July’s abstract


Yeah, now I’m feeling obligated

This one’s from not quite a week ago, an earlier morning outing. The sun had finally broken through the foliage and was attempting to burn off the overnight dew that had been surviving in the shade. In the brief time slot where the light was hitting it, before it evaporated within a couple of minutes, I played around with short depth images at f4, read more

Let’s check back with the mantids

Gosh, it’s been, what, six whole hours since I’ve posted anything about the resident mantids? I cannot apologize enough – I know how you must feel.

Okay, it’s been a bit longer than that, and in fact, this first image was taken nine days ago and not posted then. [See what I did there? I prefaced with hyperbole and followed with a contrasting statement, and now another read more

Just some recent ones


While I have a handful of photos from the past week or so, there isn’t a whole lot to say about them, so I’m mostly just going to throw them up here without a lot of exposition. Right at the moment, I have not identified the dragonfly above, which was hanging around the front garden for a few days being cooperative and photogenic, but I do have to draw attention to the read more

Monday color 25

So, for this Monday color we have an image that’s faintly unsettling to me. Not for any peculiar associations I have with the Digitalis family (though in truth we haven’t gotten along since that incident at the airport,) but because the color seems off, and not able to be corrected in any way. It has the appearance of something that had originally been shot in monochrome, like read more

Just some morning pics

Most of the time recently, the skies are so clear at sunrise that they’re boring, lacking in rich colors and clouds to throw some textures into the mix. But this morning looked like it was going to be different, so I trotted over to the pond to see what would develop as the sun came into view. While the sky did not quite produce the qualities that I was hoping for, I received the cooperation read more

Facing the grim reality

You know, there comes a time in everyone’s life when they realize something that they’ve denied up until that point, some ugly facet of themselves that they really never wanted to believe was true. Sure, they might even joke about it, make an admission in a self-deprecating way before someone else does, but they never quite believed it even then. And since that’s what a blog’s read more

Hollywood agendas

Sometimes, it’s so obvious and manipulative that it’s sickening, and I’m starting to feel that we all should be doing our part in maintaining more realistic standards. Hollywood would have us believe that Charlotte A. Cavatica, the plucky protagonist from Charlotte’s Web, is a blue-grey Asian spider with a Beatles haircut and a warm, inviting smile, as seen read more

Value pack


So, yeah, it’s been a little longer than I intended to go between posts – the idea of having two Monday colors back-to-back is, I admit, additional motivation to get something up. I wanted to say that it’s a good thing I’m not paid for this, but that’s not exactly true getting paid for posting would be quite nice, actually. It’s read more

She has a great personality

I enjoy doing this.

Last night while out poking around, I chanced upon a fairly small spider that, once I unloaded the images, motivated me to go out and get better, closer ones. I’m very pleased with this portrait:


Some spiders are menacing, or ominous. Some are even cute. This one’s just ugly. read more

Giant iridescent mosquitoes!

That… is a phrase that should become a new curse. Let’s start the ball rolling.

While I was working on the car yesterday, The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog drew my attention to a giant mosquito that was sitting on the windshield, wondering if it was a crane fly. A close examination of the surprisingly cooperative insect lent weight to it being an actual mosquito, albeit a very large read more

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