Jen Consalvo

i tend to post a lot of travel, tech event or nature pics. i guess i’m pretty true to my passions. in honor of earth day/week, here are a few of my fave nature pics from over the years. i’m just obsessed with the beauty and crazy complexity of the natural world around us.  i’ve interspersed quotes from the quotegarden.com as well because nature has consistently been an amazing inspiration for great writing throughout the ages.

tip: many of these shots were taken with my little old canon powershot. for close-ups, make sure you use the macro setting (usually denoted with an image of a flower) – it’s the only way to get super close and stay in focus. what else? lighting and patience.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. ~Henry David Thoreau

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.  ~Albert Einstein

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.  ~John Muir

Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard.  ~Standing Bear

After a visit to the beach, it’s hard to believe that we live in a material world.  ~Pam Shaw

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!  ~John Muir

Adopt the pace of nature:  her secret is patience.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.  ~Lao Tzu

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.  ~John Ruskin

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it…. People think pleasing God is all God care about.  But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.  ~Alice Walker,The Color Purple, 1982

You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.  ~Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964

It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water – and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.  ~Bernand De Voto, Fortune, June 1947

• are you on my mailing list? if not, please sign up today so i can send other tips and let you know when my book is ready (i don’t send mail very often so don’t worry about spam!)
• check out this gorgeous photo of planet earth by NASA and see what we’re thankfulfor about earth, our home.