Photochallenge Week 14: Death in Nature

At the end of last year I discovered Photochallenge.org.  This is a small group of photographers who set forth a weekly challenge to other professional and amateur photographers.  What I was drawn to with this weekly assignment is that is pushes you to try new techniques and get out and take pictures on a weekly basis.  I'm taking part again this year and will also do a quick blog post about each of them.  The rules of the challenge do require that these are new pictures, not from your back catalog.  With my busy work schedule, I may not be able to get out each week and do this, so I will likely add a few of my older photos on the blog--taking the opportunity to look at the plethora of pictures I've taken and actually do some processing and weeding.

2016 Photochallenge Week 14: Death In Nature

This week's challenge is an interesting one: to document the normal death/life cycle in nature.  I've recently been taking more nature shots so I was excited about this one.  However, being in the right place at the right time has a lot to do with this subject.  With spring only now starting (it snowed this morning here in Minnesota) there isn't a ton of animal/insect action out there yet.  I did look through my back catalog for some shots that fit the bill as well.  

1) Remnants:  I had despaired that I would not find anything appropriate for this challenge during the week.  On the way out of the clinic for lunch I discovered the remains of a bird that had probably been buried in a snowbank until the spring thaw.  Not having my trusty Canon with me, I had to use my iPhone for this shot.  I went with black and white on this to accentuate the stark white bone against the charcoal colored rocks and to bring out the detail in the feathers.  This may not be the most appetizing of photos, but I think it brings across the theme.

2) Entangled:  This one was from last fall. An enormous spider had set up a web on my deck and I went out several days to take some macro shots of it.  On this particular day it had snared a big yellow-jacket wasp.  I kept the spider around despite its freakish size since it was keeping down the wasp population!