Posted in Flowers, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged Alexandria VA, bee, Canon 50D, chicory, Huntley Meadows Park, pollen, Tamron 180mm macro lens, white pollen on August 11, 2014| 17 Comments »
I usually think of pollen as being bright yellow, but this past weekend I observed a small multi-colored bee covered in white pollen from what appears to be a chicory flower. Who knew that pollen could have different colors?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Flowers, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged brookside gardens, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, Epargyreus clarus, Silver-spotted Skipper, Silver-spotted Skipper butterfly, skipper, Wheaton MD on August 9, 2014| 4 Comments »
Can you name the most recognized Skipper butterfly in North America? According to Wikipedia, it’s the Silver-spotted Skipper butterfly (Epargyreus clarus), like this one that I photographed recently at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland.
I have been seeing a lot of skippers this month and many of them look so much alike that it is difficult for me to identify them The Silver-spotted Skipper’s colors may be a little drab, but I am happy that it is easy to identify it, which makes me happy, given that there are over 3500 different species of skippers worldwide, according to a separate article in Wikipedia.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Flowers, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, carpenter bee, coneflower, Eastern Carpenter Bee, Echinacea purpurea, Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, purple cone flower, Vienna VA, Xylocopa virginica on August 8, 2014| 8 Comments »
Sometimes, simple compositions of familiar subjects result in the best images, like this recent shot of an Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica) on a purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).
It came out just as I imagined when I was looking through the viewfinder of my camera and required a minimum amount of tweaking and no cropping.
At times, it’s not complicated.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, dragonhunter dragonfly, Hagenius brevistylus, Huntley Meadows Park, Promachus rufipes, Red-footed Cannibalfly, robber fly on August 8, 2014| 7 Comments »
There is something both creepy and compelling about the fearsomely-named Red-footed Cannibalfly (Promachus rufipes). I first spotted one last summer and noted in a posting that these insects, sometimes referred to as Bee Panthers, are reported to be capable of taking down a hummingbird.
I caught sight of this specimen earlier this week as I was making my way along a creek in the back area of my local marsh, searching for the equally fierce Dragonhunter dragonfly (Hagenius brevistylus). The Dragonhunter is a very large dragonfly that, as its name suggests, specializes in hunting other dragonflies (along with bees, wasps, and butterflies).
The Red-footed Cannibalfly is part of a larger group of giant robber flies of the genus Promachus, a name that in Greek means “who leads in battle,” according to Wikipedia. I am fairly confident of my identification, but would welcome any corrections from more experienced insect hunters.
Be sure to look carefully at the claws on the front legs in the image. I am sure that it’s almost impossible to escape when this predator sinks those claws into you and injects you with a toxin that paralyzes you and liquifies your insides.
As one blogger so eloquently put it, “Be thankful these insects aren’t the size of Sandhill Cranes.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, Papilio glaucus, Vienna VA on August 6, 2014| 18 Comments »
Last week I turned 60, but I am happy to confess that I still chase butterflies with much of the exuberance (if not quite the energy) of a child. There is something really special about the delicate beauty of butterflies that draws me in and the idea of their metamorphosis inspires me.
During a recent trip to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, Virginia, I was thrilled to spot this female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus). She was feeding on an identified plant that must have been tasty, because she kept moving from spot to spot on the plant, offering me multiple opportunities to get some shots.
I especially like the fact that I was able to get the sky into some of the images, reinforcing for me the idea of butterflies flying freely and lightly through the open air. Now that’s the way to live a life.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, damselflies, mating damselflies, Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, Vienna VA on August 5, 2014| 10 Comments »
Watching insects is sometimes like watching a Cirque du Soleil production, very colorful and incredibly acrobatic, like these mating damselflies that I photographed recently at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, VA.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged brookside gardens, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, family Syrphidae, flower fly, hover fly, hoverfly, Wheaton MD on August 2, 2014| 12 Comments »
I used to think that all black-and-yellow insects circling around flowers were bees, but quickly learned that many of them are flower flies (also known as hoverflies). There are a lot of different varieties of flower flies, but I think that they all belong to the Syrphidae family.
Yesterday when I was visiting Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland, I managed to capture this image of a flower fly just as it had inserted its head into a small purple flower. It’s a pretty simple composition, but I really like the way that it turned out, with a good amount of detail on the fly’s body.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged brookside gardens, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, Danaus plexippus, fly, hairy fly, juriniopsis, Monarch, monarch butterfly, Wheaton MD on August 2, 2014| 6 Comments »
Within minutes of my arrival at a garden in Maryland, I was able to photograph my first Monarch butterfly of the summer, but was also “treated” to the sight of the fattest, hairiest fly that I have ever seen, a true case of a beauty and a beast.
Brookside Gardens is a beautiful spot for photographing flowers and insects in Wheaton, Maryland in the suburban Washington, D.C. area. In one section of the garden, there is a section specifically planted to attract butterflies and it was in that area that I saw the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) along with more numerous Eastern Swallowtail butterflies.
I didn’t see a single Monarch butterfly last summer and feared that I might not see one this summer either, because of habitat issues in Mexico and the severe winter we experienced. I was therefore thrilled when I first caught sight of a Monarch and chased after them throughout the day at the garden.
My moment of joy was interrupted when I was buzzed by a very large fly. When it landed, I was startled to see that it was really plump and really hairy. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it would be tough to consider this beast to a a beauty. I poked around the internet in an attempt to identify this fly and it appears to belong to the genus Juriniopsis, though I can’t identify a specific species.
I continue to be fascinated by insects and at this time of the year you can usually find me chasing after them with my trusty macro lens, giving equal time to the beauties and to the beasts.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Butterflies, Humor, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, Cercyonis pegala, Common Wood Nymph, Huntley Meadows Park, nymph, Shakespeare on August 1, 2014| 15 Comments »
Chasing a nymph through the woods–it may sound like I was living out some fantasy as a character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I was only running after a butterfly, a Common Wood Nymph (Cercyonis pegala).
As is usually the case, I had never seen this “Common” butterfly before, but the large, yellow-ringed eyespots on the forewings make it pretty distinctive and I had no trouble finding it in an on-line identification guide.
I chased after the butterfly for quite some time before it finally came to a stop and perched on a tree. I am not sure why, but the butterfly chose to perch upside down. When I processed my images, I couldn’t decided if I should flip the image 180 degrees or not. Ultimately I decided that the flipped image, which is the first one, looked more “normal.”
Which one do you think works better, the flipped image, i.e. the first one, or the one with the original perspective, i.e. the second one?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Butterflies, Flowers, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, purple flower, skipper, skipper butterfly, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 29, 2014| 6 Comments »
A handsome little skipper feeds on a gorgeous purple flower and the result is simply beautiful.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Black Saddlebags, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, dragonflies in flight, Huntley Meadows Park, Tramea lacerata on July 29, 2014| 3 Comments »
Normally when I think of saddlebags, I think of cowboys and the Pony Express, but there is also a species of skimmer dragonflies known as Black Saddlebags (Tramea lacerata). Someone obviously thought the dark patches on the hind wings looked like saddlebags.
Unlike many of the dragonflies that I often observe, Black Saddlebag dragonflies like to fly high in the air (and not low over the water) and some of them even migrate. I was alerted to their presence at my local marsh by a recent posting by a local dragonfly expert and fellow photographer Walter Sanford, so yesterday I kept one eye to the sky yesterday as I searched for subjects to photograph.
Black Saddlebags flew over me several times and I was fortunate to get some shots of one of them in flight. It might have been nice to have used a longer lens than the 100mm macro lens that I had on my camera at the time, but the shots turned out pretty well nonetheless. The first image is the sharpest image, but I like the entire sequence of the three images and the way in which they convey a sense of the environment in which I was shooting.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Art, Dragonflies, Humor, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Blue Dasher, Blue Dasher dragonfly, Canon 50D, disco, disco dragonfly, green spring gardens, Pachydiplax longipennis, specular highlights, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 27, 2014| 14 Comments »
The light reflecting off the water in the background was really bright, creating these disco ball highlights when I took these shots of a male Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) recently at Green Spring Gardens. Normally I try to avoid distinctive specular highlights, but in this case I decided to embrace them.
Why do I suddenly feel an irresistible urge to watch Saturday Night Fever?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Libellula cyanea, Spangled Skimmer, Spangled Skimmer dragonfly, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 26, 2014| 6 Comments »
Have you ever found yourself in a thorny predicament? Last weekend, I came upon this female Spangled Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula cyanea) that had literally placed herself in such a situation.
Fortunately, dragonflies are so small, lightweight, and agile that she was able to place herself in between the thorns, out of harm’s way. If you look closely at her wings in the second image, however, you’ll see that they are tattered, suggesting that it’s been a tough season for her, probably as a result of predators, including overly aggressive male dragonflies.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, butterfly, Canon 50D, Clouded Sulphur, Clouded Sulphur butterfly, Colias philodice, green spring gardens, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 25, 2014| 6 Comments »
As I search in vain for larger, colorful butterflies, I continue to be amazed by the beauty of the smaller ones, like this Clouded Sulphur butterfly (Colias philodice) that I observed last week at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia.
Generally I like my closest shots the best when I am shooting with my macro lens, but in this case, I think I prefer the first shot below, that I took from a bit farther back. I like the way in which you can see the shadowy representations in the background of the stalks of the same kind of floweras the one one which the butterfly is feeding.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Flowers, Gardening, Humor, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, milkweed, obsessed, red milkweed beetle, Tamron 180mm macro lens, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus on July 23, 2014| 14 Comments »
Two years ago in a posting, I confessed to being obsessed with photographing Red milkweed beetles (Tetraopes tetraophthalmus). Inexorably I kept finding myself being drawn back to these bright red beetles.
I thought I had outgrown my obsession, until I encountered several of my little red friend this past weekend at Green Spring Gardens. I immediately reverted to my old behavior and began to stalk them like a paparazzo, trying to get a good shot or any shot at all.
My obsession continues.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Flowers, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, tagged Alexandria VA, bee, bees, Canon 50D, cone flower, green spring gardens, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 22, 2014| 11 Comments »
Whenever I have my macro lens on my camera I seem to be irresistibly drawn to bees, like bees to honey. No matter what else I am shooting during the summer, I always seem to have some images of bees interspersed among my other photos. Here are some of my recent favorite bee shots.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, dragonfly in flight, Eastern Amberwing, Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, green spring gardens, Perithemis tenera, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 21, 2014| 7 Comments »
Photographing any dragonfly in flight is a real challenge, but this past weekend I spent time chasing 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, with a wingspan of maybe two inches or so.
There were lots of male Eastern Amberwings buzzing around the edges of a small pond at Green Spring Gardens, one of the local gardens that I like to visit. They were within range of the 180mm macro lens that I was using, but focusing and tracking were my biggest problems. The dragonflies did tend to hover a bit, which helped a little, but it was tough to get them in focus when focusing manually and almost impossible to do so with auto-focus.
I took a lot of shots and was happy that I managed to get some in decent focus, though I did have to crop the images. As I was preparing this posting, I noticed that I spent some time a year ago attempting to photograph the same dragonfly species. I think the results this year are marginally better, but you can make your own call by clicking on this link to the posting from July 2013.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Birds, Dragonflies, Humor, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, green spring gardens, heron, Pachydiplax longipennis, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 20, 2014| 9 Comments »
A dragonfly perching on a heron? In real life it’s highly unlikely that you would see such a thing, but a male Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) decided that the metal silhouette of a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in a pond at Green Spring Gardens made a good spot to rest.
Click on any of the tiled images to see all of them full-sized in slide show mode.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Atalopedes campestris, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, Little Glassywing, Pompeius verna, Sachem, skipper, skipper butterfly, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 19, 2014| 11 Comments »
Small skipper butterflies don’t stand out as much as their larger, more colorful brethren, but they have an understated beauty that I find striking. It’s a daunting challenge, however, to identify them.
According to Wikipedia, there are more than 3500 recognized species of skippers worldwide, so I don’t feel too bad that my identification skills are weak in this area. As I looked through images on-line, I came across one identified as a Little Glassywing (Pompeius verna) that looks a bit like the one that I photographed, though my confidence level in this identification is pretty low.
I am confident, however, that I like the image I captured of the little skipper. There is a pretty good amount of detail, the background is blurred, and the leaves on which the butterfly is perched makes for an interesting pose.
UPDATE: A butterfly expert has definitively identified this as a female Sachem (Atalopedes campestris). Thanks to Joe Schelling and Jim Brock for their assistance in identifying this little skipper.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Eastern Pondhawk, Eastern Pondhawk dragonfly, Eastern Pondhawks mating, Erythemis simplicicollis, green spring gardens, mating dragonflies, summer lovin', Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 18, 2014| 10 Comments »
In the shade of the flowering lotus plants, these two Eastern Pondhawk dragonflies (Erythemis simplicicollis) found a few moments for some summer lovin’. Summer lovin’, it happened so fast.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Butterflies, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Common Buckeye, Common Buckeye butterfly, green spring gardens, Junonia coenia, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 17, 2014| 13 Comments »
Although I don’t live in Ohio, nicknamed “The Buckeye State,” I think that I can claim that Virginia also is a Buckeye state, because we are a home to the uncommonly beautiful Common Buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia).
I have seen few colorful butterflies so far this summer, besides the Great Spangled Fritillary butterflies that I featured in a posting in June. Where are all the Monarchs and Eastern Swallowtails? I don’t know if they were affected by the polar vortex of this past winter or if I am merely looking for them in all the wrong places, but their numbers seem to be unusually low this summer.
I was therefore thrilled this past Monday, when I caught sight of this Common Buckeye. Its coloration is so distinctive that I immediately recognized it and chased after it a bit. Fortunately I was able to capture several images of this beautiful creature before it flew out of sight.
Looking at these images, I am happy to proclaim that I live in a Buckeye state.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Humor, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Eastern Amberwing, Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, Huntley Meadows Park, Perithemis tenera, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 14, 2014| 9 Comments »
It may sound like a new summer beverage sensation, but the title is meant to be literal. I encountered this tiny Eastern Amberwing dragonfly (Perithemis tenera) sunning itself on a rock in a small, muddy creek in the back area of my local marshland park.
It was a bit unusual for me to see a dragonfly on a rock (usually they perch on vegetation or on the ground) and I think the texture of the rock adds visual interest to the shot without being distracting the eye. I was pleased to capture so much beautiful detail of this cool little dragonfly and was particularly happy to see how well the amber wings turned out.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged 55-, Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, caterpillar, fuzzy caterpillar, fuzzy white caterpillar, Huntley Meadows Park on July 12, 2014| 19 Comments »
How many views does your average post get? WordPress has a strange way of measuring “views” and “likes” that I haven’t quite been able to figure out, but I consider a posting to be successful if it gets about 30 views. A really popular posting might get 50 views.
As I close out my retrospective look this week at my first two years of blogging, I thought I would share again the posting that, statistically speaking, is by far the most popular. Out of the 1200+ postings that I have done, only seven have over a hundred views and the second most viewed posting has 138 views. The posting below has had 371 views.
Don’t get me wrong—I like these photos of the fuzzy white caterpillar, but I certainly don’t consider them to be my best or my favorite images. How did I get so many views?
Not long ago, Leanne Cole, one of my favorite bloggers did a couple of postings on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that included a discussion of some techniques to make your photos and postings more visible when people do searches with Google and other search tools. I think I may have inadvertently used some of these approaches with the caterpillar posting, because the majority of the views seem to have come from people who found the images as the result of a search, and not from readers of my blog.
I don’t put a lot of faith in statistics and they don’t count for much in my personal estimation of the success of a posting. However, I am by nature a very curious person, so I can’t completely ignore them, even if they seem a little crazy.
Complete text of my 3 August 2013 “Fuzzy white caterpillar” posting:
It’s hard enough to identify moths and butterflies when they are fully grown—it seems almost impossible to do so when they are caterpillars, like this fuzzy white caterpillar that I encountered today at my local marshland park.
The caterpillar had so much long hair that it was hard to see the actual body, which might have been quite small for all I could tell. It was crawling around in the cattails on a day that featured intermittent rain. If you look closely at the first shot, you can see little water drops near what I think is the area of the head.
The second shot may look like it was done with flash, but the darker background was caused merely by changing the settings on my camera and deliberately overexposing the image.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, butterfly, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, Lethe genus, Tamron 180mm macro lens, woods on July 10, 2014| 6 Comments »
When I am walking through the woods adjacent to the marsh, I often see small brown butterflies flitting about, but it’s rare that one lands in a place where I can photograph it. Last week, however, I got lucky and I was finally able to get some shots of one of these elusive butterflies.
Now that I have the images, I am faced with the difficult task of trying to identify the butterfly. There are a lot of brown butterflies with a numerous eye spots on the wings and to my untrained eyes, they all look pretty much the same. I think this one may be of the genus Lethe, but is it a Pearly Eye, an Appalachian Brown, an Eyed Brown, or something entirely different?
For now, I’ll fall back on an old habit and make up my own name for the butterfly and call it the Beautiful Woodland butterfly.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged anniversary, Blue Dasher, Blue Dasher dragonfly, Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, Pachydiplax longipennis, retrospective, Washington D.C. on July 7, 2014| 16 Comments »
Two years ago today, my photography mentor and dear friend Cindy Dyer sat me down at her computer and told me that I was going to start a blog. We had just returned from a photo shoot at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington D.C. and had taken lots of shots of waterlilies, lotus flowers, and dragonflies.
Cindy is a professional photographer and web designer and I had previously looked at her blog (which currently has had over 560,000 views), but I had never really thought about starting a blog myself. Inside I had all kinds of concerns about my inadequacies as a photographer and about not being ready to share my images with an audience broader than, but Cindy was undeterred and helped me choose a theme and a banner and set up my basic page.
My first posting was short, only 14 words and included a shot of a Blue Dasher dragonfly. I have reposted it below for your convenience or you can use the link in the first sentence of this paragraph.
Today’s posting is posting number 1,224. I never imagined that I would enjoy this blog as much as I have or that I would continue so faithfully to document my journey into photography. Thanks to so many of you readers who have encouraged and supported me along the way.
I may take a pause this week to reflect on that journey and possibly re-post some of my favorites from the last two years. Don’t worry, though, I be back to posting new images before long.
My first WordPress posting on 7 July 2012:
I photographed this Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens this morning.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, carpenter bee, coneflower, Eastern Carpenter Bee, Echinacea purpurea, purple coneflower, Runnymeade, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 6, 2014| 12 Comments »
Do your review your photos rapidly before you choose the ones to post or do you carefully and systematically evaluate them and only then select the best ones?
I am often in a hurry. Sometimes I will stop to work on a shot that I like before I have even reviewed the complete set of images. I generally don’t work up postings in advance and I’ll write up the posting and push the “Publish” button with out realizing that I may have unmined gold waiting to be discovered.
Only later, when I go through the entire set of shots do I realize that I have a better shot than the one I posted and realize I should have at least posted both of them. If the differences are only minor, I won’t do an additional posting, but sometimes, like today, I feel compelled to post a second image.
As was the case in yesterday’s posting, this is a shot of what I think is an Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica)—or possibly a bumblebee— on a Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). The angle and the lighting helped me capture a significant amount of the detail and texture of both the bee and the flower and the colors came through with a beautiful vibrancy. The bee was in an unusual position, which adds to the visual interest of the image.
This is one of my favorites of my recent images. You might think that this experience will teach me a lesson about the value of a full review before choosing images to process, but I suspect that this will happen again from time to time. I know my habits too well.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, bee, Canon 50D, carpenter bee, coneflower, Eastern Carpenter Bee, Echinacea purpurea, purple coneflower, Runnymeade, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 5, 2014| 11 Comments »
Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day, but it was very breezy, which made it tough for me to get decent shots of bees in my neighbors’ garden. I am still going through my photos (and deleting a lot of them), but I was immediately drawn to this image of an Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica) on a Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).
Although the dark background suggests the use of flash, I wasn’t using any flash and the shutter speed of 1/400 in the EXIF data is faster than the synch speed of my flash. I was trying to get as close to the bees as I could and the height of the coneflowers made it possible to get at eye level with the bee and get this head-on shot.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Dragonflies, Humor, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Blue Dasher, Blue Dasher dragonfly, Canon 50D, drama, dramatic, Huntley Meadows Park, Pachydiplax longipennis, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 4, 2014| 11 Comments »
What adds drama to a photo? Sometimes it is the lighting of a scene or the positioning of a subject. These recent shots of Blue Dasher dragonflies (Pachydiplax longipennis) seem to have a bit more drama and are more “artsy” than many of my typical images.
Should I start wearing a beret now when I am shooting?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Cabbage White, Cabbage White butterfly, Pieris rapae on July 3, 2014| 5 Comments »
When the weather turns hot and humid, even the insects seem to enjoy the shade, like this Cabbage White butterfly (Pieris rapae) that I encountered recently while searching for dragonflies. I never fail to be amazed at the speckled green exotic eyes of this common butterfly.
The Cabbage White’s almost pure white body, though, is often a real challenge for me, because it seems to confuse my camera’s metering system and images are often severely overexposed. In this image. I think I used spot metering to try to get the correct exposure, which seemed to help. However, there was a greenish color cast in the initial shot, probably caused by the light filtering through the leaves, that I had to fix in post-processing.
The Cabbage White does not have the spectacular colors of many other butterflies, but nonetheless possesses an understated elegance that I find really attractive.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, damselfly, Huntley Meadows Park, Lestes rectangularis, Slender Spreadwing, Slender Spreadwing damselfly, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 2, 2014| 10 Comments »
Two things really struck me when I first encountered this damselfly—its captivating blue eyes and its extraordinarily long abdomen.
Most damselfly fold in their wings when they are at rest, but damselflies of the Lestidae family keep them open and are commonly known as spreadwings. Only two members of this family are on the species list for my marshland park—the Swamp and the Slender Spreadwing—and this looks to me like might be a male Slender Spreadwing damselfly (Lestes rectangularis).
I would welcome a correction or confirmation of my identification, because I feel almost clueless when it comes to identifying damselflies.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Eastern Amberwing, Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, Huntley Meadows Park, Perithemis tenera, Tamron 180mm macro lens on July 1, 2014| 11 Comments »
Compared to the other dragonflies that I have photographed, the Eastern Amberwing (Perithemis tenera) is tiny, typically less than an inch in size (25mm), but it has such a distinctive look that it is easy to identify.
I was able to approach this dragonfly from the rear and from above as it was perched on some vegetation overhanging a muddy creek and I don’t think it sensed my presence, even though I was pretty close to it. .
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
The fi
Mike Powell 