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  This giraffe leaned nicely on a similar angle to the acacia tree in the background making for a well-balanced photo.  Thanks for posing, Giraffe! This was in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

This photo was from last Sunday.  The lakefront walkway was a busy place all day and the setting sun made for some nice silhouette shots.

This is the glacier at the top of Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro.  Uhuru Peak is at 5,895 m (or 19,341 feet) above sea level.  Before it was climbed by European visitors, the ice at the peak was assumed to be quartz.  After all, how can you have ice at 3 degrees off the equator?  The goal of the hike is to reach the peak to watch the sunrise over the Serengeti.  To do that you leave 15,000 feet at midnight and hike up switchback trails in complete darkness (except for a flashlight fastened to the guide’s ankle).

This lovely lioness looks like she just came through a fight.  She’s resting now on the Serengeti Plain in Africa.

This beautiful sunset occurred earlier this week.  The upper clouds made a canvas for the colours and the lower clouds added the drama.  It definitely needs to be included in the sunrises and sunsets gallery at fourlens.ca 

These two leopards on the Serengeti Plain are oblivious to photographers.  What are they looking at?

 This is the first post of many in the coming days from a trip to Africa that included a hike up Mount Kilimanjaro and a photo safari to five game parks in Tanzania and Kenya.  This striped fellow was seen in the Serengeti National Park.  The colours and textures in the photo were done using the DistressedFX app.

Not sure if you would call this pink or pinky purple but I noticed it in a garden as I was walking past and I took a few shots.

Indoor skydiving is safe, exciting and plenty of fun - and you don’t need an airplane!

This junior golfer has a terrific golf swing at the young age of seven.  And he has a passion for the game.  How good will his game gets as he gets older???

While visiting friends in British Columbia, we noticed this tree with the peeling bark. It is a Pacific Madrone, also known as a Madrona.  The peeling is intentional with the tree shedding bark like a snake shedding its skin.

This is the balloon that carried us to an amazing ‘sunrise in Sedona’ with Red Rock Ballooning Adventures. Highly recommended for the experience and photos!

One of the many wonderful features of an overwater bungalow is the ability to take a ladder to the sea for a morning swim.  This photo was taken at Le Meridien in Bora Bora.

This good-sized owl got comfortable inside a broken off saguaro cactus arm.  It stayed there for many days to be photographed by many people. 

As a follow up to yesterday’s horse photo, here’s a cowboy who looks like someone stole his horse.  It’s actually one of the actors who plays in the daily OK Corral shootout in Tombstone, Arizona.  The picture was taken inside Big Nose Kate’s Saloon.

These beautiful wild horses roam between Utah and Arizona in Monument Valley.

A beautiful (though very early) sunrise this morning over Lake Ontario!  Oh, the joys of insomnia.

This young lady was offering food to a cautious but hungry Canada goose at Spencer Smith Park in Burlington.

Catching sunset photos is always fun, but you can’t just focus on the sun going down.  Sometimes there are colours happening in the sky away from the sun going down.  This photo is an example. Turn around and face east!

The Photo Lab app can do absolutely magical things with photos.  The app needs to upload your photo and download the result.  To keep the data transfer lower, the app developers intentionally upload a poorer quality of your image and the final product is also not high.  I do enjoy the magic, though, and the output is sufficient for social media purposes.

The cathedral in Cologne, Germany is beautiful both outside and in.  Some editing of this photo was needed using the perspective tool in the Snapseed app to straighten the columns.  The leading lines and repeating patterns make for a nice photo.

Storms are in the forecast this week but so far no new lightning shots.  Maybe a new one like this will be possible. 

This view of the saguaro cacti in the foreground and Catalina Mountain range in the background was taken from the base of Dove Mountain in Marana, Arizona.

The best sunrises and sunsets include interesting cloud formations.  Most end up with colours of orange and red.  This sunrise was a spectacular golden colour.

This flower was in the beautiful gardens on Gartan Mountain near Glenveagh Castle in Donegal, Ireland.

These photogenic windows sit on top of a hill next to the town in Mykonos, Greece.

Whilst out for a walk near our home we happened upon these lovely wild flowers. It was later in the afternoon and the lighting from the sun was hitting them just right.

When travelling resumes after the pandemic, this Ferris wheel in Niagara Falls will once again spin tourists to a great vantage spot to see the falls.

An early orange lake and sky just ahead of this morning’s sunrise.

The castle of the Alhambra was a military fortress with a view over the whole city of Granada, Spain in the 9th century. In spite of this, it was not until the arrival of the first king of the Nasrid dynasty, Mohammed Ben Al-Hamar, in the 13th century,  that the royal residence was established in the Alhambra. This event marked the beginning of the Alhambra's most glorious period.