Everywhere, eyes are watching! Wildlife and animal photography often provide a wonderful view into animals’ eyes and gives us a small insight into their world and their behaviour.
Eye detail, colour, shape and pattern are interesting in themselves. Focused eyes of predator, wary eyes of prey, even just a curious glance – all can make a strong impression.
Mike Powell (Virginia, USA) kindly assisted me in finding five photos from his collection that relate to ‘eyes’.
Let me know if you enjoy this post as I’m considering doing a ‘Five Eyes’ series, featuring a different photographer each time 🙂
Mike Powell blogs at: Mike Powell | My journey through photography
As well as enjoying Mike’s photos, I enjoy the information and discussion that he writes for each post. Under each photo below is a link to his original post where you can read the story that goes with the image.
Click on any image below to view large-size version.
Blue-eyed, Blue-faced Beauty | Oct 18, 2014
Above: Blue-faced Meadowhawk dragonfly (Sympetrum ambiguum)
Eye of the turtle | May 15, 2015
Above: Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina)
Fox on a frozen pond | Jan 31, 2016
Above: Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) standing on pond ice
First catch of December | Dec 01, 2017
Above: Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)
Curiosity | October 23, 2017
Above: A Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon) and a Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) “seemed to be eyeing each other with intense curiosity…”
Posted by Exploring Colour (2017). Images used with permission.
Exploring Colour 
Eyes are fascinating to gaze into, especially when the animal appears to be gazing back at the observer. I think future posts about eyes would be very appealing, Liz. The compound eyes of the dragonfly show amazing details.
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Thank you Tanja!
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Wonderful. I especially love seeing the interaction between different species.
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I especially like seeing interactions between species when one of them is not eating the other one. It is hard sometimes to understand what is going on and I am probably guilty of periodically imputing human motives to the creatures that I photograph.
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Wow, incredible photos! 🙂 ❤
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Wow! Fabulous pictures!
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Impressive eyes, Mike! I especially like the eastern box turtle and, of course, the dragonfly. I’ve painted dragonflies many times and appreciate their incredible nature. Keep seeing!
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Dragonflies are one of am absolutely favorite subjects to photograph, especially close up. When I started to get a bit more serious about photography a bit over five years ago, I initially focused on macro photography. When winter arrived, I realized that I had to photograph something different and started photographing birds.
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Please do make this a series! Mike Powell’s photos are fantabulous! The closeup of the Blue-faced Meadowhawk Dragonfly is otherworldly. Love all of them, especially the Red Fox. I know that Benjamin will love these photos too! Thank-you so very much.
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Cheers Ellen! Looks like I’d better be thinking about doing another post for this series 🙂
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I love doing macro shots and the Blue-faced Meadowhawks are much pretty tolerant of my presence, allowing me to get really close sometimes. As for the Red Fox, I had been outdoors for several hours in sub-freezing temperatures when the fox appeared in front of me. My battery died after I had snapped off a few shots, but fortunately I managed to capture this image.
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I have always admired Mike’s work. Wonderful series of photos with fabulous colours and details!
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Thank you very much Pete!
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Excellent ! Nice photographs and a good theme
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Thanks Ted – I was so happy to get your feedback, very encouraging! Best wishes!
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Mike, this is a wonderful selection of “eye” shots! I especially like the Kingfisher and Woodpecker eyeing each other and your catch or the Heron and his lunch eye!
Liz, great series idea. I look forward to seeing more!
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Thanks Ellen! It was these very shots that acted as a catalyst to get me moving on my idea of doing a post on ‘eyes’ as I’ve been mulling it over for a while. Once I started working on it, ‘post’ quickly developed into an idea of ‘series’. My enthusiasm always gets the better of me and off I go!
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Liz and I worked together to pick a few shots for the new theme. It is a theme that I really like too and there are a lot of possibilities for the future. For example, I can think of some shots of jumping spiders that have a whole row of eyes–five eyes in a single subject.
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Oh, boy, jumping spiders!
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Check out this posting to get an idea of the kind of spider about which I was thinking (https://michaelqpowell.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/jumping-spider-in-early-april/).
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Those were great shots. I have to admit that they are cool looking spiders and that is an amazing green! I liked your text in that post about changing your focus when changing lenses.
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Amazing photos! Interesting idea to focus on eyes, fascinating!
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I kept on seeing interesting eye shots and thought it could make an interesting post and when I saw Mike’s heron and fish photo, I thought that I really must act on the idea. As I started working on it, I dreamed up the ‘Five Eyes’ series! Glad you enjoyed them Helen 🙂
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Reblogged this on Mike Powell and commented:
Liz from New Zealand loves to explore a lot more than just color in her blog Exploring Colour. She has a wonderful ongoing series on different aspects of beauty by guest writers and has started a new series on eyes. I am honored to be the first featured photographer. Be sure to check out her blog for beauty and inspiration in many forms.
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Thanks Mike!
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I initially thought that the photos would show up when I reblogged your post–which I really like–but only the text showed up in the reader, so I added one photo to draw folks in and hopefully some of them clicked to get access to your site.
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Just copy the whole thing if you want Mike. I know the reblog and share functions are like that and its quite irritating really! Thank you for your wonderful endorsement!
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