
Out of darkness flash
Blinding light turns black to pink
Spitting forked tongues


The first post in this series was Five Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

We had thunderstorms coming in from all directions this afternoon. The thunderstorm that built up over the Sandias was the most dramatic. While out on a walk before the storms, I encountered a little bit of wildlife.


Buckeye Butterfly
This video of the Great Purple Hairstreak Butterfly shows how it moves the flanges on the ends of its wings while it feeds. I assume it’s to fool predators into going after the flanges on its wings, giving it a chance to escape.
Blue Hairstreak
Silver kitty

Thunderstorm activity to the north.


Foraging flowers
Fluttering wings
Beat
Ragged and torn
Membranes stretched
Over
Skeletal veins
Luminescent patches
Cling
Blues scatter
Iridescence seen






I was talking to an engineer, who is also an avid photographer, about taking lightning photos when I went up to pick up a piece of equipment he had been working on. We were noting that lightning is easy to photograph, but the danger made up for how easy it is to photograph. On may way home at 11:00 pm, there was a nice lightning show over the city, so I pulled off to the side of the road in the rain, set my camera on top of the car to stabilize it (didn’t have a tripod in the car), and took a few lighting photos before I got soaked in the rain. The results are interesting.
After a week of lectures on Medieval Mystics and Masters that kept us out late every night, I ended the week photographing the Urban Olympics put on by a downtown charter school. Various professional offices and other businesses put teams together to compete in silly events, such as mop javalin throwing, toilet plunger toss, a rely race that included a mad dash in high heels — tag the rider for the tricycle slalom — tag the backward skateboard racer — tag the office chair drag racer — and lastly, tag the tricyclist for the final speed run. There was waterboarding, a 100 yard dash, urban bowling with orange barrels and shopping carts, water fights, and other events. Cherry/See/Reames Architects, who shares office space with ARC, and one of our staff members participated in the event.


I seem to get constant kitty help these days. I walked out of the store to discover a small super cell was forming overhead. I drove straight into the storm and got a great lightning show on the way home. For all the lightning and thunder over the past 24 hours, we only received 2/10 of an inch of rain.