More random stuff from the pond


Just a handful of photos, other stuff that I collected on the same days that I was shooting the great egret and the turtles. More or less, anyway – I actually returned to capture the above shot of newborn six-spotted fishing spiders (Dolomedes triton) because I didn’t have the macro flash rig along when I first spotted them. Unfortunately, the nice composition read more

Not the bluest


On a sunset outing to Jordan lake almost a week ago, we had clear skies – not ideal for sunset – except for some haze down on the horizon – not ideal for birds, which were pretty much the only thing that we saw. The majority of those were more distant, which put them down lower and thus against the haze, so most of the backgrounds for this post are going to be read more

More luck than normal


It had been a while since I’d spent any time at all at the nearby pond, so the other afternoon I wandered over to see what could be found. Right off the bat, I could see a great egret (Ardea alba) hanging out at the nearest edge, about where the green herons had been hunting earlier. Pausing well back where I wouldn’t spook it, I affixed the long lens and began read more

Thin but long

I don’t watch a lot of movies, for various reasons, but one side effect of this is that I’m not influenced by the common associations created by such. I’m not spooked by dark, quiet forests at night, and I find nothing at all mysterious or foreboding about fog it’s pretty damn cool, in fact. I’m still watching for conditions that I got one night decades read more

Four birds

Hmmm, it’s 5:09 AM with the next On This Date post set to go at 6:00. Can I do it?

On a slow outing yesterday, we nevertheless found a few subjects to shoot, and you’re about to see most of them. We’ll start off easy.


I mentioned earlier how little impact read more

On this date 36

So we’re gonna talk briefly about coincidences today, because they must mean something! Or not. Almost certainly not. But remember last week when I featured the golden tortoise beetle (Charidotella sexpunctata,) and said that it was only the second time I’d ever seen one? This is the first:


Taken on this date in 2013 – funny how I photographed them a week shy of four years apart.

Or read more

Why don’t we check out the lake?

Later in the morning yesterday – much later than I should’ve – I decided to take a quick trip down to Jordan Lake, see if there was anything happening down there. I had no intentions of spending a lot of time, and in fact was planning to meet someone for lunch, so, whatever I could find in 90 minutes or less (or it’s free!)

Not too shabby, for all that.


I feel read more

On this date 34


It’s funny – just a couple of days ago, I realized that I hadn’t posted anything since the previous On This Date post, and was worried about that. Guess I filled in the gap…

Anyway, our first entry is from 2006, one of the few trips that I’ve taken to the Blue Ridge Mountains. This time, I was playing with infra-red photography with the Canon Pro-90. It didn’t read more

Sometimes it works

Back at the beginning of the month, I lucked out and got some frames of a rare subject around here, but I was still in the throes of code mangling and didn’t want to do a post then. Looking at them later, I felt they didn’t stand too well alone, and wanted to get something to accompany them. Yesterday evening before dinner, I did a quick pass around the neighborhood pond and, to my utter read more

A mere curiosity

I had found the odd detail in the image that I’m about to show you some time back, and put it in the blog folder for the slow period, but so far hadn’t gotten to it. Now that it’s getting more springlike out there, I should be able to find current photo subjects, but it’s kinda grey at the moment, so we’ll go ahead and feature it – you know, to prove read more

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