Snow and Ice #5

It's interesting how even in the coldest and most inhospitable places, life manages to cling on... and trees against the snow always make a good picture.

Snow and Ice #4

In the early morning, with the steam from the geysers drifting across the barren, icy wilderness, Iceland has a magical beauty that is straight out of the tales of the Norse Gods. Note, the early morning jogger. Some people are hardy. Some are just foolhardy.

Snow and Ice #3

Perhaps this waterfall isn't frozen, but nevertheless I don't think I'd want to go swimming in it.

Snow and Ice #2

Although Iceland is such an incredible place, it has some of the bleakest and starkest landscapes that I have seen in any of my travels.

Snow and Ice #1

The next few images are all from a trip that I took to Iceland about three years ago. It is truly an incredible place to visit.

grandfather and grandson

guitarist

I really wish that I could report that this blind guitarist playing for small change in Madagascar was a wonderful musician. Sadly he wasn't. The noise he produced was indescribably bad. So I paid him for a photograph instead.

tea picker

A group of tea pickers working on Madagascar.

An aside

Just in case anyone is wondering about my use of Madagascan rather than Malagasy, there is an interesting discussion here.

shopkeeper

Here is a typical shopkeeper in one of the Madagascan towns.

Children

A couple more Madagascan children.

family

A family group, in Madagascar. The tiny fruit stall behind them is the family business.

Children

Let's stay in Madagascar for a while but move on to people and on to some Black and White photography. We'll start witha group of children.

Golden Orb Spider

I was intending to switch from animals to people with this post but as I was getting the pictures together I found this one of a golden orb spider in Madagascar. It isn't a place to go if you are arachnophobic, these little (well actually not so little) beasties are all over the place.

Ring-tailed lemur

Probably a slightly better known inhabitant of Madagascar, we have the ring-tailed lemur. The eyes in this picture look as if I have been at it with paint-shop but I haven't; this is how it came out of the camera. Notice the baby on the back of the lead lemur.

Radiated Tortoises

Let's skip across the water for a moment and visit Madagascar for this bit of tortoise pornography. Two things to mention : first, "radiated" refers to the pattern on the shells not to any sinister evil genius trying to create very slow mutant monsters: second, for anyone interested, the noise that goes with this photograph is a bit like this "hur-hur-hur-hur-clunk hur-hur-hur-hur-clunk".

Lizard

And one more from my theme of small animals photographed in Zambia and Malawi, here is a lizard. It has a blue head. I guess it's a blue-headed lizard. Don't you just love my in-depth knowledge of biology?

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I am very happy to see that I have, for the first time on any of my blogs, picked up a follower who is not either personally known to me or familiar to me through message boards. Welcome. I hope you enjoy the photographs.

Bob

Kingfisher

Across the border in Malawi now, we took a night boat trip down the river and I photographed this which, in spite of my bird-blindness, I am reasonably sure is a kingfisher.

Frog

Still in Zambia, still with the little critters, here's a frog.

Bird

OK. Confessions time. I am not a bird-watcher. I can just about tell a vulture from a canary, provided that the vulture hasn't been painted yellow. The only way I can tell a turkey from a duck is by taste.
So whatever this is - blackbird, crow, ostrich* - all I can tell you about it is that as I sat having breakfast on the terrace of a hotel in Zambia, it came down and stole my butter, and then sat in a nearby tree taunting me.

*OK. I know it isn't an ostrich.

Dung Beetle

For my first picture, purely to test that I have the blog set up properly, one of my personal favourites, a dung beetle.
This picture was taken in Zambia, without the aid of a macro lens ,by using my telephoto lens at high magnification from as close as I could get and still focus, which, as I recall, was about four feet away.