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Archive for July, 2013

All of the photos that I have posted this year of the Eastern Pondhawk dragonfly (Erythemis simplicicollis) have been of females, which are a beautiful emerald green, but I think that you will agree that the male in this photo is equally stunning. I love the mixture of blue and green on its body and was particularly happy to capture this one perched on a colorful flower.

This is a shot from couple of weeks ago, when I was able to borrow my friend’s Nikon D7000 and Tamron 180mm macro lens for a little while while we were shooting at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in the District of Columbia. Every time that I look over the images that I shot, I am impressed by the results that I was able to achieve with a “foreign” camera—normally I shoot with a Canon.

Pondhawk lorez

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This Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly (Speyeria cybele) was so cooperative that I was able to get amazingly close to it with my 100mm macro lens and photograph it from some unusual angles.

This is the third (and final) posting from this session with the Fritilary (I love saying the butterfly’s name) and I realize that I have moved in a kind of progression. My first posting showed the butterfly from a “normal” perspective. Then I shifted to a somewhat unusual perspective in the second posting by shooting from below the butterfly.

In these final shots, I tried to get eye-to-eye with the fritillary. In the first image, I was almost directly over the butterfly and managed to capture some wonderful details. Who knew the butterfly would be so hairy? In the second shot, I tried to put myself on the same level as the Fritillary as it got nectar from a beautiful white cone flower. If you want to see the photos in greater resolution, click on the images.

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It’s unusual for me to see a red dragonfly, so yesterday I chased around several of them and have concluded that they are probably Needham’s Skimmer dragonflies (Libellula needhami), a species that I have never before encountered.

In addition to the red-orange bodies, these dragonflies have reddish-brown veins in their wings, which make them very striking. There is another species, Golden-winged skimmers (Libellula auripennis), that is supposed to look like the Needham’s Skimmers, so I may be off in my identification—I will leave the final call to experts.

I’m keeping my eyes open and hope that I’ll be able to find a few more species that are new to me before the summer ends, though it’s tough right now to go outdoors with temperatures in the daytime around 95 degrees F (35 degrees C) and very humid.

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Soaring summer temperatures have caused the water level in some areas of my marshland park to drop and Northern Water snakes (Nerodia sipedon) can now be seen trolling these shallow waters for prey. Yesterday, in one small area I saw three of these snakes and managed to get shots of two them.

Sometimes the snakes will sit on brush and logs just above the level of the water, as in the first photo, while in other cases they submerge their bodies in the water, with their heads sticking out of the water, as in the second photo.

I like the way that the first image shows the details of the snake’s scales and like how the second photo highlights the marking on the snake’s body (and realize that some folks may find both images to be creepy).

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I am always amazed that butterflies can fly with wings that are severely damaged. This morning I encountered this beautiful female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) that had suffered some major damage to the area where the wings attach to the body. Despite the tears to the wings, the butterfly seemed unhindered in its flight and was busily at work, flying from bush to bush.

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I haven’t seen a huge number of butterflies this summer, so I was happy to see a colorful butterfly this past weekend, which I believe is a Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus).

UPDATE: My tentative identification as a Monarch was not correct. Thanks to Jeremy Sell at The Life of Your Time for his help in identifying this as a Viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus archippus).

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It was fun chasing this Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly (Speyeria cybele) around my neighbors’ garden as it moved from flower to flower. I tried to capture it from different perspectives and got some artsy looking shots that I really like.

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How do you get a sharp photo of a hummingbird’s wings? Apparently, if a hummingbird is hungry enough, it will extract the nectar from a flower before it has bloomed, and the leverage required may force it to perch on the flower, doing away with the necessity to fly its wings rapidly.

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Walking on the boardwalk at my local marshland park, the last thing on my mind was a hummingbird—I was searching for butterflies and dragonflies.  As I turned a corner, I saw a flash of color and figured it was a butterfly. I took a closer look and realized it was a hummingbird, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris).

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The hummingbird was circling around a plant with red, trumped-shaped flowers that was partially hanging over the boardwalk. Most of the flowers had not yet bloomed, so the bird seems to have decided to use its bill to drill into the side of the unopened flowers to extract the nectar. That decision was largely responsible for me being able to get some shots, because it caused the hummingbird to hang around longer.

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I realized that I had a limited window of opportunity and made a quick adjustment to my camera to increase the shutter speed of my camera, although that meant I had to narrow my depth of field. I also ended up shooting downward, with the gray composite boards of the boardwalk as the background. It was definitely a challenge to keep the camera focused on the hummingbird.

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The photos are not perfect, but I am pretty happy that I was able to get photos at all, given that this is only the second time that I have seen a hummingbird in the wild. Next time, perhaps I’ll manage to get a more traditional shot of a hummingbird hovering in the air.

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Having spotted some lotus flower buds at the aquatic garden last weekend, I remember thinking how cool it would be to see a dragonfly perching  on a lotus bud and then it happened—a male Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) landed on the tip of one of the buds.

When stalking dragonflies, I always hope that they will choose a photogenic perch, but most of the time the perches are nondescript, at best, and the background is often cluttered.

I would like to claim that I have special powers as a dragonfly whisper, but I was unusually fortunate and am happy that I was able to get some good photos when the circumstances presented themselves.

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I continue to be amazed at the insects that visit my neighbors’ garden and yesterday I was thrilled to see this Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly (Speyeria cybele). The beautiful butterfly moved around a lot among the flowers and even returned after flying away, which gave me time to change lenses.

I took this shot of the butterfly on a cone flower with my 100mm macro lens. I wanted take the photograph at eye-level with the butterfly, but initially the background was too cluttered and there was too much light coming from the back, which caused the butterfly to be shadowy.  I decided to use my pop-up flash, suspecting that the background would go black and the detail of the butterfly would be revealed, which is what happened.

The result looks a little bit artificial, but I like the effect that I managed to achieve. I am working on a couple more images of the butterfly taken in natural light, so you may see it again soon.

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I love the coloration of this male Slaty Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula incesta) that I photographed last weekend at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in the District of Columbia.  Somehow I was able to get both an interesting perch and a blurred background—all too often I get one or the other.

Black Dragonfly lorezB

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When I first spotted this dragonfly, I thought it was a wasp—it was that small. As I continued to observe it, however, I realized that it was a tiny dragonfly.

Its wings reminded me a little of a Halloween Pennant dragonfly (Celithemis eponina), one of the most exotic-looking dragonflies that I have ever photographed, but it was far too small. (Check out this previous posting for a look at the Halloween Pennant.)

This dragonfly seemed even smaller than the Eastern Amberwing dragonfly (Perithemis tenera), the smallest dragonfly that I had encountered, and I figured it couldn’t be an Eastern Amberwing, because it did not have amber wings. I was wrong. Once again I had allowed myself to be misled by the name of a species. It turns out that this is almost certainly a female Eastern Amberwing, and females have clear wings with brown spots, not amber wings.

I continue to be amazed at the dragonfly’s diminutive size. According to the Field Station at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Eastern Amberwings are considered to be wasp mimics, because of their coloring, their rapid, erratic flight, and the way they twitch their wings and abdomens when at rest. The Latin name tenera means “tender” or “delicate,” a description that seems to fit this little dragonfly quite well. If you want to learn more about the Eastern Amberwing, you should check out the Field Station website.

Large or small, at rest or in motion, dragonflies are one of my favorite photographic subjects at this time of the year. Their beautiful colors and incredible agility never cease to amaze me.

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During my trip last weekend to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, I used a Nikon D7000 with a Tamron 180mm macro lens to take some shots while my fellow photographer, Cindy Dyer, relaxed in the shade on a hot, steamy day.

I use a Canon, so it was not immediately obvious to me where the controls were for various functions on the Nikon.  I didn’t really have much time to poke around in the menus, so I just shot. I knew that the camera was set for aperture priority, but I didn’t realize until later that it was set at f/20.  What that meant was that the two shots that I am posting here were shot at 1/100 and 1/80 of a second respectively. I am a little surprised that they came out relatively sharp, because the Tamron lens is pretty heavy and is not a VR lens.

The subject matter is pretty familiar for folks who follow my blog—a Cabbage White butterfly (Pieris rapae) and a Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis). I like the way that both images turned out, with beautiful backgrounds.

Did the Nikon set-up make a difference? It was nice shooting with a camera with a bigger and brighter viewfinder than my Canon Rebel XT, but that is more a function of shooting with a much newer camera. What was especially nice, though, was shooting with a 180mm macro lens. The lens felt comfortable and gave sharp results, even if focusing was a bit slow when it had to move through the full range in autofocus mode.

I probably am not ready to go over to the dark side and embrace a Nikon—in my experience it seemed that the Nikon was different from my Canon, but not necessarily better. I may consider, however, the Tamron 180mm macro lens. I love my Canon 100mm macro lens, but sometimes it would be nice to have that little extra reach and still be able to get true macro results.

Cabbage White lorezBlue Dasher lorez

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It was bound to happen. No more than I few days ago I lamented that I had never seen a dragonfly eating, in responding to a wonderful posting by Sue of Backyard Biology about dragonflies as super predators—you should check out her posting, unless you are squeamish about things like headless dragonflies.

Sure enough, this past weekend I was able to get some photos of a female Eastern Pondhawk dragonfly (Erythemis simplicicollis) with a bee that she had captured. Initially, I was just trying to get a photo of the beautiful emerald-colored dragonfly on the plant in the second photo. I didn’t even realize that she was cuddling a bee in her front legs, almost like a little baby.

Eventually she flew down from the plant to the edge of the boardwalk to enjoy her meal and I got the first shot. I had to lean over the edge of the boardwalk to get the photo and just barely avoided falling into the bushes below.

My usual experience is that I am so excited about photographing a subject the first time that I not very concerned about the quality of the images. I will keep my eyes open and hope to capture some more images of dragonflies feeding.

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I have not yet seen many colorful butterflies this summer, so I was thrilled this past weekend when I observed a female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) feeding on a Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) and managed to get a couple of good shots.

The first image has a dreamy quality and a softness that I like, with a background that is almost pastel. The body of the butterfly is clearly visible, with its proboscis fully extended.

In the second shot, the colors are more vivid and the butterfly’s head is obscured. However, the wings are open wide and in a beautiful position.

My favorite is the first one. Is there one that you prefer?

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I love all water lilies, but somehow the pink ones had a special attraction for me this past weekend, when I visited Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, a wonderful treasure in the District of Columbia administered by the National Park Service. The surrounding lily pads and the duckweed in the foreground really help to showcase the delicate beauty of this flower.

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It’s not often that I have the luxury of consciously composing the background when I am photographing a dragonfly, but this Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) was cooperative enough that I was able to frame the shot with a lily pad in the background. As a bonus, the colors of the background are a pretty good match for the colors of the dragonfly.

Who knew that dragonflies were so stylish? Maybe the coordinated colors helps the males to attract prospective mates. The less stylish dragonflies probably have to rely on the insect equivalent of eHarmony.com.

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It seems like I have been seeing Green Herons (Butorides virescens) everywhere recently. Of course, that is an exaggeration, but within the last month I have encountered Green Herons in three separate locations.

Out of the three locations, this is the most suburban—a little pond at a local garden, surrounded by grass on most sides. The other locations are in marshy, wooded areas.

I observed this Green Heron this past weekend and think it is a juvenile. Normally I have trouble identifying juvenile birds, but adult Green Herons have yellow legs, while juveniles have greenish legs.

I happened to have my 100mm macro lens on my camera, so I had to try to inch my way toward the heron to get this shot. I like the heron’s pose with its head tilted up. Ideally I would have liked to blur out the background more, but I don’t find the green grass to be too distracting.

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I love back lighting and I was really struck by the beauty of the light coming though the giant leaves of an Elephant Ear plant this past weekend, highlighting the details of the plant. The veins are very prominent and the colors and patterns are gorgeous.

This image is more abstract than my usual photos, but sometimes it’s nice to shoot something a little different.

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Imagine what it would be like to climb out of the secure watery world that you have always known onto an exposed blade of grass to wait for a transformation to take place, a transformation from the inside.

Impatiently waiting for your skin to dry in the sun, you prepare to break out of your former body, unfurl your wings, and fly into the air. You’ve waited all your life for this moment, when you emerge as a dragonfly. How hard it must be to wait for the transformation to be complete. At last you take off, forever changed, leaving behind the empty outer shell as the sole evidence of your former existence.

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As I was walking along the boardwalk at my local marsh in the early afternoon of a very hot and humid day this weekend, I spotted a deer in the brush, my closest encounter with a deer in a long time.

Immediately I stopped, fearful that I would spook the deer. The deer was close enough that I figured that I could get a good shot. I was wrong. The strong, harsh midday light was coming directly from the side, and despite my efforts to adjust my settings, virtually all of my shots had one side of the deer’s face with blown out highlights and the other side in deep shadows. It might sound artistic, but it wasn’t.

I slowly began to move toward the deer, hoping to get a more favorable lighting situation, when, sure enough, the deer turned around and ran away from me. I thought that all was lost, but then the deer stopped and turned to look back at me. Somehow, the deer had moved to a spot where there was a little shade and I managed to get this shot.

Frankly, my deer, I don’t give a damn that you chose to move away from me—I love you more from a distance.

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One year ago today I made my first posting on this blog, an image of a Blue Dasher dragonfly in a pose that I later learned was called the obelisk pose, and it seems appropriate on this anniversary to post a similar shot that I took yesterday.

Blue Dasher Undulate

I remember well that first day, when my photography mentor and good friend, Cindy Dyer, sat me down at her computer and helped me set up my account. She was pushing me to get more serious with my photography and she somehow sensed that a blog would be a good creative outlet. Given the fact that this is my 723rd posting on this blog, it turns out that she was amazingly prescient. I could not have done it without here constant support, encouragement, and inspiration. Thanks, Cindy.

I have learned a lot about photography this past year, but more significantly I have learned a lot about myself through all of these postings. I have also had the wonderful experience of being part of an incredibly supportive community of fellow bloggers, who have been extravagantly free in providing encouragement and assistance. I look forward to my daily interaction with so many of my readers.

Statistically speaking, I’ve had over 23,00o views of my previous 722 posts from readers in 85 countries. I am honored that 479 of them have chosen to follow my blog.

My audience is a diverse one—some of you take photos of the same subjects as I do, but many of you express yourselves in words and photos of different themes. I looked over some of the statistical formation that WordPress provides to see if I could determine what type of postings were the most popular, based on the number of views, and realized that there is no magic formula. Some photos with single posts worked well, but sometimes ones with multiple photos and a lot of text were equally popular. Creepy bugs and beautiful flowers—there seems to be an audience for all kinds of images.

I continue to follow the approach that I started with a year ag0, to post photos that I personally find interesting or beautiful and share some of my thoughts about the subject or the situation in which I took the photo.

Some of you may be curious about the posting that had the most hits this past year. I though about reprising the photos themselves, but I decided that it was better to include links instead, so that you could read the text that surrounded the images, in order to understand better the context.

Here are the ten most popular postings this past year on my blog, starting from the one with the most views:

The dominant theme that connects these diverse subjects my insatiable curiosity to know more about the world around me and to capture some of nature’s beauty in my photography. Somehow in the process of this ongoing journey of discovery, I have come to finally consider myself to be a photographer, and not just someone who takes pictures.

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How do you approach each day? Do you embrace it with all of your energy, like this bumblebee seems to be doing as it leaps into a patch of Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)? Most mornings, my body needs the stimulation of coffee and bright colors like those in this photo have the same effect in awakening my other senses.

I had never seen Butterfly Weed until a few days ago, when I encountered it at a local garden, and I was immediately captivated by its vibrant color. According to Wikipedia, it is a species of milkweed native to North America that attracts butterflies and hummingbirds (and obviously bees too).

I love the unusual position of this bee. It looks like he is skydiving, gliding through the air.

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Although it was hot and steamy this morning when I traveled to Kenilworh Aquatic Gardens in the District of Columbia with some friends, the gorgeous lotuses and water lilies in bloom made the trip worthwhile.

Most of the water lilies were white or pink, but in one area they had these especially beautiful purple water lilies. This photo is the first installment of several postings that I plan to do of the dragonflies and flowers that I managed to photograph today.

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Earlier this week I posted some images of the Eastern Amberwing dragonfly (Perithemis tenera) in flight, but you can see the details of this tiny dragonfly better in this shot of one perched on a branch. It’s always a treat for me to get shots of these beautiful little dragonflies, because they are so small (less than one inch (25mm) and very active.

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It doesn’t get much more simple or more beautiful than this—a fuzzy bumblebee on a Purple Cone Flower (Echinacea purpurea).

I got as close as I could with my macro lens, eye-to-eye with the bee, and managed to capture some of the incredible details and colors of both the flower and the bee. Except for a minor amount of cropping and tweaking, this is pretty much what the image looked like when I first pulled it up on my computer.

It’s enjoyable to chase after more exotic creatures and environments to photograph, but it is reassuring to know that beauty is never far away—it is present in the ordinary.

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Why do hawks scream? That question ran through my head yesterday during a visit to a local garden, when the call of a hawk rang out almost continuously for long periods of time.

Twice I managed to see the hawk, which I think may be a Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) and got some shots of it. Although I was able to get a shot of the hawk perched on the limb of the tree (the second photo here), I prefer the first image.

I had observed the hawk flying to the branches of a tree that was relatively near to where I was. The photographic challenge for me was that the hawk was mostly in the shade and the sharp upward angle made it tough to get a good shot. After a few minutes on the branch, the hawk took off and I got a couple of photographs before the hawk disappeared into the trees.

I really like the outstretched wings and tail of the hawk as it took to the air. Note too that the hawk’s mouth is open—I think he was still screaming.

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Sometimes an insect or a spider is so small that it seems almost impossible to get a clear shot of it, which was the case the this morning with this tiny crab spider.It was located in a place where a tripod was not feasible and the spider kept changing its position.

I kept shooting and got this image that is kind of artsy. The spider ended up as merely one element of the composition. I especially like the limited color palette and the different shades of green and brown that are present in the image.

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Globe Thistles (Echinops ritro) have an interesting geometric look when viewed from a distance, but they get even more magical up close, when the spiky parts of the flower seem to glow like little Christmas lights.

As I was admiring the thistles in my neighbors’ garden, I spotted this beetle, which I think might be a Banded Longhorn Beetle (Typocerus velutinus). The beetle was slowing searching for prey, weaving his way through the spiked protrusions of the plant. I decided to try to get at eye level with the beetle and to shoot through the thistle.

In most of the shots that I took, the beetle’s face was hidden, but I was happy to get this image in which the face and antennae are visible. Given that the beetle was moving, I am also content that this macro shot is pretty much in focus and the important elements are not blurred.

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It’s tough enough to try to photograph any dragonfly in flight, but this past weekend I chased after some of the smallest ones, the Eastern Amberwing dragonflies (Perithemis tenera).

According to Bugguide, these dragonflies are typically 21-24mm in length, which is less than one inch. There were lots of Eastern Amberwings buzzing around the edges of a small pond at one of the local gardens that I like to visit. They were within range of the 100mm macro lens that I was using, but focusing was my big problem. Even though they tended to hover a bit, it was tough to get them in focus when focusing manually and impossible to do so with auto-focus.

The amber wings of this dragonfly are distinctive and I was happy to get some images that showcase the wings. The shots are not quite as sharp as they might have been if I had captured the dragonflies perched, but they seemed to be in constant motion and never posed for me. Focusing manually is still an adventure for me when the subject is moving, but it is a fun challenge.

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One of my favorite plants in my neighbors’ garden is the Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro), a magical plant that has fantastic balls of tiny flowers tinged with blue, purple, and pink and has the additional benefit of attracting bees.

The plant’s spherical shape makes it a little tough to photograph and creates real issues with depth of field, but I managed to get a few shots that highlight both the shape and texture of the plants and the activity of the bees that were gathering pollen from them.

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