the hospital room with Grandma Ruth holding him.  For the statisticians amongst you, he weighed 9 pounds even, and was 20 inches long.  Mother and son are now home and doing well, although with two other youngsters at home, everyone is feeling a bit tired!

 Since I am not likely to be in the “totality zone” for the up-coming solar eclipse, I figured that if I was going to make any impact, I had better get in ahead of time, so #2 is a picture of the sun, taken through a piece of special “solar film” – thanks, Dick – that cuts out most of the sun’s light.  I really don’t know if the color in the photo is the “real” color of the sun, or if it is an effect of the film.  I did not try to adjust it!  The dark spot near the lower edge of the solar disc is a sunspot, not a dust particle on the sensor!

 #3 also has a very dark background, even though it was taken in daylight just a couple of hours later.  The female Cardinal just happened to be sitting in sunlight while the background was in heavy shade.

 After what seems like a very slow start to the season, the number of butterflies seems to be picking-up, and #4 shows a Painted Lady.

When looking at the upper surface of the wings, as here, it is quite difficult to tell the difference between a Painted  Lady and the closely related American Lady, which has one extra small white spot on each fore-wing.  However,  the lower wing surface makes life easier, because the hind-wing of the American Lady has only two large “eye” spots, whereas the Painted Lady has four, as shown in #5.

 In #6, the light was falling on the head of the Bumble Bee in such a way as to show a strong green coloration to its eyes, which I have never noticed before, and made the picture worth including.

 #2 was taken from our balcony, and #3-6 were taken within our property boundary, but my walk then took me to my favorite nearby pond, and yielded the Great Blue Heron in-flight image, #7.

 To see a Green Heron there is a little more unusual, but #8 shows one perched in a tree.

If one Green Heron is unusual, to get two in the same frame, #9, is definitely uncommon,

and to get three in one picture, #10, is a “first” for me!  From the way they were behaving, I suspect that at least two of them are juvenile siblings, while the third may be a parent still coaching the youngsters.

 Soon after I got home from my walk, we had a short, sharp, rainstorm, followed by a very nice rainbow, #11.  This was taken with a wide angle lens (11-18mm zoom at 17mm) on the Nikon D810 body, in order to include the full arc.

 Later in the evening, the sky became very ominous as another storm moved through (#12).

This storm produced some lightning bolts, one of which I caught in #13 using a long (15 second) exposure.

It is not a very sophisticated technique, but I have found that by taking a series of long exposures in quick succession, one has a reasonable chance of catching a flash, provided one is willing to go through, and delete, all the “blank” exposures!

 Have a great week!