Just because, part 38

I’m probably not going to get too many opportunities to post in the next week, and what will be posted probably won’t be… comprehensive, shall we say? “Hit and run” is closer to the mark.

I’ve had a lot of images saved in the blog folder, some for quite a while now – 260 total – and finally decided to sit down and weed out those that weren’t going to result in a post. Most of those were prepared with the idea that I’d write them up sometime, but I never felt that strongly about the subject; you may be looking at what I do post and wondering how badly a subject must suck not to clear that bar, and that’s fine, be that way. See if I care. But anyway, better than half are gone now, and that’s allowing for those that might still provoke a writeup. You know, in the winter months when there’s not that much to shoot.

I’ll also take the opportunity to put up a pair that remained, random images that I just never wrote up until now. Not like I’m lacking in images for this month, but hey, while I’m here…

Northern cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis showing loss of feathers on face
Taken back in July but pushed off by more distinctive subjects, this is what a northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) looks like without facial feathers – I know I always wondered. Now, why the feathers are missing is not something that I can accurately answer, but despite the name of both the species and the state, this is the south, so my guess is an incident having to do with alcohol and a grill…

And the other.

eastern pondhawk Erythemis simplicicollis partaking of a misting at night
We often have a handful of dragonflies that hang around the front garden areas, and this eastern pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) got disturbed one evening in August and flew around my headlamp for a few moments before I convinced it to settle onto a plant; dragonflies have rotten night vision and always ‘roost’ for the night, but if they’re disturbed they’ll attempt to use what light is available to navigate to another safe spot. Once it had settled, I favored it with a misting, and since this was during the extremely hot and dry spell that we had, the dragonfly was visibly excited and eagerly sipped up all the water it could, wiping it from its head as the mantids will, as well as taking it directly off of the leaf. I was kind of sorry I didn’t have the video lamp handy to show this in action; I really should have it affixed more often. And now I’m thinking about whether a combined macro/video rig is viable.

[There’s more to this than you might think. First off, macro (still) photos are shot using the viewfinder eyepiece, strictly direct light through the lens, while video requires either the back LCD or an external monitor, which tends to work better. This generally means having the camera in a video rig, but that’s awkward to use when trying to make lens adjustments. The macro flash softbox and the video light are not interchangeable in purpose. I’m not thinking there’s an easy hybrid method that would work…]

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