May Photo Challenge - Entries (Post them here).

[Photo Challenge]

The topic this month is: "Beauty in Nature"

This thread is only for posting your entry and any comments you'd like to make about your own photo.
If you would like to comment on other entries please use the comments thread.
As usual, one entry per person and the image must be your own work.
Normal forum rules and image size applies.

The image doesn't necessarily have to have been taken this month but we do encourage you to go out and enjoy the challenge.
The winner of the poll, which will be run at the end of the month, will get to choose next month's topic and have their
photo posted in our "Photo Challenge Hall of Fame" thread.

Good luck and good shooting.

[Allan_L (Allan)]

I guess I will kick this off this month.

I took this yesterday after sunset, specially for this month's challenge.
It is from the end of my street, looking East-wards over Tuggerah Lake, towards Toukley.

You can clearly see the Earth's Shadow (cast onto the atmosphere) as the dark blue band rising at the anti-solar point (ie: as the sun sets behind me).
Above that, the so-called "Belt of Venus" (or Anti-Twilight Arch). The arch's light pink color is due to back-scattering of reddened light from the setting Sun.
With the pink reflected in the surface of the lake.
[Warning Science Content, courtesy of Wikipedia]
Light from the sun near the horizon is red because the light passes through an especially thick layer of the atmosphere, which works as a filter, scattering all but the red light.
The red sunlight directly illuminates small particles in the lower atmosphere on the other side of the sky from the sun.

[UniPol]

Nature's perfection.

[Luke.]

I took this photo in Esperance, WA.
It was a cold long walk down the stairs to the beach at 3:30am. It was a very calm and beautiful morning and the sky had a purple glow as first light.

[Derek Klepp]

An oldie but I really like this one unfortunately the Jabirus didn,t return this year.

[Rick Petrie]

Couldn't think of anything more striking or beautiful in nature than the design of flowers. These are some really colorful orchids growing wild in our side garden.

[astronobob (Bob)]

My portion of Nature & Beauty within -
Looks very similar to Rick's tho a Pink Variety

[BilliGoatsGruff (Billi)]

Here's my entry the beauty of simple patterns made by nature.

[zenith (Tim)]

My entry is from a beach on the Mornington Peninsula. I took the photo a few weeks ago an hour after sunset as the tide was retreating, exposing more and more rock between each set of waves.
3.2 sec exposure to give the water a nice soft look (f22, ISO 100, 105mm).
Cheers.

[pluto (Hugh)]

Perhaps this is taking the "in" in "Beauty in Nature" a bit literally but this was beautiful!

This is taken from inside the magma chamber of the Thrihnukagigur volcano in Iceland. If you ever go to Iceland this has to be on your list. I spent 2 weeks driving around in a Jeep and everything was amazing - but this was the highlight