Photo of the Week – December 5, 2013

Continuing the theme from earlier this week, here is another photo of a sunflower seed head.  This one was taken on a frosty morning last week.

A sunflower seed head

A Maximilian sunflower seed head.  Deep Well Wildlife Management Area, Nebraska.

I usually try to avoid putting a horizon line behind the subject of a close-up photo because it can add unnecessary distraction to the image.  In this case, however, I tried the photo both ways and decided I liked the one with the horizon better because it gave the image some additional context and depth.

Here’s the alternate version – see what you think.

The same sunflower head shown above from a slightly different angle to keep the horizon line out of the image.

The same sunflower head shown above, but from a slightly different angle to keep the horizon line out of the image.

Photo of the Week – November 28, 2013

Does any animal evoke a stronger sense of prairie than the plains bison?

Bison at The Nature Conservancy's Niobrara Valley Preserve, Nebraska.

Bison at The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve in the sandhills of north-central Nebraska.  Click on the image for a larger, sharper view.

On this Thanksgiving, I am grateful for many things.  Among those is the opportunity to take my kids to see bison on large tracts of native prairie.  I hope they’ll do the same with their own kids someday.

Happy Thanksgiving.