What's with the tomatoes?...

I have gotten more than a few emails asking me "what's up with tomato posts?".

Well, I'll tell you... anyone from the north (especially the northeast) knows that between the sub zero temps, the ice storms, and the snow, winter seems like the season that will never end.

The first sign that there's light at the end of the tunnel is when the seed catalogs start showing up in the mail. So the thing that keeps the cabin fever at bay is planning your garden, ordering seeds, and starting the seedlings.

Last year I decided to greatly expand my tomato garden, so I ordered my seeds in January, started them in February, and once they started popping through the soil would move them from one window to another following the sun throughout the day.

Come the end of March I would move them out to our three season sun porch in the morning and back inside late in the afternoon.

I would feed them every 10 days, move them into bigger pots as they grew, and basically spend some part of every day dedicated to my tomato plants until they were finally planted in the garden at the end of May.

Things went wonderfully, by the beginning of July we had hundreds of little green globes hanging all over my plants.

Then it hit, by the middle of July my garden was hit with early blight and by the time I realized what was going on it was too late. Within a week everything was dead.

So the success of this years garden (and harvest) has erased the last years bad memories.

I promise, after today won't bother you with any more pictures or posts about my tomatoes, except to say I just picked 60 more a couple days ago.

Contest images from our readers...

Below is just a fraction of the (almost) 600 the outstanding images that have been submitted by our readers as part of the September contest.

If you are interested in entering the contest (prize - the David Honl 2 DVD set "Light") you can get contest details here. If you would like to add some of your own images to our Flickr group as part of the contest (or simply just to share) details for joining the group can be found here.

Clicking on any image below will open it larger and in a new window.

Spider

Photography by Thomas Philip

Did u know?

Spiders are invertebrates,which means that they don't have backbones.spiders help plants reproduce my pollinating them.Spiders are a  vital source of food for birds,small mammals and fish.without spiders and other insects there wont be food for the ones dependent on them,as a result it will effect the food chain badly .Spiders are not counted in insects as insects body is divided into three and has six legs.Whereas spiders have eight legs and their body is divided into two(the abdomen and the thorax).the silk spinning glads that spiders have are called as spinsters,which is located at the tip of their abdomen.not all spiders spin web.its found that there are more than 30,000 species of spiders.Spiders are oviparous,which means they give eggs.another interesting fact is most spiders have either six or eight eyes.most spiders inject venom with the help of fangs.Spider bites can be very painfull and also may prove to be fatal

30 free high res textures from V Gallery...

In an effort to raise awareness for an organization in Nepal called Hope's Promise V Gallery is giving away 30 free (high res) textures.

Hope's Promise helps orphaned and vulnerable children in Nepal.

The textures are free (and actually shot in Nepal) and you can download them here.

I have these textures and suggest you get them too.

Ant

Photography by Thomas Philip

Like most insects, Ants have six legs.Wherein Each leg has three joints. Their legs are very strong, they can run very quickly.if a man could run as fast as ant does as per his size then he could run as fast a racehorse.Another interesting thing is ants can lift 20 times their own body weight.The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days. Their   antenae is not only used for touch but also for sense of smell.Their jaws open and shut sideways similar to a pair of scissors.Its found that  Adult ants  are not able to chew and swallow solid food, instead they swallow the juice from the piece of food and throw away the leftover dry part.They have two eyes,wherein each eye is made of many smaller eyes.which are called as compound eyes .the outer body of the ants are covered with a hard armour which is called as exoskeleton.till date there are over 10000 known species of ants and i dont know what type of ant is shown in the pic above ,lol.And each of the ant colonies has one or more Queens 

Bee

Photography by Thomas philip

Honey bees'wings beat so fast that it goes upto 11,400 times/minute and its flight speed averages to only 15miles/hour.Bees have five eyes.They can easily perceive movements that are separated by 1/300th of a sec. Whereas humans can only sense movements that are separated by 1/50 of a sec.If a Bee were to enter a cinema hall then it would easily sense each individual movie frame being projected.another fact about bees is that they cannot recognise red color.Stringer bees have barbs which anchors the stringer in the victims body.

bees communicate with one another by dancing mostly to give directions of the flowers.a bee hive can contain upto 40000-45000 bees.The queen bee is the only sexually developed female in the beehive.and she only mates once in her lifetime and can lay about 3000 eggs a day.The life expectency of a Queen bee is upto 2years

Pleasant surprises...

This week has held a couple of very pleasant (and unexpected) surprises.

First, PhotoComment is photography website and online magazine based in South Africa that's dedicated to sharing the passion of photography with their readers through reviews, tutorials, and photography contests.

Each Saturday they feature a website that has "held them captive"... well, guess who they named "Website of the Week" this past Saturday?

:)

Yup, it was Weekly Photo Tips, "a blog that comes highly recommended by some of the most prominent photographers like Scott Kelby".


Then while checking our stats the other day my jaw dropped to see the our subscribers has soared well past 2,000!

I share this with you not to brag, but to tell you how honored I am for the recognition and grateful that you spend some of your valuable time here with me at Weekly Photo Tips.

Thank you.