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Posts Tagged ‘Canon Rebel XT’

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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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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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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This photo leaves me a little confused, because the larval shell to which this damselfly is clinging seems too big for its body and looks more like it belonged to a dragonfly.

There are plenty of places on the internet where you can read about the life cycle of dragonflies and damselflies, but the short version is that they spend most of their lives in the water as nymphs. There they go through a series of larval stages in which they shed their skin that has grown too tight. Just before they molt for the final time, they climb out of the water and, once the skin dries, the damselflies emerge. They then have to rest for a little while as their wings unfurl and their legs get stronger. Only then can they fly away.

This pretty little damselfly seems to be in the resting phase on a little rock ledge at the edge of a pond at a local garden. I wanted to try to get a bit closer, but the embankment where the ledge was located was steep and muddy and I would have had to be standing in the water to get a better angle.

I like the photo a lot and find it to be weirdly fascinating. The landscape is simple and rugged, with some texture in the foreground. The moulted shell still seems lifelike and seems to be looking at us with a slightly tilted head. The damselfly itself has the only color in the image and attracts the viewers’ eyes. There is a kind of tension in the damselfly’s pose, as it hangs on with all of its strength, waiting until the moment when it can fly away.

Imagine what it would be like waiting, waiting for the moment when you take to the air for the first time, leaving behind forever your old life in the water.

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Yesterday evening when I saw a fly with a golden body perched on a leaf and decided to try to get a shot of it using my pop-up flash, several remarkable things happened.

Almost every time that I tripped the flash, the fly flew away for a split second and returned to the the leaf. Most of the the shots showed only a part of the fly’s body in the frame, but several of the images show the fly in mid-air, as you can see in the first and third image.

The flash also revealed that the fly is multi-colored to the point that I have named it a rainbow fly. (I have no idea of its real name). You can really see a lot of different colors in the second image, the only one that I managed to get of the fly sitting still.

Those who follow my blog know that I enjoy trying to capture shots of birds and insects in flight, but I never expected that I would get shots of a fly in flight, even accidentally. It shows once again the significant role that luck plays in getting interesting images.

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I have encountered some cool-looking spiders in the past, but I think that this Bold Jumping spider (Phidippus audax) just leaped to number one on my personal list.

I was checking out my neighbor’s garden (fellow blogger and photographer Cindy Dyer) this past weekend, when I saw a little movement among the flowers. The first thing that i noticed was the fuzzy body and I suspected that I had a jumping spider in front of me. It crawled all around a couple of different plants and most of the time it had its back to be. I tried to be patient as I waited for it to turn toward me, so that I could get a shot of its amazing eyes.

It is equally remarkable that the Bold (also known as Daring) Jumping spider has iridescent blue-green mouth parts that are technically known as chelicerae. At first, I thought the spider was eating something brightly colored that really made it stand out—you can’t really camouflage yourself when you have a color that distinctive.

This is the third species of jumping spider that I have now seen in this one little garden. I am not sure what attracts the spiders to it, but the garden has an equal attraction for me.

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Cabbage White butterflies (Pieris rapae) may look very ordinary at first glance, but when you look more closely, you find that they have amazingly beautiful, green speckled eyes.

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Damselflies have such narrow bodies that it’s often hard for me to get my camera to focus on them, but I love to chase after them, hoping to capture some of their beautiful colors. I was happy that I managed to get this shot of mating damselflies with enough detail to see some of the differences in coloration between the male and the female. I don’t dare try to explain the physiology of the mating process—I don’t really understand it and will leave that to the experts.

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Click on the photo to see a higher resolution view of it.

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The water lilies at one of my local gardens seem to be blooming a little late this year, but two of them finally were in bloom yesterday. Here’s a shot one of them and if you look closely you’ll notice a damselfly perched on the water lily. The image is not in his style, but water lilies always remind me of Monet, one of my favorite painters.

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I just can’t get enough of the Blue Dasher dragonfly. Here’s a shot I like of a male Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) on an unidentified green plant that I took at Hidden Pond Nature Center here in Springfield, VA. Often I will try to go for maximum possible sharpness and realism, but I like the composition of this image and it has a kind of an “artsy” look that appeals to me.

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The response was so positive to my recently posted photos of a bee on a lavender plant that I decided to post a couple more of my favorite images from that session. Unlike my previous shots that attempted to capture a bee in flight, these ones were taken while the bee was busily working. The light was starting to fade, so both of these were shot with my pop-up flash and I am happy that the flash did not totally blow out the highlights.

Using flash is an area that I have not paid much attention to, but it looks like it’s worth spending some time learning more about it and experimenting with different ways of adding additional light to my photos.

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Today there seemed to be a lot of small hover flies buzzing around the flowers, so I decided to try to get a shot of one of them. As their name suggests, these flies spend much of their time hovering, but fortunately they land sometimes, which gave me a chance to get an image of a hover fly.

Hover flies, which are also known as flower flies and syrphid flies,  are part of the insect family Syrphidae. There are quite a few different species of hover flies and I find it difficult to tell them apart, so I’ll merely identify this one as a hover fly.

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My normal instinct is to move in really close to my subject, whether it is physical movement with my macro lens or virtual movement with my telephoto zoom, but when I saw this dragonfly, I consciously pulled back in order to bring more of the stalk of the lily into the image.

This is a new species of dragonfly for me and I think it is probably a Slaty Skimmer (Libellula incesta). I love the contrast between the dark blue color of the dragonfly’s body and the orange shade of the lily.  This dragonfly’s muted colors give it a somewhat more sophisticated look that the more garishly colored Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) that I also photographed that day. (Check out my previous posting to see the contrast between the images of the two dragonflies in similar positions.)

In addition to the colors, I like the composition of the image and the water in the background blurred out pretty nicely too. In the next few weeks, I’ll be off trying to catch some shots of dragonflies on lotus flowers and waterlilies—it’s that time of the year again.

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Have you ever tried to take photos of a bee in flight? In the past, I have managed to get a few such shots accidentally, when a bee took off as I was shooting.

However, a few days ago when the light was fading in the early evening, I decided to try to photograph a bee in flight using my pop-up flash. I knew that timing would be critical, because the time required for the flash to recycle meant that I would get only one shot each attempt, and not a burst. It was a fun little challenge, even though most of my shots were out of focus.

I especially like the first image, in which the bee appears to be attempting to hover in mid-air. The second shot makes it look like the bee was free-falling, waiting for the optimal moment to deploy his tiny parachute.

It’s easy to get ultra-serious about photography and get bogged down thinking of settings and exposures and composition—it’s nice sometimes to just have fun and then share the results of the fun time.

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