Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
I rarely deploy a camera in any kind of zoo, but this opportunity was too good to miss.
In addition to the island’s glorious natural attractions (they include the Indian Ocean’s highest peak, a host of endemic species, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, and one of its rainiest locations) Réunion has an excellent aquarium.
i am almost certain that this post’s hero is a hawksbill turtle.
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In March 2016 my beloved and I were in northwest Western Australia, “sailing” on a motorised yacht from Broome to Wyndham.
(with many “tinny” side-trips to islands, tidal creeks, beaches, waterfalls, etc)
We were “exploring” the Kimberley Coast – the world’s greatest tropical coastal “wilderness”.
Around 7am on the fourth day of March, we were just a few kilometres distant from Horizontal Falls – this coastline’s most celebrated “attraction”.
By Grand Canyon standards, visitor numbers were infinitesimal.
However, by “way-out-of-any-town” Kimberley standards, we were in severely tourist-infested waters.
Accordingly, some local sharks have learned that a boat may provide a “free feed”; we were far from the first tourists to observe a very relaxed shark, so “amazingly close” to “their” boat.
To my knowledge, “our” boat did not feed the shark.
Nonetheless, the image immediately above does show a mutually beneficial relationship between a “client” (the shark) and some “service providers”..
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As was true of #41 in this series, I took the featured photograph in southeastern Alaska’s Glacier Bay in June 2015.
Unsurprisingly, kelp “forests” thrive there.
Kelps (and all other seaweed species) do photosynthesise, but – like all other algae – they are not plants.
Algae – even the towering “forests” of giant kelp – have no roots, nor any “complex” vascular structures.
As anyone who has harvested washed-up kelp from a beach knows, a single frond from a kelp “forest” can be massive – much too heavy to float.
So how does a kelp “forest” manage to stay upright, with its fronds positioned high enough in the water column to enable them to “harvest” the necessary sunlight?
You are looking at the answer.
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This series has fewer than 10 remaining chapters.
The next several all look down into water, or through it, or at it.
This chapter’s image was the fruit of looking down into a tidal pool in southeastern Alaska.
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The featured image was not shot in monochrome.
Its colour palette is accurate; if my camera had looked straight up rather than almost straight down, the image would have largely been blue, flecked with white and grey.
I took the photo in a “remote” part of northern Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan province in May 2024.
What appears to be a rock is a rock; I have no idea of its mass, but am sure it would weigh at least several tonnes.
In the context of the relevant valley, however, that rock is a speck!
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An elevated vantage point sometimes offers an interesting, “different” view of human activity, and the opportunity to record it, candidly.
As the featured activity would suggest, I was looking down to a very “modest” street.
However, my vantage point for all images in this post was the most “desirable” location in Madagascar’s national capital – the royal palace complex, which sits atop the city’s highest hill.
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The Otago Peninsula is a long” finger”, extending 20 kilometres east-ish from the second largest city on New Zealand’s South Island.
Dunedin is modest in population – a “permanent” home to little more than 130,000 people, and now #7 in NZ.
Once, however, it was the nation’s premier city.
Dunedin still feels surprisingly “grand” and “important”; culturally, this “university city” is generally considered one of NZ’s “big four”.
The Otago Peninsula’s sheltered side is the southern wall of the large, drowned valley that is Otago Harbour.
Otago Peninsula’s ocean-facing side is very much wilder.
My photo looks down from the ocean side of the Peninsula’s extremity, Taiaroa Head, which is home to the world’s only “mainland” breeding colony of Northern Royal Albatross.
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If you wish to experience an incredibly diverse array of extraordinary flowering plants – most especially, species that naturally occur in only one part of the world – you’d be best-advised to avoid places with “good” soil and abundant, “reliable” rainfall.
The “winning” combination: “poor” soil, unreliable rainfall and a very high evaporation rate!
Arguably, the world’s best natural “flower gardens” are in the southwestern “corners” of Africa and Australia; there, “looking down” is almost always rewarding, but most especially so in Spring.
I took the photo on 30 October 2023, circa 100 kilometres southeast of Perth.
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With or without a camera to hand, it can be a great pleasure to look down on a “historic” city from a high vantage point, shortly before sunset.
I took the featured photo at 5.54 pm on 11 November 2025.
We were standing on the most elevated “viewing platform” in Córdoba – the upper section of its Cathedral-Mosque’s bell tower.
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Only very rarely do I photograph food on a plate.
However, at lunchtime on 11 November 2025 in the Spanish, Andalucian city of Córdoba, the pictured salad landed on our table.
It looked uncommonly lovely.
(In our restaurant-dining experiences in Spain, a main course very often proves memorably delicious, but salads and vegetables are all-too-often underwhelming, and/or barely-present)
I picked up the camera, looked straight down, and decided, “if this salad only looks delicious, I’ll delete the photo, pronto”.
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