I started this year with the strong consideration that I was going to increase the number of posts I’d been making, which is always a bad idea – I am, of course, far behind where I was last year at this time. It doesn’t help that the site upgrades that I’d tackled became the resizing of nearly every image, cleaning up the stray code that html editors leave behind, altering
Category: Nature
Composition, part 5.1
Part five-point-one? Aren’t we up to fourteen now? Well, yes, but part five needed revisiting. Okay, it didn’t need it, and to be frank, it’s probably one of those things that will be debated for a long time – but here’s my attempt to reduce this as much as I might by introducing a pertinent factor. As you no doubt recall, Composition Part 5 was about
Fringe benefits
While it is hot enough out there today to actually make the grass disturbingly warm, and potting soil seem to have been heated on a stove, there is still a small benefit to chasing frantic pollinators on spearmint flowers: you get to inhale the wonderful mint aroma.
Some small black & white wasps could be seen, in close approach, to have distinctively chartreuse eyes, but were disinclined to
Back to the beginning
Since I had some business in Raleigh yesterday, I decided afterwards to go back to one of my old haunts, the head of the Neuse River where it spills from Falls Lake. I haven’t been back there in a while, but years ago when I started getting serious about photography, it was one of my routine shooting locations, probably helped by it being 11 kilometers (7 miles) away from where I lived at
The pieces come together
As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m in the middle of updating the galleries of the main website – don’t go rushing over there, since there’s nothing to be seen just yet I’ll be uploading them all at once when everything’s ready. But among the changes, I’m adding more information to some of the older pics, and one of those is the image
What’s super about it?
While I’ve touched on this subject briefly before, I think it stands a better examination. The process of writing some of these posts has led to the contemplation of some of our cultural assumptions, and what’s become an interesting lesson from this is how useful it might be to contemplate words and ideas that we’ve taken for granted in this case, it’s the
Macro photography, part four: You can be excused…
… if you thought this was an ant. That’s really the whole idea.
I spotted one of these in one of my regular insect-hunting spots, but only got a single inadequate photo of it before it vanished under some leaves. Earlier today, I spotted it again – this time, venturing under the web tent shelter of a crab spider, who vacated quickly at the threat of course, my
[Insert topical, perhaps punnish title here]
Just thought I’d throw up an image in recognition of National Pollinator Week, even though I don’t know what qualifies as a national pollinator, except for perhaps an extremely busy bee.
Now, a word of advice: if you’re just getting started in macro photography, don’t pursue it if you have high blood pressure, anger management issues, or take offense at inanimate
Nothing lives forever
This is actually a combination of two post ideas I had, because I realized that the perspective discussed in one had direct bearing on the other. And then, while this was in draft form, another related item came up. Bear with me as we wend through it all.
Every once in a while I hear something about a culture dying out, or a language on the verge of disappearing because only three people speak it,
Trapped!
Sometimes you actually have some cooperation from your subjects, despite their best efforts. Mom paused for a nice profile, even allowing a view of her progenys’ meal, while one of the sprogs smiled (or something) for the camera in the opening of the nest box. It’s all because of clean living and pure thoughts.
And, something that cannot quite be called a ‘camera trap.’ Typically,