+
Most Shared

18 nature photos that didn't turn out as planned. Can you spot the mistakes?

Check out the photos that Instagrammer Samantha Pickertts doesn't usually share.

True
Earth Day

Like most famous Instagrammers, Samantha Pickertts takes A LOT of photos.

She posts some of the incredibly beautiful nature photos she takes on her Instagram feed. But what you don't see? The thousands of photos she doesn't post, photos that sit in her computer's hard drive for years.

Sometimes the photos are left behind because animals or people got in the way of the shot. Sometimes Pickertts' fingers end up in the photo frame. But sometimes the mistakes are even tinier; they're mistakes that only a photographer would notice — a misplaced seagull, the corner of a tripod, weird lighting, or a wonky chunk of dirt.


"I can easily take hundreds of pictures on any given session," Pickertts says. "I consider myself satisfied if I wind up with one special image that captures something unique and worthy of sharing."

In celebration of Earth Day, we asked Pickertts to send over a stack of those photos that DIDN'T make the Instagram cut.

We wanted to show you what the world around us looks like without filters, perfect framing, Photoshop, or expensive equipment.

And we also wanted to help Pickertts share an important Instagram secret: Most nature photos aren't perfect because the world isn't perfect ... but it is beautiful.

Can you spot the tiny mistakes in these photos?

1. Bryce Natural Bridge, Utah


All photos by Samantha Pickertts, used with permission.

The tiny mistake: a dark finger swipe at the top left corner of the frame.

2. A glorious sunrise

The tiny mistake: Pickertts says this photo is underexposed, but you can barely tell because the natural colors in this Bryce Canyon National Park sunrise are so incredible.

3. Bullhead City, Arizona

The tiny mistake: "The background here is not exceptional," says Pickertts, noting that the animal started walking unexpectedly. "But it ended up being a fun photo because I caught the burro's shadow."

4. Crater Lake, Oregon

The tiny mistake: "The cloudy day yielded no reflection of Wizard Island on Crater Lake, which is what I was after," Pickertts says. What she did end up with? A snap of the incredible clouds.

5. A human footpath

The tiny mistake: "I couldn't get clean shot of lake without a bit of land on foreground," Pickertts says, remembering her annoyance with the shot.

Turns out, she gave the photo extra depth by capturing the land; you can actually tell where she's standing.

6. A delicate arch

The tiny mistake: Pickertts accidentally included a tripod in the shot. Oops!

7. Goosenecks State Park, Utah

The tiny mistake: I spy with my little eye ... a tiny human in this epic nature shot at Goosenecks State Park in Utah.

8. Lee Vining, California

The tiny mistake: Pickertts raced to catch the sunrise ... and missed it. Hey, it happens to the best of us, even famous nature Instagrammers!

9. A rogue seagull

The tiny mistake: Breaking one of the rules of nature photography, this seagull flew below the horizon instead of above it ... and right toward Pickertts.

10. Mono Lake, California

The tiny mistake: A man spending a quiet moment by himself interrupted this photo of Mono Lake in California. Or maybe she interrupted him.

11. Multnomah Falls, Oregon

The tiny mistake: "This bridge was under construction, which was totally unfortunate for me when I got there," Pickertts says. "I edited the scaffolding and workers out when I posted this image on social media."

12. Na Pali Coast, Hawaii

The tiny mistake: Check out the bottom lefthand corner. Yep, that's a fingernail.

13. Natural Bridges State Beach, California

The tiny mistake: "People got in the way of this shot, but I love it anyway: especially the bird formation above the natural bridge," Pickertts says.

14. Point Bonita, California

The tiny mistake: Even nature photographers can't control the weather! This shot got totally fogged-out.

15. Rowena Crest, Oregon

The tiny mistake: Can you catch the wind in these flowers? Pickertts says it was incredibly windy on this day hike, so it was tough to photograph most of her subjects.

16. Valley of Fire, Nevada

The tiny mistake: Pickertts says she didn't notice that she caught the back of the sign on the left side of the photo. Ideally, the front of the sign would have framed the left side of this gorgeous sunset.

17. Vance Creek Bridge, Washington

The tiny mistake: This photo was rendered unusable by Pickertts because of the challenging lighting situation, which cast the trees in the background into a muted tone.

18. Victoria Beach, California

The tiny mistake: Do you spot what Pickertts' photographer's eyes spotted? Yep, that's another photographer in the bottom left corner of the frame.

These photos aren't edited, and they're full of tiny mistakes. But they're also beautiful.

"The world is such a special and lovely place to begin with," Pickertts says. "I just feel very fortunate to be a part of it and do my best to capture a little bit of magic in my daily meanderings."

Her photos remind us of something really important: that taking in the reality of the moment and of the world around us (not through a screen or an Instagram filter!) is a great way to appreciate what we've each been given: a gorgeous planet to call home every day.

Sponsored

ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

True

If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

Keep ReadingShow less

Karlie Smith shows the meal she's bringing to the restaurant for her son.

A mom who admitted she packs her 2-year-old a meal when they go out to dinner has started an interesting debate on TikTok about restaurant etiquette and how it applies to young children.

The video posted by Ohio mom, Karlie Smith (unbreakablemomma on TikTok), has received nearly 600,000 views and has over 1,850 comments.

“Call me cheap, call me whatever, but if we’re going out to a restaurant, I’m packing my kid a meal," Smith, 21, said in her post. "I do this for many reasons. On Friday nights, my family and I get together, and tonight, we’re getting food out. My son is not getting food out.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
Keep ReadingShow less
@Steve_Perrault/Twitter

Some moments never get old.

On November 19, 1999, a man named John Carpenter made game show history and quite possibly gave us all the greatest game show moment of all time.

Carpenter was a contestant on the very first season of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” shot in America. Hosted by the late Regis Philbin, the quiz show featured three "lifeline" options to help them with difficult questions, the most popular being able to “Phone-a-Friend.”

Carpenter had impressively not used a single lifeline for any of his questions. That is, until question 15. The million-dollar question, to be exact.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

On a beautiful May day, friends and family gathered in the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Community, where Fideli is a resident, to witness the ceremony.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

12-year-old Texas girl saves her family from carbon monoxide poisoning

She knew something was wrong with her mom and brother, which wound up saving her whole family.

Fort Worth 12-year-old helps save family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide is called a silent killer for a reason. Many people don't realize they're experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning before it's too late. The gas is colorless and odorless and tends to have a sedating effect that causes people to sleep through the fatal poisoning. Having carbon monoxide detectors is one of the most effective ways to identify the gas before it's too late to get out of the house, but not every home has one.

A little girl in Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a terrifying encounter with the deadly gas, but her quick actions saved her entire family. Jaziyah Parker is being held up as a hero after she realized something was wrong with her family members and called for help.

The girl called 911 after she noticed her mom pass out. On the call with the dispatcher, Jaziyah says she thinks her mother has died before explaining that there was something now wrong with her baby brother, who was just 5-months-old.

Keep ReadingShow less

Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Barrymore has consistently starred in hit films and movies that are rewatchable cable-TV staples, such as “Charlie's Angels” (2000), “Never Been Kissed” (1999), “Scream” (1996), “The Wedding Singer” (1998), “50 First Dates” (2004) and “Fever Pitch” (2005).

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS. So far, the show has been a big success, attracting an average of 1.21 million views per show, and ranks as the #4 talk show in syndication. It was recently renewed through the 2024 season.

Keep ReadingShow less