Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Downy Woodpecker, Huntley Meadows Park, Picoides pubescens, Tamron 180mm macro lens, woodpecker on September 8, 2014| 7 Comments »
I don’t know where they have been hiding, but for several months this summer I hadn’t seen a single woodpecker at my local marsh. Consequently, I was really happy when I sighted this Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) right in front of me this past weekend. Downy Woodpeckers are small, but they make up for what they lack in size with an amazing amount of energy—they never seem to stand still.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Arachnids, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, Neoscona crucifera, Spotted Orbweaver, Spotted Orbweaver spider, Tamron 180mm macro lens on September 6, 2014| 7 Comments »
As I gazed across the little creek that I was following, I spotted a spider hanging in midair. The spider scrambled up one of its silken threads as I approached and stopped just short of the branch from which it had been hanging. It was pretty dark in the shade, so I cranked up the ISO to 1250, popped up the built-in flash, and propped the camera against another tree for stability.
Of the images that I attempted, this is the best one I managed of what I believe is a Spotted Orbweaver spider (Neoscona crucifera).
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, birds in flight, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, fish, Huntley Meadows Park, Osprey on September 5, 2014| 5 Comments »
For the first time in my experience, ospreys have been hanging out at my local marsh this summer, probably because of the higher water levels as a result of a massive wetland restoration project. I love watching the ospreys soaring high in the air. They are generally too far aware for me to capture their high-speed dives into the water, but occasionally I will see one catch a fish. Recently I captured some shots of the various wing positions of an osprey flying away with its freshly caught fish.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, blue heron, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, crouching heron, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park on August 29, 2014| 7 Comments »
Why was this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) crouching in the water? Was he playing hide-and-seek with his heron friends? Was he seeking shelter in the shade?
The more that I watched the heron fix his attention on the eye-level branches, the more I became convinced that he was stalking dragonflies. Several times he advanced forward slowly, never once looking down at the water, but I never saw him make the rapid thrust that he uses when catching fish. It seems to me that he would get a better reward for his efforts by catching fish and frogs, but maybe he simply wanted some variety in his diet.
When I departed, the heron was still crouching and the dragonflies remained hidden.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized, wildlife, tagged Canon 50D, Celithemis eponina, halloween pennant, Halloween Pennant dragonfly, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Richmond VA, Tamron 180mm macro lens on August 25, 2014| 13 Comments »
It’s not hard to figure out the source of its name when you spot a colorful Halloween Pennant dragonfly (Celithemis eponina) waving in the breeze. These dragonflies also remind me of pole vaulters, attempting to thrust their bodies over a crossbar while holding on to the very end of a long pole.
I have not seen one yet at Huntley Meadows Park, the place where I take the majority of my photos, though earlier this summer one of my fellow photographers, Walter Sanford, spotted one in the park for the first time in years. I shot this image at edge of a small pond during a recent trip to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, heron, Huntley Meadows Park, rock, Tamron 180mm macro lens on August 24, 2014| 10 Comments »
The Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) at my local marsh seem to have grown accustomed to the presence of people and some of them like to fish near the boardwalk. This one was so close that I had to lean backwards over the edge of the edge of the boardwalk to fit the entire heron into these shots—zooming was not an option, given that I was using a lens of a fixed focal length, a 180mm macro lens.
While I was observing the heron, it concentrated its activity around a rock that stuck out of the water, sometimes perching on it and sometimes circling around it. I hope the heron had better luck during the rest of the day, because it did not have any luck at all as I watched and waited in vain to capture a big catch.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, birds in flight, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park, low-flying heron on August 21, 2014| 8 Comments »
Most of time when I see Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) take off, they fly high into the air. This heron, however, decided to fly very low over the surface of the big pond at my local marsh—I think he was on his way to harass one of his fellow herons, because there was a lot of loud squawking shortly after I took these shots.
Generally, it’s not hard for me to decide if I want to crop a shot in landscape or portrait mode. This time, though, I vacillated and ultimately decided to do one each format. Who says you have to choose? You can have it both ways.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, mating Red-footed Cannibalflies, mating robber flies, Promachus rufipes, Red-footed Cannibalfly, robber fly, Tamron 180mm macro lens on August 19, 2014| 10 Comments »
As I was walking through my local marsh yesterday, I caught sight of a giant flying insect. Upon closer examination, it proved to be a pair of mating Red-footed Cannibalflies (Promachus rufipes).
They eventually settled on a leaf, just above eye level. It was a heavily vegetated area and it was tough getting a clear line of sight and a good angle of view (and standing on my tiptoes probably is not an optimal shooting position). This first shot was the only one I got where both of these giant insects were in focus.
At a certain point of time, one of them, which I suspect was the female, tried to escape and I got the second shot, capturing an unusual moment in time. In the original version, the background was mostly light colored, but there were some ugly smudges of greenish gray. I tried to remove them hastily in post processing to highlight better the subjects, but I noted that I didn’t do a very good job when, after the fact, I looked at the posting on a computer screen, vice my laptop, on which it was composed..
The second shot seems to be begging for a clever caption. Does anyone have a suggestion?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, birds in flight, Butorides virescens, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, green heron, Huntley Meadows Park, industrial green heron, juxtaposition on August 17, 2014| 7 Comments »
Generally I prefer to have a natural background for wildlife shots, but when a Green Heron (Butorides virescens) that I was observing this past Friday at my local marsh took off, I ended up shooting it against the backdrop of the boardwalk. I really like the look of the resulting shot, which juxtaposes those natural and industrial elements in an unusual way.
If you enjoy photos with this type of contrast of the natural and the man-made, check out my posting from this past week of an “industrial” dragonfly.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park, ruffling some feathers on August 16, 2014| 10 Comments »
Several Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) were very active yesterday at my local marsh, chasing each other around and squawking loudly. One of them flew up into a tree near to where I was standing and perched for a little while. I got this shot shortly after the heron flew down from the tree into the water and extended its wings to arrest its momentum.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria, Ardea alba, birds in flight, Canon 50D, egret, Great Egret, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 180mm macro lens, VA on August 15, 2014| 15 Comments »
I’m always thrilled to see Great Egrets (Ardea alba), like this one that I photographed on Monday at Huntley Meadows Park. Unlike Great Blue Herons, which often are willing to tolerate my presence, egrets seem to fly away as soon as they detect my presence. When egrets are flying, I never fail to be impressed by their beauty and grace, looking like ballerinas in an aerial performance.
As has frequently been the case recently, I ended up photographing a bird with a macro lens, in this case it was my Tamron 180mm. The image with the standing egret was cropped a little, but it gives you an idea of my field of view. I had crept through some chest-high vegetation in order to get near the edge of the pond for these shots.
I suspected the egret would take off and I think I had the presence of mind to switch to Servo mode on my camera, which allowed me to get some in-flight shots that are pretty much in focus. I was shooting in burst mode and captured other images as well, but the egret’s head was hid in those shots.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park, laughing on August 13, 2014| 11 Comments »
Do Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) laugh? I was intently watching this heron recently at my local marsh when he suddenly opened his mouth. It wasn’t really a yawn, and he certainly didn’t seem bored. It was more like something had struck him as funny—it might have been me.
For some reason, the words of a really old Bee Gee song came into my head, the one that begins with the words, “I started a joke.” I went searching on You Tube for the song and came across an old video of the very young Bee Gees singing the song on the Tom Jones show in 1969. If you are of my generation, you may enjoy a trip back to the 1960’s or it may be a new discovery for some younger readers—just click on this link.
As with many songs, I don’t quite understand the somewhat enigmatic lyrics—maybe you can discover their true meaning (lyrics from azlyrics.com):
“I started a joke, which started the whole world crying,
but I didn’t see that the joke was on me, oh no.
I started to cry, which started the whole world laughing,
oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was on me.
I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes,
and I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I’d said.
Til I finally died, which started the whole world living,
oh, if I’d only seen that the joke was on me.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, banding, Buteo lineatus, Canon 50D, hawk. adolescent hawk, Huntley Meadows Park, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Tamron 180mm macro lens on August 10, 2014| 11 Comments »
This past Friday morning, as I was following one of the creeks at Huntley Meadows Park, I caught sight of a large bird perched on the trunk of a fallen tree almost right in front of me. I had a 180mm macro lens on my camera, which proved just enough for me to almost fill the frame with images of the bird.
After consultations with the naturalist staff, I believe this to be an adolescent Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus). Note that the young hawk has a band on one of its legs, which was put on it at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland.
The hawk looks pretty bedraggled and the naturalists hypothesized that perhaps it had been harassed by some other birds and was recovering on the ground. The hawk was aware of my presence and looked in my direction a couple of times, but I stayed at a distance, fearful of disturbing it in a potentially vulnerable moment. Although I would have liked to have moved in closer for some shots, I moved away quietly after capturing some images, leaving the young bird in this position on the log as I departed.
© 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 Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, blue heron, Canon 100mm macro lens, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, heron catches fish, Huntley Meadows Park on August 4, 2014| 13 Comments »
I watched and waited as the Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) watched and waited. When the crucial moment came, we both reacted and were rewarded—the heron got a fish and I got a photo. For a brief moment, each of us was satisfied.
© 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 animals, Nature, Photography, wildlife, Winter, tagged Alexandria VA, beaver, breaking through the ice, Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, Castor canadensis, Huntley Meadows Park, ice, North American Beaver on July 11, 2014| 13 Comments »
Which of your images are unusual or distinctive enough that you genuinely feel like they are “once in a lifetime” photos?
Of course, all photos are unique captures of a subject at a particular moment. As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is reported to have said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”
Somehow, though, it seems like we could capture similar images in many cases if we returned to the same locations under similar conditions and were patient and persistent enough.
As I celebrate my two year blog anniversary this week, I’ve been doing a few retrospective re-postings of favorite posts from the earliest days and am continuing in that vein today with some photos of a North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) breaking through the ice of a beaver pond from below on a winter day early in 2013.
A lot of things had to work together perfectly for me to get these images and it’s hard to imagine that confluence of factors ever happening again for me. The photos and the accompanying prose help to document that very special moment.
Besides the uniqueness of that moment, there is something particularly enjoyable about posting icy winter photos as we continue to suffer through a seemingly endless cycle of hot, humid summer weather. I hope that you feel as refreshed as I do when viewing these images.
Complete text of original posting “Breaking through the ice from below“ on 30 January 2013:
The beaver had disappeared from the small open water area of the ice-covered beaver pond. Wondering if he would resurface, I stood in silent readiness with my camera still in my hand.
My eyes were focused on one area of the pond, but my ears detected a sound emanating from another location near the edge of the pond. Somehow I knew instantly what was about to happen—the beaver was about to achieve a breakthrough. The light had faded a bit and I couldn’t see well enough to focus perfectly, but I aimed at the source of the sound and got this shot of the beaver poking his head through a newly-created hole in the ice. From this perspective, it looks like the beaver is pretty small.
As I watched, the beaver placed his front paws on the ice, which appeared to be able to support his weight, and gradually pulled his body out of the water. Naturally, the small hole became a lot bigger as his large body came increasingly into view.
After the beaver was completely out of the water, he bent down over the opening that he had just created. Perhaps he was trying to decide if he needed to enlarge it further or was trying to free a tasty-looking stick from the ice. It almost looks to me, though, that he is peering into the water, wondering if one of his fellow beavers is going to be popping up to join him.
The beaver did not linger long at the new location. After a few seconds on the “outside,” he dove back into the icy waters of the pond.
There are few moments in life that are truly “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences, ones that would be impossible to replicate, but I have the sense that this was one of them. So many things had to work together to make these photos happen—the timing, the location, and the ice, to name a few.
It is supposed to get up to 70 degrees (21 degrees C) today and the ice will almost certainly be gone by the time I am able to return to the marsh this weekend. Perhaps I will get to observe the beavers eating or working or playing or maybe they will remain in the lodge. In either case, I can be happy, knowing that we shared a really special moment together.
© 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 Amphibians, Birds, Humor, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria, Butorides virescens, Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, frog, green heron, humor, Huntley Meadows Park, retrospective on July 9, 2014| 17 Comments »
Do your mix humor with your photography? I enjoy playing with words (and especially puns) and love looking for opportunities to inject humor into my blog postings. One of my favorite bloggers, Lyle Krahn at Krahnpix, is a real master at mixing his incredible wildlife shots with a kindred kind of humor (or perhaps he might say “humour.)
This past Monday was my blog’s second anniversary and I am taking a brief pause from posting new photos to think about the blog and my photographic journey over the last two years. During this period I am re-posting some of my favorite postings.
The re-posting today of an encounter between a Green Heron (Butorides virescens) and a frog was one of my earliest attempts to add humor, from the title all the way down to the last line of the posting, and is one of my favorites over the past two years. Here’s a link to the original posting or you can read it in its entirety below.
Full text of blog posting on 24 July 2012 that I entitled “Not Seeing Eye to Eye”:
One can only imagine what is going through the frog’s mind as he looks into the crazed eyes of the green heron who has just speared him. Is he looking for mercy? Is he resigned to his fate?
I watched the prelude to this moment unfold this afternoon at Huntley Meadows Park, a marshland park here in Virginia. The green heron was intently scanning the water from the edge of a boardwalk that runs through the march. Periodically he would extend his neck down toward the water.
Several times we heard an excited “eeep” sound followed by a splash, indicating another frog had escaped. After a few more minutes, however, the heron dived into the water and reappeared on the boardwalk with the speared frog you see in the first photo.
When you look at the comparative size of the heron’s mouth and the frog, it hardly seems possible that the green heron could swallow the entire frog. The heron took his time shifting the position of the frog and then all at once he turned his head, bent his neck back a little, and down went the frog. It happened so quickly that I was able to snap only a single photo that shows the frog’s webbed feet as the only remaining parts that have not yet been swallowed.
In this final photo the heron no longer has a slim neck. I have no idea how long it will take for the frog to reach the heron’s stomach but I am pretty sure he was not yet there when I took this photo.
And don’t try to talk with the heron during this period. Why not? Read the caption of the last photo!
I can’t talk now. I have a frog in my throat.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged A, Alexandria VA, beaver, Canon 55-250mm zoom lens, Canon Rebel XT, Castor canadensis, Huntley Meadows Park, North American Beaver, retrospective on July 8, 2014| 6 Comments »
How do you decide which of your photos are your favorite ones? Do you rely on technical criteria, like sharpness, or do you rely more on the overall artistic impression? Do your memories of shooting an image factor into your calculations? Do WordPress statistics play any role in your thinking?
As I noted yesterday, my blog’s second anniversary, I am taking a brief pause from posting new photos to think about the blog and my photographic journey over the last two years. During this period, I though I would re-post some of my favorite postings. I am posting them in their entirety, because I think that my prose enhances the appeal of my blog (and I find that I enjoy the creative experience of expressing myself in my words as well as in my images).
I tend to photograph a lot of insects in the summer and birds in the winter, but some of my most memorable images come from my infrequent encounters with mammals, like this tender moment that I shared with a beaver family last summer that was visible one day during the daylight hours.
In response to my initial questions, I tend to give my greatest priority to the overall artistic impression and give little weight to WordPress statistics. Some of my best photos have relatively few views, while I have a few unexceptional images that have a lot of views.
Text of the original blog posting that first appeared on 18 July 2013:
Last Friday, after some violent thunderstorms, I visited my local marshland park, where the staff alerted me that three beavers were sleeping on a patch of dry land near their lodge, which apparently had flooded. The three North American Beavers (Castor canadensis) were all snuggled together and reminded me a little of puppies. I am working up some more images, but thought that I would give a sneak preview of coming attractions.
© 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, 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.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Bar-winged Skimmer, Bar-winged Skimmer dragonfly, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, Libellula axilena, Tamron 180mm macro lens on June 30, 2014| 3 Comments »
It’s unusual for me to take a photograph of a dragonfly with my camera pointed upward, but this Bar-winged Skimmer (Libellula axilena) kept perching in the branches of a downed tree limb, enabling me to include a little patch of sky in some of the shots. This is a new species for me that was pointed out to me by fellow photographer Walter Sanford when we ran into each other at one of our favorite spots at our local marshland park. The second shot shows part of the wing pattern that is responsible for the common name of this species, “Bar-winged.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, female Great Blue Skimmer, Great Blue Skimmer, Great Blue Skimmer dragonfly, hovering, Huntley Meadows Park, Libellula vibrans, ovipositing, Tamron 180mm macro lens on June 29, 2014| 21 Comments »
It’s tough to photograph a dragonfly in flight, but when it chooses to hover, there is a slightly better chance of getting a shot. That was the case recently when I encountered this female Great Blue Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula vibrans) that was in the process of depositing her eggs in the water. As her mate circled overhead, the female dragonfly would hover over the water and then periodically dip the tip of her tail in the water before returning to the hovering position. I was able to get several images of the hovering dragonfly, but got only a single image of her depositing the eggs.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, bluet, bluet damselfly, Canon 50D, damselfly, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 180mm macro lens on June 28, 2014| 8 Comments »
Looking at my recent postings, you might come to the conclusion that I neglect damselflies, the smaller, less colorful members of the Odonata family, in favor of dragonflies. Actually, I really like damselflies, but they are so small that it is difficult to see them most of the time and quite a challenge to get a clear shot of one.
As I was searching for dragonflies, I came upon this beautiful black and blue damselfly perched on a small branch near the edge of a muddy creek and was able to get an unobstructed shot. You might think that identification would be easy, but there is a whole group of damselflies, the bluets, whose members have various combinations of black and blue.
So far, I haven’t been able to identify this damselfly, but I find its combination of black and turquoise to be elegant and really attractive.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Travel, Urban, wildlife, tagged Black-billed Magpie, Canon A620, Colorado, Denver, Magpie, Pica hudsonia on June 26, 2014| 9 Comments »
I couldn’t help but notice Black-billed Magpies (Pica hudsonia) here in Denver, Colorado, which I am visiting on a short business trip. The magpies are loud and boisterous, even in the area of my hotel just off of a major road.
It’s particularly nice to encounter these attractive birds because we don’t see them at all in Virginia. As is usually the case when I am travelling for business, I took these photos with a little Canon point-and-shoot and not my regular DSLR.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 