Bee in flight with pollen on it's body; Wasp close up

1/400 sec. f/8 100mm ISO 250

It's nice to see the bees out back working the flowers again .. here are a couple of photos taken with my Cannon 50D and 100mm Macro lens.

1/500 sec. f/8 100mm ISO 400

This camera is helping me to get a better understanding of how to capture a well composed macro shot. I'm doing everything on "Manual" mode so I can control all aspects of the photo: shutter, aperture, ISO, focus and composition. It's actually kind of fun - like a balancing act.. wanting to speed up the shutter for the flying bee's, but not wanting to increase the ISO to much .. etc - I'm learning.

The PowerShot was a great starter macro camera (as can be seen in the quality of the fly photo taken with it), but this 50D is a good step to a better understanding and some better captured images.

1/400 sec. f/8 100mm ISO 400

Thanks for looking. Leave a comment if you like them or have any suggestions.

Frozen water grows up defying gravity

 I was out back first think in the morning and it had froze the night before and was still below freezing. A barrel that collects rain water had what appeared to be a perfect water drop formed on it, but the "drop" was going up - opposing gravity. I've included two photos; the first showing the drop close up. (As with all my photos here, they have only been cropped - there is no other editing of the images.)

I think this is a striking photo with the air bubbles suspended in the middle running from top to bottom, or is that bottom to top..? It has become one of my favorite of all time photos that I've taken.




The second photo shows the drop in context - rising up out of the lid of the water barrel. I think it's important as it shows the environment of the above photo. It also shows the background colors that become blurred in the macro shot which create the pleasing refraction's and reflections in the frozen water.

The final photo is of a second water barrel that also has a frozen water formation growing up out of it. This one looked like sword or even an old glass Christmas light. It also has bubbles of air suspended inside the frozen water. It too was very cool!

Citizen Promaster SST U706

This may have been my 5th or 6th Eco-drive watch .. not sure. This watch raised the bar for me. It looks good in the light and dark; it has a Sapphire crystal, water resistant to 200 M, Solar powered, stainless bracelet, alarm, timer, ... I enjoy wearing it.

Changing the time is easy and having access to UTC is also convenient.

This watch has a cool track timing / speed feature that I've not had opportunity to use yet.

I really like how the hands glow so well that they light the face of the watch. And the blueish color looks good.

All in all - it's a Great watch!

If you come across one - snatch it up if it's a fair price as it will probably be working and looking good.

Citizen G900 Minute Repeater

This was my first (or second) Citizen Eco-Drive (solar) watch. It came with the bracelet, but was too small. I looked for additional links, but was not able to locate any from Citizen or the internet.

Recently I bought a silicone band and have since been able to wear this watch. - it's a fun watch to wear as it's not easy to read; you have to look at it and then you remember, "Oh Yeah, the orange hand isn't the seconds - it's the date!". The confusion it causes is part of the fun of wearing it. It's not a put on and forget type of watch (like my H144 is). This watch also "Plays" the time nicely.

Today I took photos .. it was good theropy.

1/40 sec. f/5 100mm ISO 400

Late this afternoon, I put my camera on the tripod and headed out back to see what I'd find.

The sun was low in the sky, so I knew all the exposures would have to be long, so pictures of moving bugs and flowers was out. Thankfully the wind was light and I focused on walking the fence line where the sun was still casting it's rays. Photos started with partial second shutter speeds and went up to 2 1/2 seconds.

1/15 sec. f/4 100mm ISO 400

photo1- I don't know what kind of plant this is: it is a vine with sharp stickers on it, but this portion is being eaten. As I was focusing on the leaf I'm sure I saw a very tiny critter run down the edge of the leaf..that was a very small critter!

photo2 - I think the stem is from the same vine - but not sure.

photo3 - The galvanized nail is part of the fence where the wood has been worn away or come off.

photo4 - The dogs almost look like ghosts as they play with the dog on the other side of the fence. (There are two 'ghost dogs' there, the second is a little more active and more difficult to see.)
 photo5 - This photo was exposed for over 2 seconds, but there is little or no movement of the 'headless' dog.

Forty five photos later, the sun had set, and I was walking in thankful for getting 30 minutes with my camera outside. Looking that closely to small things we don't normally see is good.

(No harm was caused to any animals in the capturing of these photos, or before or after the capturing of these images too.)

1/15 sec. f/4.5 100mm ISO 400

2.5 sec. f/32 100mm ISO 400

2.5 sec. f/32 100mm ISO 400

Housefly and ... clay pigeon shooting

This was a very skittish house fly out on the compose heap and I couldn't get the camera close to it. There are so many variables and moving parts / targets with macro photography. None-the-less, it's fun to try. I think it's time to start looking for a flash solution - I'll have to read up on it.

Now I know the shotgun shots aren't macro, but they too were fun to capture today. It's neat to see the pellets en-route and the clay pigeon start to be impacted and breakup as the pellets intersect with it. I with I would have bumped the shutter speed up as there was plenty of light it would have been neat to see what the images looked like with 1/800 or 1/1600 or more even .. next time!  :)

IO Moth (Automeris Io)

I had no idea what this was when I was taking some close ups of it, but now I've learned it will become a silk moth (IO Moth), well before becoming a moth.. now it's a stinging caterpillar about 3" long with the pink and white horizontal stripe down it's side.

It is very neat and close up looks like row after row of prickly branches, as seen in the below photos. You can see the black on the tips and I was told that the sting is very effective - which I took his word for.

This was the first time I've seen one of these and the first time I was able to photography one as it crawled around in the afternoon sun.