My online journal where I share my interests in photography, nature, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, coffee life, spirituality and asking deep questions.
This bush seemed to be moving when I walked by it. Upon a closer look I discovered it was covered in milkweed bugs. There may have been a hundred scattered throughout the bush and just his bush. I looked closer and what do my eyes see? They are all mating. It’s an orgy! Disgusting! So, I watched for a while. Had to chuckle as I imagined one of them sending out a text message earlier. “Hey we’re all meeting at the sixth bush from the lookout on the Cathy Fromme trailhead at 6:00 pm. Be there or be square.” Looks like they all showed up.
Trying to shoot any insect that’s capable of flying is a challenge. They are always moving. They are not moving as fast our universe, so eloquently explained by Paul in his posting on the Milky way. However, they are elusive and ddarters, tough on auto focus systems. I noticed several bees hovering over these flowers and knelt down to watch and tRyan to get some shots. Even though the bee is blurry, I was pleased with this image. He’s airborne and most of those images are blurry. This one’s in focus enough for posting but not printing. Another reason I like this image is the large glob (technical term) of pollen on his leg that can be clearly seen during flight.
I’m not sure how it happened. I was working through some images from 2009 taken at Inniswood Gardens when I discovered these two images. It seems I did very little with them at the time and most likely because I had shot a lot of images that day. It was a cloudy, overcast day with light rain and I’m in this beautiful garden, why not. For some reason I found the only keyword I had entered for either of these images was Inniswood Gardens. There was no keyword for dragonfly or plants or leaves or rain. Nothing. How the heck am I suppose to find them without keywords, unless I’m just browsing? I suspect slothfulness or skipped them because other images were more appealing to me. I could have skipped the dragonfly because it is a bit out of focus.
I think this a Clubtail Dragonfly. Forgot to ask when I took the photo.
However, this time around they caught my eye. They also reminded me of those rainy, overcast days that provided such wonderfully diffused light while I lived in Ohio. It also reminded me of how often I came home with wet pants (from the knee down) when it was raining or just rained. I played with them a little, and for my taste, I like the way these two images turned out. My post processing included exposure, tone and contrast. Pretty simple actually. Why I did not play with these five years ago, I don’t know. But, five years ago something within urged me to press that shutter button. I must pay more attention to the urge.
Delicate Flowers
Oh, and these flowers? Well, I’m going to throw them in because I have the urge too.
Have no clue what butterfly this is, so if anyone knows let me know. Nor do I know the gender. Almost have to be a butterfly to know that difference. I do know the flower is a coneflower. Sometimes things just fall into place and other times they dont. This was one those time it did. As I knelt down to photograph some coneflowers that are close to the end of their season of life, this butterfly wanted in the photo. This one flitted back and forth between two flowers directly in front of me. Butterflies and birds are attracted to the sweet nectar of coneflowers. I could almost hear this one calling out, “Pick me. Pick me.” So I did.
My sister has a small fountain in her backyard. I love the soothing sound that it makes. I was amazed to watch the bees and wasps as they gathered around the fountain to take in water. Since bees are not know to be good swimmers they prefer to find water in small puddles. The bees find all the small pebbles around the fountain, perch on the pebbles and begin lapping up the water. Nature gave me another lesson.
At this time of the year a few photographers begin posting their best images from the past year, something I’ve never done. Well, I thought I would look back over the year and pick what I considered are my best. I started adding images to a quick collection and by the time I went through the year I had 67 images in my collection. I’m not that good so I turned off the computer. This was not going to be easy.
The next day I made a pass through these 67 images and dropped it down to 48. Waited for the next day and repeated the process until I had whittled it down to these 12. I finally just picked one image from each month. It was more difficult than I thought and not because I have that many good images. It occurred to me I was selecting images I liked and not necessarily the best or of the highest quality. I therefore changed my criteria to select the ones I liked, my favorites, rather than my best. Some are HDR images as I played the software and the one image of the flowers and bee was taken with the G12, everything else was with the D300. Even after posting these images I will want to add others and delete these. Never satisfied.
Oh, and Happy New Year. I do hope the coming year of 2013 is good to you and your family. Happy shooting.
