As I approached Rico Road for my return home, I met up with a caterpillar clinging to the underside of a red maple leaf, enjoying a plant-based meal.
Jul 022014
Jul 022014
Late this afternoon, I set out into the humid haze with my latest lens: a 60 mm f/2.8 prime macro. There is a learning curve with this lens, and the light was far from ideal. Still, I was able to find a semi-cooperative juvenile katydid to experiment on. This portrait is my favorite from the “katydid session”.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Jun 292014
On my return from Piney Woods Church Road today, I paused along the driveway to photograph an immense American beautyberry bus (Callicarpa americana) in bloom. A Georgia native that I have seen many times further north in the state and obtained from a native plant nursery a few years back, it has taken well to our yard. I think this photograph captures the way the Lensbaby Sweet 35 optic can produce a pleasant blur in an image.
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.
