Sunbathing Spider

 Backyard Nature, Golden Hour, Sense of Place  2 Responses »
Jul 012014
 

On my way back to Rico Road along Piney Woods Church Road this afternoon, I paused to photograph a spiderweb glowing in the last afternoon sunlight, holding an orb weaving spider at its center.  As I explored various angles for the image, I discovered that one particular angle produced a series of lightly-colored beams of light that angled across the image and illuminated the spider.  These beams were not visible on by screen as I framed the photograph, but only afterward.  The result is this shot of a “sunbathing spider”.  Based upon its compact shape and fairly small size, it may be a Hentz orbweaver (Neoscona crucifera) although I am not certain enough of its coloration to do more than hazard a guess.

 

Sunbathing Spider

Day 182: Wood Oats Ripening

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jul 012014
 

This afternoon, I slipped my 12-50 mm zoom lens back on the camera, as a respite from Lensbaby, and headed off down Piney Woods Church Road.  It was a brutally humid late afternoon, and I felt like I was leaving a trail of perspiration behind me as I walked up to Hutcheson Ferry Road and back again. On my return, I paused to take a few photographs of ripening wood oats beside the roadway.  The afternoon light shone through them beautifully, yielding this image.

 

Wood Oats Ripening

World in a Water Drop

 Backyard Nature, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 302014
 

With my Lensbaby Sweet 35 optic and macro converter, I had a grand time today photographing water drops.  Here are two of my most successful images from this afternoon.  The top image is a spent bloom on the Cleyera shrub I have been writing about lately.  The leaf in my second image belongs to a vine clinging to a pecan tree, a vine that I have not been able to identify (probably a nonnative cultivar of some sort).

 

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Spiders along the Road

 Backyard Nature, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 302014
 

From my latest Piney Woods Church Road outing, here are two spider images.  The first is what has been tentatively identified by the folks at BugGuide on Facebook as a spider egg sac, attached to a horsehair on a barbed wire fence.  The second is an Orchard Orbweaver (Leucauge venusta) that has just captured an ant in its web, and is at work securing its next meal.  Both were shot with my Lensbaby Composer Pro with Sweet 35 optic and a 16 mm macro converter.

 

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Day 181: Afterbloom

 Backyard Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 302014
 

After a spell of near-monsoonal rain this afternoon, I set out on another expedition with my Lensbaby Composer Pro with Sweet 35 optic.  This time, instead of the 8 cm macro converter from yesterday, I used a 16 mm one.  That translated into still more close-up  photographs than the ones I took yesterday.  I spent over an hour wandering Piney Woods Church Road, a goodly part of it trying to focus on water droplets.  I discovered (no great surprise here) that the water droplet comes into focus twice:  once the exterior surface is in focus, and at a different point when the central reflection was more or less in focus.

On my way back home, I also casually snapped this shot of a goatsbeard (I think), its bloom finished, but still retaining beauty and mystery.

 

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The Lines Between

 Backyard Nature, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 292014
 

This photograph verges, perhaps, on excessive minimalism (if there is such a term), but I find it entrancing somehow.  Three spiderweb lines, ultimately connecting parts of a sweetgum leaf to each other, preserve the memory of previous journeys.  It seems fitting, somehow, to consider where I have gone, as I reach Day 180 and rapidly approach the halfway point in my own pilgrimage.

 

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Day 180: Muscadine Jewel

 Backyard Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 292014
 

Here is another photograph with my Lensbaby Composer Pro with Sweet 35 Optic earlier this afternoon.  A rain storm had ended; as I type this, another, more dramatic, storm is waiting on our doorstep.  This was an unusual case (for me, at least) in which an image I found passable in color looks quite lovely and a bit mysterious converted to black and white.  A droplet of water clings to a grapevine; a second water droplet on the same vine is an out-of-focus spot of brightness to its left.

 

Muscadine Jewel

 

Radcliffe’s Dagger Moth Caterpillar

 Backyard Nature, Insects, Natural History, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 292014
 

This afternoon, I ventured to Piney Woods Church Road with my Lensbaby Sweet 35 Optic for the first time.  The Sweet 35 produces a “sweet spot” of focus (one that, through tilting the optic, can be shifted to any part of the frame).  A well-built manual focus lens, it has a learning curve (particularly when paired with an extension ring, as I did, for macro images).  It produces a lot of chromatic aberration — a “halo”, often of purple, surrounding darker objects against a bright background.   At the very end of my walk, in my own yard, I finally took an image that, to me, embodies the possibilities of Lensbaby for color photography — a lovely shot of some beautyberry in bloom.  Meanwhile, here is a caterpillar who I saw on the underside of a pin cherry leaf.  It is almost certainly a Radcliffe’s Dagger Moth Caterpillar (Acronicta radcliffei).  I took this photo with my camera pointed upward, using my tilting screen on the camera to bring the caterpillar into focus.  For some reason, this photo reminds me of the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.

 

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Jumping Spider

 Natural History, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jun 272014
 

I took this photograph of a tiny jumping spider (family Salticidae), maybe a quarter of an inch across (if that), looking at me from atop a rail of a rusty fence gate.  A complete portrait eluded me — my subject was rather skittish.  I didn’t even bother glancing at my photo the first time through today’s shots, because even with my lens in macro mode, the spider was minute in my image.  I was amazed to find that it came out quite well, even after cropping practically the entire photograph away, just to get this close-up.  I love this spider’s eyes.

 

Jumping Spider

 

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