Christmas is almost here!
It was a challenging year, tiring from every point of view but full of intense emotions.

With the holidays quickly approaching,  I want to wish everyone who is reading my blog a safe and enjoyable time with family and friends!
Hoping, as usual, that the upcoming year will be much much better!

See ya in 2014!

This beautiful long-eared owls (Asio otus) were spying on me while I was sitting on the balcony.

From dusk til dawn they stay there, perfectly camouflaged among high branches of the garden tree. They sit all day almost motionless and impassively and then, in the evening, begin their work and take flight in search of some food. 

It's a large family of seven-eight owls who are spending the winter on this tree, away and safe from humans.

The subjects were relatively far away, nearly obscured by tree branches but while I pointed the camera and tried to focus I was delighted to see this beautiful animals staring back at me through the viewfinder.

They watch me, too.

I've never seen them up close, through the view of a telephoto lens.

Thank you, Owls!

The Galilean thermometer on my attic desk

We are always surrounded by objects. In almost all cases are things that we have seen hundreds of times, and details that we know very well that belong to our ordinary world.

But how would apporoach these objects a person who did not know what they are and begin to study them, looking at them from every possible angle to understand their form and function? For sure he would find them strange, curious, maybe mysterious...

I try to simulate something like that with my camera, looking for unusual angles or particular locations: you can find interesting shots right inside your house!

"And all the lives we ever lived, 

and all the lives to be, 

are full of trees and changing 

leaves". 

                              Virginia Woolf