North Carolina winters are usually not too dire, and we can count on some good outdoor weather pretty much throughout, but this doesn’t mean that good photo subjects will be as readily available, so I’m resigned (albeit reluctantly) to the arrival of the slow season. This little gallery is my minor act of defiance.
Above, a photo that’s harder to capture than you might imagine.
We all have experience with missing something right under our noses, or someone speaking to us who remains totally unheard because we’re concentrating on something else. The proper term for this is inattention blindness, and lots of videos and examples can be found online (Richard Wiseman, over there in the sidebar links, deals with this trait from time to time.) It is something that
Well, that’s what I was initially after, but the conditions weren’t right at the nearby river, so I chased other images instead. They look better at higher resolution, so here’s me making the page very long.
No, I’m not on a water droplet kick, but if it looks cool, Ima take a pitcher of it…
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
When living in Florida in 2004, I was in an apartment complex with a central pond, which was only six meters from the back side of the apartment. This was a sliding glass door leading onto a screened patio, and during the warmer months, this door remained open while I was home (during the hotter months, however, the air-conditioning was on so the door stayed closed.)
At about three AM one morning,
As the weather turned rather chilly, and more than a smidgen damp, I decided to play with the squishy conditions.
Did you know that those paranormal ‘orbs’ have a tendency to hide behind drops of water? Strange but true…
So, are you considering becoming a nature and wildlife photographer? Then let me tell you a little story, but I’ll caution you not to consider this typical.
Last night, while examining the dog fennel plants for photo subjects, I came across a few dead ants and a
I know, I know, I go from bugs to snakes – more of a lateral move instead of an improvement, but chill something else may be coming soon.
I see about one of these a year, and it seems to be about this time, too. I’m not aware of anything that would make rough green snakes (Opheodrys aestivus) appear in early autumn, so I’m going to guess this is only coincidental. I found
Most likely a white-banded crab spider (Misumenoides formosipes) with an unidentified hymenoptera. Good luck for the spider, bad luck for the bee. Taken on a shamrock plant that The Girlfriend’s Younger Sprog had obtained this past March. And since she doesn’t like spiders, probably better that she’s at college now…
I got my timing down the other day, and caught a set of lady beetle eggs as they hatched. The eggs are 1.2mm in length – yes, I have a loupe with a micrometer scale – so the details you’re seeing here are pretty fine. As you can see, the larva are visible through the translucent shells.
Hatching isn’t quick by any stretch, but it can still happen entirely while you’re