We’ve been seeing some steamy weather lately, high heat preceding wicked thunderstorms, and I was dumb enough to go down to the river in the former looking for subjects. Between bad sinus reactions and sweating buckets, without finding much of anything to shoot, I elected not to stay long. But I did bring back an eyed click beetle (Alaus oculatus) to get some more
Category: Frustrations
Frustrations, part 10
We’ve had a couple of bluebird nest boxes in the yard for the past two years, attracting occupants each spring, and of course this means I’m attempting to get some decent images. What I’m most after are the newly emerged fledglings, the young whippersnappers just leaving the nest, but while waiting I try for feeding shots as well.
The folks are a tad shy about me looming over their
Frustrations, part nine
Edit: I’d already used “part eight” on a previous post and missed it, so this has been renamed.
I have a small collection of school presentations that I’ve put together, primarily about arthropods – life cycles, feeding habits, camouflage, and so on. For one of them, I have pretty much everything about lady beetles illustrated, save for just one thing:
The days of yore, part two
Okay, so, I had this idea a couple of weeks ago, to feature an image from the summer solstice on the day of the winter solstice – kind of a callback to nicer weather, and a reflection of that little archive list on the sidebar, right? Yeah, so, first, I had to stick to digital images, since over a decade of slides in my stock are only dated by the month and year I got them developed, so no
Frustrations, part eight: Where is it?
There’s not going to be anything insightful hidden within this post, I’m just writing it out because I’m hoping it will be cathartic.
First things first. I’m actually pretty good about being able to find some place on a map that I’ve been to years before, based largely on the general landscape and my memory of how I’d arrived, and this even applies to little unplanned
Not quite
Yes, being a northern hemispheran, autumn is encroaching here, which means the availability of subjects is waning rapidly and I’m going to be grumpy and irritable for a few months (not helped at all by sinuses that react badly to the conditions.) Yet, there are still some last holdouts defying the season, like an aster flower that abruptly came into bloom under the dog fennel
Showoff
So yeah, I’m well outside of the range of the annular eclipse, still taking place as I type this I believe, and my friend in Kansas thought he was too. But at least he was watching carefully at sunset when he got the right conditions.
No filters needed when it’s this low on the horizon, since the atmosphere cuts the light levels down to manageable levels. Notice
There isn’t always a complete answer, part one…
For those of you who have been hanging on the edge of your seat, checking thrice daily to see if I’ve offered an update, I apologize for keeping you in suspense. Actually, no I don’t – suspense is good for you, and anxiety strengthens the heart. Well known fact.
Spoke too soon, perhaps
In yesterday’s ‘Too cool’ installment, I lamented not being able to illustrate the topic with my own images, and suspected I’d have no opportunity to do so. This was an abject ploy to make you feel sorry for me.
However, I soon became wracked with guilt over such blatant manipulations. Not to mention that, while searching through my images last night to illustrate a couple
Conflicted
I just can’t seem to get my timing down. I see countless lectures and events that look like they should be interesting, and they’re usually too far away for me to attend. I’ve completely written off things like The Amaz!ng Meeting, not just because of distance but because they chose the most expensive place to