This week, Patti Moed invites us to “showcase Nature–including plants, animals, landscapes–and other features of the physical world…” I had lots of examples to choose from since picking up my photography hobby again in 2012. To read Patti’s entire challenge post and judge for yourself how well I met the topic as posed, you can read her entire post here.

The opening photo was featured a short time ago in a Travel Tuesday post captured in the Blue Ridge Mountains in October 2018, one of our most recent travels to a National Park. We were heading out of the park and we came upon a scenic viewing area just as the sun was starting to dip below the mountainous horizon.

This view of the Pacific Ocean and native plantlife was captured at a scenic point near Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. It is one of my favorite images from the islands and one that I haven’t shared in several years.

What’s more natural than a family? I captured this family of wild horses in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park. My long zoom lens was at its maximum as I was a very long distance from them, but they were all keeping a wary eye on what I was up to standing at the top of a hill next to the highway that traverses the park.

This bighorn ram rested high on a cliff edge near the top of high rising terrain. I captured the image from the deck of a paddle-wheel cruiser sailing Canyon Lake near Apache Junction, Arizona. The cruise gave me a great opportunity to capture not only bighorn sheep but also bald eagles on the fly and in the nest.

This juvenile mule deer was hiding behind a rock outcropping. I waited for some time to catch him just coming out from his hiding place. I’d love to say that I discovered him in the wild in southern Arizona, but the truth is, he and his family have the run of a large natural enclosure at the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Zoo just outside Tucson.

One more view of the Pacific Ocean is featured in my final image for this challenge. The image was captured from the cruise ship, Norwegian Pearl as we traveled the Inside Straights of Alaska on our way to Juneau. Please click on any of the images to get a better view. Thanks to Patti Moed for allowing me to share some of my favorite natural landscapes.

John Steiner