A lunch high up in the clouds...

  Butterflies are just gorgeous. Who wouldn't want to photograph one? There's lots of species too, and for each season their own. It's not always easy to make an image of one because they are shy, and when you approach they'll fly away. So it's good to be careful when trying to shoot one. Today my whole day was dedicated for photography, so I headed to one of my favorite spots. Lots of wild flowers and insects, and the weather was just perfect, not too hot nor too cold. Walking among the flowers I stumbled across a black-veined white butterfly flying from one flower to another. What a nice subject, a fairly big butterfly sipping nectar from a flower. Just when I started to get my self ready for the shoot, the butterfly suddenly started to shake. A thing I've seen before... a crab spider was faster. Crab spiders are experts in camouflage, they just wait on a flower and change their color accordingly and when a the meal is there they'll hit. Probably the prey won't even understand what hit them. Good for the spider, good for me and bad for the poor butterfly... The spider got a meal, I had something interesting to shoot and... well... poor butterfly.  What really amazes me, is the meal of the the spider. Imagine if you would enjoy a meal from a big (very big) and light plate and you'd have to eat it on the 40th floor outside and in a hard wind. That's exactly what the spider did. The butterfly was large, the wind was blowing and still this white beast was enjoying a lunch. Here's two images, bon apetit...

   

It's slow time

  Have been a bit busy these last too weeks, and even if I've had occasionally time to make a frame or two, it has mostly been cats and dogs, so I decided I'd wait for something else before I'll make a new post. So even if me and everybody else are busy, it's good to know that there still are those who crawl around in a pretty slow pace... snails. For photographers and culinarists as well, it is good that these invertebrates move slow. After the rain, and of course during,  there are plenty of these oozy fellows around, so it's good to watch your step, otherwise you can hear something crack under your feet. It seems that Escargots are not too afraid of hights. This guy in the images below had found hes way to a pretty elevated position, and because of the nice light after a heavy rain, instead of getting butter and garlic, I grabbed my camera and tripod made a couple of portraits of him. Enjoy...

Elephant Hawk-moth

  My field trip today was supposed to be a little further away from home, but due to other more important things I ended up once again on a combined photo / dog walking trip. I was hoping for snakes or at least for a tree frog or two. Didn't find a single. My wife though, made an interesting find, an elephant hawk-moth was hiding among the grass. My first impression was that it's dead, but no. So I gently decided to move it in a little nicer surroundings and make a few frames of it. Here's one...

   

Zinnia getting visitors

  One of my favorite flowers is Zinnia. Not only that it is interesting looking and beautiful, but it's a tempting flower for different pollinators. For a couple of days I've been trying to photograph a couple of those nectar hungry invertebrates. For the purpose I chose just one flower, the tallest one...

High noon and both the flower and the background are nicely lit 

A hummingbird hawk-moth visiting the flower. The background  is in the shadow of a nearby building

  Some kind of a hover fly spotted the flower and came for a sip

Not all of the insects are of flying kind. A couple of shield bugs enjoying the fall sun

   Last but not least a small white butterfly taking advantage of the juice of the zinnia flower.

An intimate portrait

  Fire bugs are pretty common insects, you can see them here and there and often many at the same time. It's not uncommon to see these invertebrates to be fastened to each other from their butts. That means that a male have found a female and they are breeding and soon there is more of them, actually a lots of them. However, I like these interesting small bugs. They are brightly colored and a nice subject for photos.

A garden spider in the garden

  It's been a pain to try to make an image of our newest guest in the garden. Hes artwork is usually most beautiful in the morning when covered in dew.

  But to make an image of the artist her self has been a hard task. Every single morning you can see that she has been working on her web during the night, but in the morning she' gone. She's hiding. She's waiting for a prey, like this...

 
  Hiding behind the apple leaves and having control over the fine strings of her web with just one small touch of her leg. And if and when some poor insect flies to the so beautiful but so fatal trap...

  She's ready, but so was I too!

Macros with a flash

  In most of my photography I rely on ambient, natural light. I think that the sun is the best light source existing. Today I thought I'd make an compromise and try to shoot a couple of macro images with my old and faithful sb-600 speedlight unit. For the purpose I fastened it on a tripod and adjusted it so that I could use it wireless and off-camera. In these next three images the strobe is placed on the right side of the camera and quite close to the subject and the power is 1/16 of full power.

   A shield bug larvae on fig leaf...

   Bees enjoying an overly ripe fig...

   A snail on a zinnia.    

Visitor in the yard

  Dragonflies aren't the most frequent visitors in our yard, but maybe once or twice in a summer they'll make an exception. This yellow fellow landed on a dry branch on one of the apple trees. I saw it from the window, jumped up from my chair, picked up my camera and tripod and rushed out. I was pretty sure he'd be gone, but no, there he was still on the same twig enjoying the sun. First I tried to approach him from the other side, just to shoot him with a nice rim light, back lit, but he was too faraway. A new approach from the other side, with quite a bit of branches and apples in my way. Carefully I managed to place my tripod and camera between the branches and make a few frames, but still I felt he's too faraway. Nowadays I usually don't shoot macros without my tripod. But what can you do when the tripod becomes more than an obstacle? You'll shoot free hand and that's just what I did. Luckily I ended up with at least one decently sharp image.

    

Bush and a bush cricket

  A fig tree in the yard can be full of surprises and photo opportunities and of course figs too. Today I found two bush crickets on the same branch. Sad to say I was two slow to shoot, the other one moved away before I managed to make a frame of the two on the same leaf. Here's one shot made with a 150 mm macro lens, wide open f4,5, @ ISO 800 (bad light)...

   

Caterpillars

  I think there is quite a bunch of garden keepers who wouldn't like their roses to be eaten by caterpillars. I don't care. If there is roses I photograph roses and if the roses are eaten by caterpillars then I photograph caterpillars. That's pretty much what happened today. Finally I forced my self to do something in the garden and dug out the lawnmower from the shelter. Half of the job was done when I noticed a couple of nice caterpillars feeding on one of our roses. What can you do? Leave the lawn, get inside, grab your camera and make a couple of images.

DX / FX

  Just did a test out in the yard. FX / full frame and DX / crop sensor. Not really a big test, just to see the difference in the images taken with the same 150 mm macro lens, from the same distance with a Nikon D300s and D700.

                                                                Nikon D300s, @ f11

                                                                 Nikon D700, @ f11

  As you can see, there's a small difference. At the same half of the life size magnification (1:2) the crop sensor gives you bit more reach, a nice thing to have when you want to shoot tiny small things like bugs. Otherwise when shooting @ ISO 200. there's not too much of a difference in quality. Not really a big thing, but just to kill time a nice small test.  

Damselflies

  Had to get my feet wet literally for these images, but I think it was worth it.

Butterflies, butterflies and butterflies...

  My search for snakes ended up in a bunch of butterfly photos. Most people will think that that's nice, because snakes are bad and ugly. I guess everybody have right to their opinion. So, anyway, My favorite spot was full of lumberjacks so only a few pictures from there...

 Silver-washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia)

Hummingbird Hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum)

Couldn't stand the noise, so I decided to hit the road and move my self to the next spot. When photographing these blackberries, suddenly a butterfly landed on it... and only for a second.

 Purple-shot Copper (Lycaena alciphron) ???

What I really love, is to photograph something new, and today I got lucky...

Jersey Tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria)