On the 15th, I headed out a little after noon to play some more with my new macro lights. It was a bit of an overcast day, but that wouldn't matter to the flashlit photos. My only concern was whether or not I'd find decent subjects—some bugs like to hide when the weather isn't nice.

But not all bugs are like that, and over the years I've noticed that flowers have a much harder time hiding than bugs do, so chances of finding good subjects weren't all that bad, especially if I went to a place with flowers. So I chose Glenbrook Ravine as my destination. Glenbrook Ravine has a nice little cultivated garden at its lower end.

I ended up finding quite a few interesting insects, several of which posed difficult identification problems for me. Only a few did I finally get figured out, so I'll be less precise than usual today.

My first real find at Glenbrook was a damselfly perched on a rock. Here the lights really accentuated the damsel's metallic look and the cell structure of her wings.

It was a nice effect, but not one that I'd want all of the time. To not get such a relective image, I'd have to move the lights away from the camera lens.

I watched a few more damselflies and a dragonfly in flight, but they didn't land anywhere where I'd be able to get photos of them. I quickly tired of that and moved along, next finding some flowers that caught my eye. Here's a little flowerhead; for this shot I held the camera in one hand and one of the flash units in the other. The handheld flash is to the left of the flower, and is giving the well-defined highlight on the red stalks in the back.

Alternatively, I could've equalized the lighting with some Photoshop trickery.

On this shot, I deliberately kept the camera further away so as to include the flowers and buds with their visitor, a Yellow-faced Bumble Bee.

I was quite happy with the way the lighting and the detail turned out on those photos.

Another fly I found in the area was this bronzish fellow. Again, here, the eyes and short antennae really distinguish this as more of a fly than a bee or wasp.

He was a pretty neat little fly, with a gold thorax and red/brown eyes.

Not seeing anything else flying around, I picked up a twig and scratched the surface of the flowerbed to see if anybody was lurking just beneath the top soil. Beside where I was scratching, I noticed a number of really little (2 or 3 mm) almond-shaped things. They weren't really moving, and it took me a little while to figure out that they were, in fact, insects.

From the size and shape, I had a pretty good idea of what kind of insects they were, too. These little guys were leafhoppers, the first ones that I've ever seen (or, probably more properly, the first ones that I've ever noticed that I've seen). I had read some about these guys in the recent weeks, and so I guess I was primed to notice them. Here's a shot I got of one of them.

Well, that was pretty exciting, seeing a new type of insect for the first time. This fellow's brown was good camouflage for being in dirt, mud, sticks, and leaf litter, but most leafhoppers have much more vivid coloration.

Speaking of vivid coloration, here's a fly that I found on a very vivid red flower petal. I liked this guy's grey and black striped pyjamas.

In reviewing the photos, I found the vast majority of them to be well-lit. It was proving to be difficult to go wrong with these little macro lights. They're going to be a very valuable addition to my photographic kit.

With eyes on the flies,
Tom