Okay, maybe I don’t do “cute”



I’ll let you in on a little secret. No, it’s not that I can’t photograph cute animals – that’s pretty damn obvious. This has to do with book reviews. You see, I spend more time on the illustrating image of the book cover than I do on the review itself, largely because I get a concept in my head and try to produce that image, which may or may not work.

In the case of read more

Book Review: Brain Bugs

A friend of mine (yes, I have some, hush) handed this book over to me, because we’d had numerous discussions related to the content while he was reading it – and I was the one who initiated them without even knowing about the book. Anyone familiar with the content of this blog may be forgiven if they suspect it’s about insectivora, but that’s not the kind of bugs we’re read more

And another thing…

First off, even if you don’t like spiders, you really need to check out this video, an extremely well done collection of jumping spider behaviors. This comes courtesy of The Dragonfly Woman. Even though I’m embedding it here, I encourage you to go read more

Eye eye, Captain!


Aw, c’mon! Some titles you can’t resist!

This jumping spider (genus Phidippus, perhaps a Phidippus audax) produced a great pose while I was working with it, appearing to salute with its pedipalp, or maybe shield its eyes form the sun. In reality, it was cleaning its eyes, perhaps trying to wipe away the spots in its vision from my strobes going off right in its face. read more

Turn ’em off

I feel bad about this, because I think I should be more in the loop, but this really is the first I’ve heard about it. “Earth Hour” is tonight, between 8:30 and 9:30 PM. As a show of support for energy efficiency and easing our reliance on limited resources, people across the world are shutting down as many electrical appliances as possible for an hour tonight.

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Not quite over it yet


I know this is a poor showing for National Wildlife Week, but hey, I think every week is National Wildlife Week, so chill. I been busy.

Anyway, in poking around today after staging a few shots for a presentation, I came across this little lovely, in a very typical place for such: on a rock, in a cranny sheltered by a clump of leaves. This is a southern black widow (Lactrodectus read more

Macro photography, part three

I threatened earlier to return to this if you weren’t good, so you only have yourself to blame, but herewith, a quick tutorial on a method of macro photography called dark field photography.

Most times, this is used with microscopic subjects, which technically isn’t macro photography but photomicrography instead. The essence is, the visible background of the image is dark, yet the subject read more

My god! It’s full of snails!


When I was in Florida, I maintained a saltwater aquarium in the most casual way possible, by simply replenishing it with water from the nearby Indian River Lagoon routinely. The occupants were primarily porcelain crabs, tiny hermit crabs, and read more

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 read more

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