My online journal where I share my interests in photography, nature, coffee life, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, spirituality and asking deep questions.
I sat by my pond the other afternoon with soft diffused light due to cloud cover. A busy bee made his appearance moving from one flower to another collecting pollen. I watched with enjoyment and took a handful of photos but I mainly watched the constant movement. Look close and you’ll see the pollen on the legs.
The Variegated Fritillary are found in open sunny areas such as prairies, fields, pastures, road edges, landfills. They feed on the nectar from several plant species including butterfly weed, common milkweed, dogbane, peppermint, red clover, swamp milkweed, and tickseed sunflower. The Environmental Learning Center provides both those needs. I’m no longer one to go for a walk in the nature areas as I tend to meander through them. Way too much to miss if I just walk.
I’m not sure how it happened. I was working through some images from 2009 taken at Inniswood Gardens when I discovered these two images. It seems I did very little with them at the time and most likely because I had shot a lot of images that day. It was a cloudy, overcast day with light rain and I’m in this beautiful garden, why not. For some reason I found the only keyword I had entered for either of these images was Inniswood Gardens. There was no keyword for dragonfly or plants or leaves or rain. Nothing. How the heck am I suppose to find them without keywords, unless I’m just browsing? I suspect slothfulness or skipped them because other images were more appealing to me. I could have skipped the dragonfly because it is a bit out of focus.
However, this time around they caught my eye. They also reminded me of those rainy, overcast days that provided such wonderfully diffused light while I lived in Ohio. It also reminded me of how often I came home with wet pants (from the knee down) when it was raining or just rained. I played with them a little, and for my taste, I like the way these two images turned out. My post processing included exposure, tone and contrast. Pretty simple actually. Why I did not play with these five years ago, I don’t know. But, five years ago something within urged me to press that shutter button. I must pay more attention to the urge.
Oh, and these flowers? Well, I’m going to throw them in because I have the urge too. 🙂
Have no clue what butterfly this is, so if anyone knows let me know. Nor do I know the gender. Almost have to be a butterfly to know that difference. I do know the flower is a coneflower. Sometimes things just fall into place and other times they dont. This was one those time it did. As I knelt down to photograph some coneflowers that are close to the end of their season of life, this butterfly wanted in the photo. This one flitted back and forth between two flowers directly in front of me. Butterflies and birds are attracted to the sweet nectar of coneflowers. I could almost hear this one calling out, “Pick me. Pick me.” So I did.
I hadn’t planned on going to Blendon Woods Metro Park but that’s where I ended up. It was one of those times when I just needed to get out of the apartment, get in some fresh air and sunshine. I spend way too much time in long silver tube so why would I want to hang around my apartment when I’m off work. Anyway, the only lens I had with me was 35mm prime, not the best lens to use for close-ups. This is about a 50% crop so we do lose some sharpness. Not sure what sort of bug it is but it has a place on my blog today. A bug.
“All you can work on today is directly in front of you. Your job is to develop an imagination of the possible.”
Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
While on a trip to the Smoky Mountains I dropped and broke my Nikon 80-400mm VR lens, a $1400 loss. Ouch! Needles to say I spent the last 3 days of our 7 day trip with nothing but two other Nikon lens, a 16-35mm and 24-85mm. Now my longest focal range dropped from 400mm to 85mm, what was I going to shoot?
The first morning we were able to shoot in Cades Cove we were met with fog, wonderful fog. Along with the fog comes the heaviness of the morning dew, so needles to say we were pretty wet by the time we returned to the hotel. I noticed a barb wire fence covered with dew near the Tipton Place and wandered over to have a look-see. I discovered this grasshopper hanging upside down and patiently waiting for the morning sun to dry his body for the days activities. Since the 24-85mm also had macro capabilities it worked great for me to get some nice images. The fog was burning off and you can see the sun approaching in the background. This image was one of my first attempts at macro photography and spurred the purchase a nice macro lens. So, I ended up working on what was in front of me.