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On the 18th, I made
it home from work right around 5:00. Since it was nice out, I
decided to take a little walk around my building with my camera.
My first stop was on the walkway from my place out towards the
quay; this is one of my favorite parts of the property, as there
are some flower beds beside the walkway, and because the walkway
goes down some stairs, there is a stretch of flower beds where
the ground is waist-high. This is excellent for flower and insect
photography, as one doesn't have to bend over as much or lose
mobility by kneeling or sitting down.
Naturally, I had the
macro lens on my camera, and I proceeded to move in close for
some flower shots.
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| Nearby,
some ants caught my attention and I tried to see how close I could
get to them with the camera. Ants aren't camera-shy like some insects,
but they're a bit difficult because they tend to be in constant
motion. I caught a few ant photos, but none of them as crisp as
I would have liked. |
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| There were
a few Yellowjackets nectaring at the flowers. |
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| I also found
this little guy, who looks to be a beetle of some sort. |
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| I was going
to try to get a better angle on him when I got distracted by a cute
little striped fly that landed on a plant to my right. He was about
7mm long and brown-and-yellow striped, a bit reminiscent of a bee.
It turns out that he's a hover fly in the genus Sphaerophoria,
and he was kind enough to let me get my camera in real close
to take his photo. |
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| After the
hover fly flew, I turned around and looked through the flowers on
the other side of the walkway. There I found this little grasshopper
hanging onto the side of a flower. He's about a centimeter long,
and I think he's another young Migratory Grasshopper. |
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| After taking
the grasshopper photos, I looked up to find that my buddy Smudge
had come over to see me. He was lying on the path in front of me,
basking in the sun. |
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| After I
had taken proper notice of him, he walked a few feet away and laid
down to watch over the area while I did my photography. It was awful
kind of him to do that for me. |
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| Feeling
safe and secure with Smudge on the job, I turned back to the flower
beds for a while. There I found this ladybug-of-few-spots. I've
taken a lot of ladybug photos lately, but I couldn't resist a few
more. |
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Eventually Smudge and
I wandered back into the courtyard, where Jodi reminded me of
the Barn Swallow nest that's under an archway on the side of our
building. The baby swallows there had been seen making little
flights from the nest to a nearby windowsill.
I went inside to arm
myself with my flash, as the light under the archway was pretty
poor. I'm not so good with flash, and so I generally hesitate
to use it because I mostly end up with photos that look pretty
flat. The photos I got did, indeed, turn out a little flat, but
the swallows were cute enough that they're worth showing. Here's
the four little guys at the nest.
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| And here
they are again, gaping because Mom is flying near, maybe with food. |
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The flash photos had
turned out okay, but they really pointed out to me that I need
to learn a lot more about how to do it right. So in the coming
while, I expect to be doing a lot more flash photography and experimenting
with different flash equipment and techniques.
Your inexperienced
flasher,
Tom
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