{"id":35173,"date":"2023-08-21T23:23:53","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T03:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=35173"},"modified":"2023-08-21T23:23:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T03:23:53","slug":"out-of-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2023\/08\/out-of-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Man, I’ve hardly picked up the camera in days, and haven’t done any high-magnification macro work in weeks at least. My macro muscles were protesting. But I did a handful of frames today, so we have a smattering of content – kinda like the sweater you get for your birthday from a distant aunt who has no idea what you like. Hide your disappointment and try to look grateful.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we have a little find on one of the (many) basil plants, seen here at full frame for scale and context.<\/p>\n

\"spiny
Looking like little more than a fragment of dead leaf, which is kinda the point, the nymph of a spiny assassin bug (genus Sinea<\/em>) stands watch for other less-alert insects. Aside from not being able to see many details because of its size, it’s also a nymph, and distinguishing an exact species is next to impossible. There was enough detail in this frame, however, for a closer look.<\/p>\n

\"spiny
Thorny little cuss, isn’t it? And those antennae look like they got caught in the folding doors, but that’s how they be. Overall length wasn’t above 10mm, so those thorns might<\/em> have been a deterrent for something the size of the newborn anoles, or they might not even have been up to that task – I have no idea what might prey on something like this.<\/p>\n

Because it was in a nice accessible location and not likely to be going anywhere, I dug out the reversed Sigma 28-105 for some tight closeup work. Those pics were just<\/em> adequate for a broader frame – I should have had more light to focus by, since the indirect daylight wasn’t enough and focus was ever-so-slightly off, but my heart wasn’t in it.<\/p>\n

\"closer
You can see the peace sign of the left foreleg spikes, way<\/em> out of focus in the center of the frame, and recognize that these were roughly 3mm closer to the camera than the head, giving you an idea that depth-of-field is not impressive at this magnification, even at f16. But the proboscis is prominent, and used to drill through the exoskeleton of its prey. Maybe someday if I’m hardcore I’ll try to stake out something like this to photograph (or video) a capture, but I imagine that could take hours, and it’ll occur on a day much cooler than anything we’ve had in the past several weeks.<\/p>\n

In other news, while I haven’t been shooting, I did<\/em> update the ‘Favorites’ page, and added an entirely new one, ‘Shameless<\/a>,’ because it was probably long overdue. It is nowhere near complete, I’m sure, but you can always find both in the top menu. And I’ve got a few other things in the works, though the Tripod Holes posts are now complete through September, with several more images in the lineup waiting for the accompanying text. I’m not that<\/em> lazy, in other words. Smile and say, “Thank<\/em> you, Uncle Al.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Man, I’ve hardly picked up the camera in days, and haven’t done any high-magnification macro work in weeks at least. My macro muscles were protesting. But I did a handful of frames today, so we have a smattering of content – kinda like the sweater you get for your birthday from a distant aunt who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[1143,2961,1581],"class_list":["post-35173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-nymph","tag-sinea","tag-spiny-assassin-bug"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}