So, spiders


And so, we rejoin our hero in his further adventures of spider encounters and arachnophobia…

When I did the detailed portraits of a largish wolf spider (family Lycosidae) a few days back, I released it under the porch steps and vowed to keep an eye open. Accommodatingly, the spider assisted read more

Not spiders


You know, if I’m telling you in the title that spiders will not be found in this post, that only means some following post is not going to be good for arachnophobes…

Since the move, I’ve been taking the opportunity on occasion to scope out the new area, trying to determine what kind of decent shooting locales can be found nearby. One stroke of luck is a large pond, close and easy read more

The long-awaited mantis update

Posting is still slow – I’m finding a lot of my time taken up with other things, boring things from a blogging perspective – but I’m trying to keep up with images at the same time. There will be another post featuring various arthropods coming shortly, but for now I’m going to focus on just one.

One of the many mantises that had inhabited the Japanese maple has now switched read more

It’s just to illustrate, honest

A few posts back I talked about a cool lens effect, where defocusing a subject far enough could make it virtually disappear. Yesterday, I captured an image that illustrates it even better. That’s really the whole purpose of this post. It’s not to creep people out or anything.

Your read more

On composition, part 22: Distortion

A fundamental part of photography is focusing light onto the recording medium, be it film, digital sensor, or even our own retinas. And the method used for doing this the vast majority of the time is a lens, a transparent substance with a certain index of refraction – the trait of bending light when it passes through the surface of the substance. Put the right correct surface angle read more

The depths of your eyes

Yeah, that title’s fairly similar to a post from about a year ago, but the difference is significant. That one was about a fly with a maze-like pattern in its eyes (thus, “lost,” get it?) while this one really does involve depth. I spend hours on these titles…

Anyone who’s had a close enough encounter with a praying mantis knows about the false pupil, even if they haven’t read more

Blogging wasn’t in the cards

For anyone, should they actually exist, who has been stopping by and not finding any new posts, I apologize. On occasion, circumstances inhibit sitting down and working on posts, and this particular occasion was a move. We are now in a new house!

I take no credit for this whatsoever it was all The Girlfriend’s accomplishment. Well, okay, that sounds like I didn’t even read more

Near invisibility potion


The other day I went out chasing pics again, and didn’t really snag much of merit. But while playing around with macro shots of honeysuckle flowers, I captured a few frames that illustrate a peculiar, and sometimes handy, photographic trait. It takes some explaining, so bear with me.

First, the illustration. These are two frames from almost exactly the same vantage point, with just a change read more

I’m a dude

I had to wash off some things outside a short while ago, and while draining the hose, I set the sprayer for ‘mist’ and applied a liberal coating to grasses where I knew some of the praying mantises lived I was rewarded with seeing one of them scamper up and begin drinking deeply from the water droplets adhering to the leaves. Of course, I trotted (it might have been read more

Not deep

I’m still here, and still largely busy – it’s going to be a lean posting month, but I’ll still try to put something up from time to time.

[“From time to time” – isn’t that a stupid phrase? Who makes these things up, and did they have any think what word good is?]

A few days back we received torrential rain, which is not to say this is any more remarkable read more

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