Eugene Navakas
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enavakas.bsky.social
Eugene Navakas
@enavakas.bsky.social
380 followers 310 following 170 posts
Lit. Ph.D. turned TV writer. Learning photographer. Art junkie.
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enavakas.bsky.social
Chicago Botanic Garden, pre-snowfall
A Japanese-style island within the Chicago Botanic Garden, reflected into the near-still water of a pond. The main subject of the photo, though, is the fall color--red, orange, green, and gold, each accompanied by the differing texture of its plant.
November 11, 2025 at 5:39 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
dapper

#Photography #Birds #Ohio
A woodpecker perches in profile, aslant, on the side of a hefty moss-scaled branch. Golden light washes everything, filtered through the surrounding canopy of yellow and orange autumn leaves. Fall is here, and today's palette is the proof. (No filter.)
November 2, 2025 at 10:43 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
Which reminds me: I've personally heard multiple Germans bring up how shocked they were, after an initial childhood misunderstanding, to learn that this logo does not represent a company whose symbolic core is headwear. The word "hat" is in the name! Under a depiction of a red hat!
Pizza Hut logo, with the words "Pizza Hut," meaning "Pizza Hat" in German, printed in black under a red roof that looks exactly like a hat.
November 1, 2025 at 2:13 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
night statues

#Photography #Ohio #Wildlife
Two female deer--mother/daughter? younger/elder sibling?--stand in thin brown grass in the gathering dusk. They both look right at me, ears spread flat and wide and swiveled forward like satellite dishes. It's hard not to feel just a little magic in these unexpected, quiet encounters.
October 30, 2025 at 1:42 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
witch king

#Photography #Ohio #Woods
I turned the corner to find this buck completely still, seated on green undergrowth, staring directly back at me. Its crown is small and sharp and new, a curving fork of antlers per side. Dusk is falling, the spell cast.
October 27, 2025 at 3:47 AM
enavakas.bsky.social
Just found this promo pamphlet from a 70mm 2015 Roadshow screening of Tarantino's THE HATEFUL EIGHT tucked away on the bookshelf. Advertising swag, sure, but still, his love for the medium and attention to detail couldn't be more obvious. Long live the movies.
The cover of a vivid color promotional pamphlet reads: "The 8th film by Quentin Tarantino. The Hateful Eight. Special Roadshow engagement presented in Cinerama 70mm UltraPanavision70."
October 12, 2025 at 6:26 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
raptor rehab, Yellow Springs, OH

#Photography #Birds #GlenHelenPreserve
Barn Owl, close, eyes on camera. Its face is heart-shaped--two deep-set dark eyes on white over an inverted-triangle nose. It wears its wings like a brown, black, and white sorcerer's cape. In the background, the thin, chiaroscuro slats of a window, stage props of a noir populated only by birds.
October 12, 2025 at 3:22 AM
enavakas.bsky.social
painted lady

#Photography #Butterfly #Ohio
A Painted Lady perches on a white/pink/yellow bloom alongside a green tuft of spade-shaped leaves. The underside of its facing wing is crammed with detail--segmented and saturated, like a cel of animation or a tattoo. Brown and white, orange and black, lacy webs, disk-like eyes--nature's design in full aesthetic flower.
October 5, 2025 at 5:11 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
grasshoppers in the soy

#Photography #Insects #Ohio
A grasshopper, close, hugs a hairy, testicular (sorry, not sorry) soybean amid yellowing leaves. The detail on its green face is sharp and easy to anthropomorphize--two large, dark eyes and a wide, toothy mouth. Two fine, sensitive antennae curve up from the top of its head. A grasshopper, very close, in profile, climbing a string-like brown stem from left to right. The sun is in its face, casting light and shadow over the lace-like detail of its wings and legs. The background is amorphous and blurry, mostly drawing focus back to the bug itself.
September 29, 2025 at 6:37 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
Not the world's most well-composed photo, maybe, but I still found the shape of this Metric Paper Wasp to be unusually striking.

#Photography #Insects #Ohio
A blood-black Metric Paper Wasp clings to the underside of a curving yellow cluster of tiny flowers. It's crisp and shiny and even a little martial in aspect, evoking (for me at least) the techno-bellicose flying suit of Iron Man.
September 21, 2025 at 7:07 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
goose, loose, etc.

#Photography #Birds #Ohio
A Canada Goose periscopes its curving, black neck up and out of a field of tall, weedy grass. Its head is turned, in profile, but its eye is fixed, on you.
September 8, 2025 at 12:34 AM
enavakas.bsky.social
I always get a kick out of seeing this book on my shelf, given the direction my career (such as it is) has taken. I'm sure it's become part-dated, part-extra-timely--it's been decades since my last reading, not to mention the actual publication date--but I still bet I'd adore it, irony and all.
Snap of the white paperback cover of Jerry Mander's classic Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.
September 4, 2025 at 10:44 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
Couple from late-Sept. 2021:
August 31, 2025 at 1:57 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
🎵I see you under the midnight / All shackles and bows 🎵
A monarch butterfly in profile, perched on a narrow clutch of yellow, pom-pom-like flowers. The background is blurred, but rich with mixed shades of green. "Summer," as The Cars say, "It turns me upside down."
August 29, 2025 at 4:21 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
There once was a frog in a spot
who brayed and bemoaned his cruel lot,
but his neighbor--no king--
knew the rare, wiser thing
was to fly on those wings that you've got.

#Photography #Wildlife #Ohio
A gorgeous green frog (American Bullfrog? Northern Green Frog?) floats on the surface of a still, reflective pond. A Black Swallowtail butterfly perches on the bloom of a bright orange flower. Its wings are heavily damaged, missing large chunks, and yet it still flies and feeds, making the best of what must be a steep challenge.
August 23, 2025 at 9:26 PM
enavakas.bsky.social
proof of life

#Photography #Flowers #Light
A lavender water lily blooms lush and wide against a featureless background. The sense of contrast is sharp--deep darks, hot lights--so that the lily seems to have been cut-and-pasted onto a black matte. Taken at a pond at the Chicago Botanical Garden.
August 22, 2025 at 3:15 PM