Hoar Frost. December 14, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: Florida MA, hoar frost, macro photography, Sigma 50mm f/2.8 lens
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Along a frozen dirt road in upper Florida MA, a weeping shoulder pushed its wetness skyward as the dry sky demanded tribute:
Hoar frost is by its nature dirty, and this black and white rendition dodges the visual complication of the coarse mingling of water and earth.
That one’s thanks to Ziggy, my Sigma 50mm lens, which has the shortest minimum focusing distance of the lenses in my kit, as well as a very small aperture. This was shot at f/40 for maximum depth of field without employing focus stacking HDR.
Wilcox Hollow, Day Two. December 9, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: deerfield river, macro photography, nature photoraphy, Wilcox Hollow
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I returned to Wilcox Hollow on the Deerfield river this afternoon with my housemate and dear friend Lizz, who loves details and liked what I brought home from there on my last visit.
She’s recently been attending far-flung workshops with world-class photographers and, I’m grateful to say, bringing home some useful pointers, which she generously shares with me.
Thanks, Lizz.
Here’s a bit of what I came home with today.
A reflection in a shallow, stranded pool:
Dried grasses catching the slow drizzle of a December afternoon:
Sprigs of vegetation refuse to turn brown, insisting instead on wearing their colors to the end:
I chose a shallow depth of field to get this example to pry itself from its surroundings:
But the geology here is composed of such extremes of light and darkness that it screams to be rendered in black and white.
So I did that with these next few shots.
A study in the placement of cobbles:
Nature draws an animal in millions-of-years-old stone – bovine? equine?? Either way, the picturing long precedes the existence of the beast, so it’s just a silly human interpretation of a geological phenomenon:
This venue, Wilcox Hollow, has a lot to offer to a photographer, and I expect to be back soon – perhaps as soon as tomorrow! 😉
A Freak Of Nature. May 3, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: Catamount State Forest, Colrain MA, macro photography, Sigma 50mm lens, slugs, trillium, yellow trillium
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Here’s a wildflower which I at first thought was a Yellow Trillium, but now believe to be an uncommon variation on our standard local red trillium:
…as witness its intergrowing with the more common red variety.
True “Yellow trilliums” are pure yellow, while this variant has reddish veins throughout:
Regardless, it’s beautiful, and apparently popular with the local invertibrates as well:
These I found up at McLeod Pond up in Colrain, MA and captured with Ziggy, my 50mm Sigma macro lens.
When It’s Ugly Outside… December 7, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in macro photos.Tags: impending snowfall, macro photography, sexy bits, ugly season, violets
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I know, it’s un-citizenly to think of Mother Nature as serving up The Big Ugly, but you know, sometimes She just does.
November and December can be temporal proof of that. Gone are the colors, out comes the mud. It ain’t pretty.
Like today, with a thick pall weighing down the world, a pervasive grayness gripping every view. I didn’t see any reason to break out the camera at work, and afterward it went from gray to black in half an hour.
Then, as these things happen, I came home to a cold house with this little potted violet sitting over the kitchen sink, doing its mating dance for no one in particular, unless it’s you:
She’s plump and expectant, thrusting her sexy bits upward from creamy sheets of crystalline bliss:
This was a nice find on an otherwise uninspiring day.
Tonight the rain is supposed to turn to snow, and depending on when and where the transition takes place, we could have a reprieve from Teh Ugly by morning.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, eh?
Thanks to Ziggy for these macro shots. They were a nice counterpoint to the larger-world details of getting the wood stove up and running so I can get scantily clad and relax before bedtime.
Which is happening right about now.
G’Night. 😉
Wasps! July 29, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: Golden Digger wasps, Great Black wasps, macro photography, Sigma 50mm lens, wasps
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All my life I’ve been terrified by wasps, at least since, at the age of perhaps three, I was badly stung by one. I was playing outside my country home on a summer’s day when my carefree afternoon was interrupted by a sharp pinching pain in my left knee and, looking down, I saw a wasp sticking straight out of it, affixed by her stinger and doing a crazy Twist as she pumped me full of her venom. I’m sure I wailed like a banshee, as I was that kind of kid.
At any rate, it’s taken me a fair while to forgive the whole lot of ’em and come to see wasps as a beautiful part of the natural world, to be wondered at rather than feared. They’re amazing, really – many are solitary, and lead the same singularly productive lives their ancestors did eons before their birth.
On a recent trip to the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls, MA I got to photograph a couple of wasps engaged in what they do best, making love to nectar-sweet flowers. In this case the flower was an Eryngium, of the sapphire blue “Sea Holly” variety, and the wasps were of two kinds, Sphex pensylvanicus, the Great Black Wasp:
…and Sphex ichneumoneus, the Great Golden Digger wasp:
These are two large specimens, each approaching an inch and a half in length.
Both of these Femme fatales dig vertical ground burrows with side chambers, then hunt for katydids and crickets, paralyzing them with a nice little sting and dragging them live into those subterranean crypts, where they lay their eggs on them. The larval wasps hatch and devour their still-living hosts, growing beautiful and strong thanks to Mommy’s thoughtful gifts.
Isn’t Nature wonderful?
And aren’t you glad not to be a katydid?
These shots were taken by Ziggy, my 50mm Sigma macro lens, and were a bit of an experiment – I nearly always shoot entirely manually, preferring to chose all of the parameters involved in this art form, but here I decided to give Shutter Priority and Auto a go because of the windy conditions – I wanted to shoot fast enough to freeze the motion. They did reasonably well, snagging some shots I doubtless would have missed fiddling with the dials, but the aperture was necessarily set at a low number/large opening, resulting in such a shallow depth of field that large parts of the wasps aren’t in focus. The effect, while “artsy,” isn’t really what I had hoped for.
I’ll continue to explore these modes hoping to tweak them into compliance, but I’m thinking that if I can’t improve on the results, I’d rather miss a whole lot of shots and bring home a few I’m really proud of.
Your impressions are, as always, welcomed and appreciated.
Queen Anne’s Lace. July 24, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: macro photography, queen anne's lace, Sigma 50mm lens
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Among the summer roadside flowers which I most love, Daucus Carota tops the chart. Its complex umbel of tiny white flowers is at first gilded with pink highlights:
…then flattens into a jungle of fine little blossoms:
…hosting a steady parade of predators and prey. There are no obvious dramas unfolding in these particular shots, but I’m committed to finding you some.
Later, – TCR.
Small Wonders. April 17, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: ferns, lichen, macro photography, moss, Sigma 50mm lens
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I got out today, between showers, to see which of Nature’s Children might have been coaxed from their seasonal sleep. All around there were signs of Spring, from green shoots to buds popping in the trees, despite the dampness and the chill wind. Surveying the gently swaying world, I opted to hunker down for some ground-level investigation.
My first stop was an overgrown stone wall down by the Deerfield, and there I struck Photographer’s Gold – a world of miniature structures clinging implausibly to the weathered schist boulders stacked along the road to Rowe.
Wading into an ankle-deep slurry of last year’s leaves and this year’s run-off, I contorted my tripod in a way which the better ones accommodate and set to work with Ziggy, my 50mm macro lens.
The results were gratifying for an early-season foray – last year’s miniature perennials poking through a bed of lichen:
…the reproductive trumpets of another stage of that lichen:
…and a tiny fern asserting its presence in a crowd of lichens and moss:
These colors are right out of the box, not adjusted in any way; they’re pretty nice just as Nature made them!
Thank you, Mother Earth; thank you, Father Sky.
This Bud’s For You! March 6, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: Bud, Connecticut, iris, macro photography, Sigma 50mm lens, Trader Joe's
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I was in southern Connecticut yesterday, and couldn’t help noticing that, weather wise, things there have moved considerably farther toward Spring than they have up our way.
And I necessarily got to Jonesin’ for some color.
From our kitchen island, an iris bud portends the coming change of season:
…courtesy of Ziggy, my 50mm macro lens.
This bud’s store-bought (Trader Joe’s, if you care,) but it won’t be long until the first local color appears.
I’m psyched!
Getting The Garden In. October 15, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in macro photos.Tags: Black Swallowtail, caterpillar, fennel, frost, garden, harvest, macro photography
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That is, harvesting everything which might not survive the predicted weekend weather, cold rain ending in wet snow and high winds.
The chard and tomatoes were the big picks, with hot peppers and celery being covered at night and left for a bit longer;Â our Brussels sprouts will actually benefit from this weather.
The big surprise was an uninvited guest who rode in on a sprig of fennel:
A Black Swallowtail caterpillar eyes his next meal.
But I was eying it too, so he got a ride back outside. 😉
It’s The Little Things! September 12, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: beetle, hickory nut, macro photography, moth, Sigma 50mm lens, spider
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Here are a few macro shots which I took over the weekend.
First, a little brown moth which I rescued from between our kitchen window and screen, here shot on a jade plant which it rode out the door:
Then there was this match-head size spider, hiding inside the shell of a hickory nut which had been gnawed open and eaten by a rodent:
…Thanks to Susan’s keen eye for noticing it when it was tucked up into a corner!
And last, this little beetle basking on a flower petal in our dooryard:
…looking for all the world like a little piece of jewelry.
Tomorrow we’ll return to the Big People’s World. 😉
Little Bang Theory 