Posted in Bees, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, blanket flower, Canon 50D, genus gaillardia, green spring gardens, metallic green sweat bee, sweat bee, Tamron 180mm on June 24, 2022| 4 Comments »
We have had rain and clouds the last few days and I feel the need for a pop of color today. This blanket flower (g. Gaillardia) provided a wonderfully colorful backdrop for a little bee that I spotted during a recent trip to Green Spring Gardens. I think that it may be some kind of sweat bee, but I did not get a close enough look at it to be able identify it.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Flowers, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, hover fly, hoverfly, Tamron 180mm, water lily on June 23, 2022| 20 Comments »
There was only one water lily in bloom last week at Green Spring Gardens—it did not have to share the spotlight with any other floating flowers. In some ways, its uniqueness made it even even more special. I love water lilies, but it may be a bit early for them to be blooming, at least at this pond.
As I was looking through my camera’s viewfinder, trying to think of an interesting way to photograph the single water lily, I spotted a tiny hover fly making a beeline for the center of the water lily. I reacted quickly and frantically clicked away. In most of my shots, the hover fly was out of focus, but my luck and timing allowed me to capture the first image below, in which the little insect is in relatively sharp focus—click on the image to get a closer look at the patterns on the hover fly’s body.
I realize that some viewers may prefer to enjoy the beauty of a flower without having to see insects, so I have added a second shot of the water lily that I took from a slightly different angle. No matter which image you prefer, I am confident that you will agree that the water lily is stunning—I love the way that the center of the flower seems to glow.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in damselfly, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, damselfly ovipositing, Eastern Forktail, Eastern Forktail damselfly, green spring gardens, Ischnura verticalis, Tamron 180mm on June 21, 2022| 11 Comments »
As I was visiting a small pond at Green Spring Gardens last week, checking to see if the lotus flowers and water lilies were in bloom, I detected some movement at the edge of the water. It took me a moment to spot some tiny Eastern Forktail damselflies (Ischnura verticalis) that were buzzing around the vegetation sticking out of the water. Eastern Forktails are quite small, about 0.8-1.3 inches (20-33 mm) in length.
I got down as low as I could and captured several images of a beautiful female Eastern Forktail. In the first shot, she perched and posed for me, so I had the luxury of carefully composing my shot. Click on the photo to see the wonderful details of this damselfly, including her stunning two-toned eyes. Eastern Forktails are quite small, about 0.8-1.3 inches (20-33 mm) in length.)
In the second shot, she was perching on the edge of a lily pad with the tip of her abdomen in the water. She was in the process of depositing eggs into the bottom of the lily pad or possibly into the stem of the plant.
As it turned out, it is still too early for the lotus flowers to bloom, though the plants were producing lots of leaves. There was one white water lily that was blooming, so the scene at the pond does not yet remind me of a Monet painting.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Arachnids, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Dolomedes triton, green spring gardens, Six-spotted Fishing Spider, Tamron 180mm on June 17, 2022| 10 Comments »
I was thrilled to spot this cool-looking Six-spotted Fishing Spider (Dolomedes triton) yesterday at Green Spring Gardens, a county-run historic garden in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from where I live. These spiders usually keep several of their legs on the surface of the water and detect the vibrations of potential prey and them scamper across the water to capture their targets.
Initially the spider had its legs anchored on the edge of a colorful lily pad a short distance from the edge of a small pond, as shown in the first photo. When I got a little too close, the spider moved a short distance away, as shown in the second photo, but eventually it returned to its original spot.
Fishing spiders like this one are quite large—a female can grow to be about 2.4 inches (60 mm) in length, including her legs, while the male is somewhat smaller. According to Wikipedia, Six-spotted Fishing Spiders hunt during the day and can wait can wait patiently for hours until stimulated by prey. Potential prey include both aquatic insects and terrestrial insects that have fallen into the water, tadpoles, frogs, and small fish. Amazingly, these spiders are capable of capturing fish up to five times their body size, using venom to immobilize and kill the prey.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Flowers, Gardening, Nature, Photography, spring, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, g. Tradescantia, green spring gardens, spiderwort, Tamron 180mm on June 6, 2022| 9 Comments »
I love the triangular shape of Spiderwort plants (genus Tradescantia). I tend to think of spiderworts as being a bluish-purple in color, but was delighted to discover them blooming in a variety of colors during a recent visit to Green Spring Gardens, a county-run historical garden near where I live. I think my favorite color combination may be the one in the middle photo, with the white flowers and the purple “fuzz” in the center.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Flowers, Gardening, Nature, Photography, spring, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, Love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena, Tamron 180mm on May 31, 2022| 22 Comments »
During a recent trip to Green Spring Gardens, a county-run historic garden near where I live, I was delighted to see that Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) was in bloom. Love-in-a-mist is a flower that looks like it came from outer space, with wild tendrils shooting out of its middle and green spiky vegetation surrounding it. Like many forms of love, the flower simultaneously looks to be both inviting and threatening.
I find this flower to be incredibly beautiful and exotic and it is one of my favorites. Typically Love-in-a-mist is blue, but it also comes in shades of white, pink, and lavender. Many flowers lose our interest after they have bloomed, but I find the seedpods of Love-in-a-mist to at least as intriguing as the flower itself, as you can see in the final photo.
When I did a little research I learned that the striped, balloon-shaped object that I call a seedpod, is actually an inflated capsule composed of five fused true seedpods, according to an article by Wisconsin Horticulture. I also discovered that the thorny-looking spikes that make up the “mist,” which are not sharp, despite their appearance, are technically bracts, a specialized kind of leaves.
I smile whenever I use the name of this flower—we can always use more Love, whether it comes in a mist, in the sunshine, or even in a downpour.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Flowers, Gardening, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Winter, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, edelweiss, g. Galanthus, green spring gardens, snowdrop, snowdrops, Tamron 180mm, The Sound of Music on January 25, 2022| 22 Comments »
In the deepest darkest days of winter, there is still new growth, like these snowdrop flowers (g. Galanthus) that I spotted yesterday at Green Spring Gardens, a county-run historic garden not far from where I live.
I decided to mix things up a bit and put my macro lens on my camera for the first time in months, hoping that I might find flowers in bloom. What can I possibly find that would be flowering in late January? We have had over a foot (30 cm) of snow already this month and some frigid temperatures, a harsher winter than in recent years. I knew from past experience, though, that there was a good chance that some snowdrop flowers would be in bloom—my challenge was to find them.
I searched in vain in flowerbed after flowerbed, until finally I found several small patches of these pretty white flowers. The words to the song Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, one of my favorite musicals, came to mind. Although edelweiss is a completely different flower, the words of the song seemed to fit my snowdrops so well.
“Every morning you greet me
Small and white, clean and bright
You look happy to meet me
Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow
Bloom and grow forever.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Danaus plexippus, green spring gardens, Monarch, monarch butterfly, Tamron 180mm on August 20, 2021| 5 Comments »
With all of the recent rain, I have not gotten out as much as I would have liked—today’s weather forecast noted that we have had rain during nine of the last ten days. So I decided to share another photo today of a Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) from my visit last Friday to Green Springs Garden.
In a previous posting entitled Monarchs at last, I showed Monarchs feeding on brightly-colored flowers. The background in today’s image is much more muted and the butterfly appeared to be relaxing rather than actively feeding. I love the way that you can see the butterfly’s curled-up proboscis from this angle, looking almost like a very large nose-ring—yeah, I imagine this to be a punk rock butterfly.
Have a wonderful Friday.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Flowers, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Archilochus colubris, Canon 50D, cardinal flower, green spring gardens, hummingbird, Lobelia cardinalis, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Tamron 180mm on August 18, 2021| 19 Comments »
If photography were an Olympic sport, would it be an individual sport or a team sport? Generally I prefer to go out with my camera on my own, following my own interests at my own pace. I like the sounds of silence punctuated only by the songs of the birds singing or the wind rustling through the treats, rather than by the harsher tones of the human voice.
I also like to keep moving and start to feel restless if I stay in a spot for more than a few minutes. I guess my style would be most closely related to that of the Olympic biathlon. This winter sport combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. Competitors spend most of their time in motion, stopping periodically to take a few shots and then moving on—that is my preferred style. Oh, I can be quite patient at times, like when I am trying to photograph a dragonfly in flight, but that is more the exception than the rule.
One of the consequences of my approach is that I am often in a reactive mode. I chase the action rather than wait for it to come to me, which means I have to react really quickly when a situation presents itself.
I knew from Facebook posts that Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) were active at Green Spring Gardens when I decided to visit last Friday. When I arrived, I immediately spotted a cluster of photographers that had staked out a flower bed, some of whom are shown in the final photo. It was hard to miss them, because many of them had large lenses and heavy tripods.
I avoided this group and went about my solitary pursuit of butterflies and dragonflies with my more modest and portable camera setup. Later in the day I did manage to spot a hummingbird in a distant patch of Cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis). The shots are essentially record shots that merely document the presence of the hummingbird. However, hummingbirds are so cool that I am really happy whenever I manage to capture a recognizable image of one.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, dragonfly, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Eastern Amberwing, Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, female Eastern Amberwing, green spring gardens, Perithemis tenera on August 17, 2021| 3 Comments »
Within the bird and insect kingdoms, species tend to be named on the basis of the appearance of the male and not of the female. This can be incredibly confusing, especially for a neophyte who is trying to identify an individual.
I remember be utterly baffled years ago when someone explained to me that the sparrow-looking bird in front of me was a female Red-winged Blackbird. What? How could that be? The “blackbird” was not black at all, and as for the “red wings,” there were none.
Over time I have become more familiar with the birds and the bees and some of the intricacies of sexual differentiation within species. I do not give too much thought that this pretty little female Eastern Amberwing dragonfly (Perithemis tenera) that I spotted last week at Green Spring Gardens has wings that are not completely amber-colored like those of her male counterpart.
Eastern Amberwings are the smallest dragonflies in our area at less than an inch (20-25 mm) in length. It is hard to miss the males as they buzz about low over the waters of ponds, but females tend to be much more elusive and often hunt far from the water. In the case of the one in the photo, she was perched on some vegetation in a bed of flowers a long way from the pond.
According to the Dragonflies of Northern Virginia website, “Amberwings are reported to have the most intricate courtship of any dragonfly. After the male selects several possible egg-laying sites for a mate, he flies off to find a female and leads her back to his potential nursery. To attract her, he sways back and forth, and hovers with his abdomen raised. Mating only occurs if the females approves—making this one of the few dragonflies where females choose the males.”
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, green spring gardens, Mexican Sunflower, Papilio glaucus, Papilio troilus, Spicebush Swallowtail, Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly, Tamron 180mm on August 16, 2021| 3 Comments »
It was definitely exciting to see my first Monarch butterflies of the season last Friday at Green Spring Gardens, but I was equally delighted to see some other beautiful butterflies that day. The one in the first photo is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) on a flower that I later learned is a Mexican sunflower. I am pretty sure that the butterfly in the second image is a Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus), although the angle of this shot keeps me from being absolutely certain. I am not sure what kind of flower it is feeding on, but it sure was pretty.
Although I spend a lot of time in streams, fields, and marshes, I enjoy visiting gardens from time to time. It is stimulating to all of the senses to see all of the bright colors and smell the fragrant flowers. There were plenty of bees too and occasional forays into the flowers by goldfinches and hummingbirds. It was a good day.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Danaus plexippus, green spring gardens, Monarch, monarch butterfly, Tamron 180mm on August 15, 2021| 24 Comments »
Several times recently I have noted with regret that I had not yet seen any Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) this summer. On Friday my luck changed and I was absolutely delighted to have multiple encounters with Monarchs during a visit to Green Spring Gardens, a country-run historical garden only a few miles from where I live. Obviously I had been looking for Monarchs in all the wrong places.
I felt carefree as a child as I chased the butterflies all over as they flitted from flower to flower. It was a hot, humid day and it was not long before I was drenched in sweat, but I was content in what I was doing.
I will let the beauty of the Monarchs speak for itself through these photos. I will only add that it was definitely worth the wait.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, dragonfly, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Blue Dasher, Blue Dasher dragonfly, Canon 50D, Eastern Amberwing, Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, green spring gardens, obelisk, obelisk posture, Pachydiplax longipennis, Perithemis tenera on August 5, 2020| 27 Comments »
What do you do to cope on a hot sunny day? Most of us stay indoors in an air-conditioned space, possibly with a cold beverage. Dragonflies do not have those options, so many of them assume a pose, often known as the obelisk posture, in an attempt to regulate their temperature by reducing exposure to the direct sunlight.
You may seen dragonflies in a handstand-like pose, looking like gymnasts in training—that is the obelisk posture. The dragonfly lifts its abdomen until its tip points to the sun, thereby minimizing the amount of surface area exposed to solar radiation. At noontime, the vertical position of the dragonfly’s body suggest an obelisk, which in my area immediately brings to mind the Washington Monument. According to Wikipedia, scientists have tested this phenomenon in a laboratory by heating Blue Dasher dragonflies with a lamp, which caused them to raise their abdomens and has been shown to be effective in stopping or slowly the rise in their body temperature.
While visiting Green Spring Gardens last week on a hot humid day, I observed obelisking behavior in a male Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) and a male Eastern Amberwing (Perithemis tenera). I have always been intrigued by this pose and would love to try it out to see if it works for thermoregulation in humans too. Alas, I lack both the upper-body strength and the lower body flexibility to make a go of it, so I’ll continue to be merely a spectator of these beautiful little acrobats.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, green spring gardens, Papilio glaucus, Tamron 180mm on August 4, 2020| 18 Comments »
Most folks who live in the Eastern part of the United States can probably identify an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) when they see one. Eastern Tiger Swallowtails are large and have a distinctive pattern of bright yellow and black on their wings. However, not all Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies are yellow—females come in two distinctly different variants, black and yellow.
The yellow morph looks a lot like a male, but with a conspicuous band of blue spots along the hindwings that the males do not have. The dark morph female has similar markings, but most of its body color is black, like the one below that I spotted last week at Green Spring Gardens. The perfect condition of its wings this late in the season suggests to me that this is a newly emerged butterfly.
So why do the females come in two colors? I read an interesting on-line article about this subject entitled “Why are you that color? The strange case of the dark phase tiger swallowtail.” The author speculates that the dark morph is an evolutionary attempt to mimic a similar-looking Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly that predators know is toxic, a practice known as Batesian mimicry. So, in theory the dark morph would have a better chance of survival. For unknown reasons, however, the males do not seem to be as attracted to the dark morph females, “These guys are apparently traditionalists and prefer the good ol’ yellow and black that their species is known for.” So the genes that might benefit species survival are not always passed on.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, clover, Danaus plexippus, green spring gardens, Monarch, monarch butterfly, Tamron 180mm on August 3, 2020| 24 Comments »
This butterfly had its choice of flowers as I chased after it last week at Green Spring Gardens, but it chose instead to grab some nectar from a lowly clover plant. Still, I can’t complain—it was my first sighting of a Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) this season.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Dragonflies, dragonfly, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Eastern Amberwing, Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, female Eastern Amberwing, green spring gardens, odonart, Perithemis tenera, Tamron 180mm on July 31, 2020| 30 Comments »
It love it when dragonflies cooperate and choose particularly photogenic perches, as these female Eastern Amberwing dragonflies (Perithemis tenera) did on Tuesday at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from where I live. The males of this species, whose wings are a solid amber in color, mostly seemed to be hanging out at a pond at the bottom of a hill, while the females were flitting about among the flowers in the gardens at the top—the gender separation reminded me of the awkwardness of junior high dances when I was growing up.
As many of you may recall, dragonflies and damselflies are part of the Odonata order of flying insects. My friend and fellow dragonfly enthusiast Walter Sanford has coined the term “odonart” to refer to artsy-style photos that we manage to capture of our favorite aerial acrobats. I think that both of these images qualify to fit into that self-created category, given the beauty of the dragonflies and their particularly photogenic perches.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Butterflies, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, beauty, Canon 50D, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, green spring gardens, Papilio glaucus, perfection, Tamron 180mm on July 30, 2020| 15 Comments »
Many butterflies are looking a little tattered this late in the season, like this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) that I spotted on Tuesday at Green Spring Gardens, but I still find their beauty to be breathtaking. True beauty, I would argue, is often to be found in imperfection, not in some superficial notion of perfection.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Flowers, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Archilochus colubris, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Tamron 180mm on July 29, 2020| 32 Comments »
During a short visit to Green Spring Gardens yesterday I was thrilled not only to see some Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris), but also to get some shots of at least one of them. I am not sure that a 180mm macro lens is optimal for this subject, but it worked, albeit with a need for an often significant crop of the original images.
Even though it was over 90 degrees (32 degrees C) when I set out, I felt a need to get out of the house, stretch my legs, and shoot a little. I chose this county-run historic garden because it is not far from where I live and I knew it had some shady areas. I expected to be photographing mostly insects and flowers, so my trusty 180mm macro lens was affixed to my camera.
As I was chasing some little dragonflies in one patch of flowers, I remembered that I had seen hummingbirds in this same patch a few years ago. Recently I have seen some awesome shots of hummingbirds on Facebook taken by local photographers at this garden, so I was certainly aware I might spot the speedy little birds. Once I spotted a hummingbird flitting among the flowers, I decided to stay at this spot and see if I too could capture a shot.
This sun-lit patch of flowers was long and narrow and the hummingbird would make short forays into one part of it and then would fly up into the shade of a tall tree. I never could establish if I was seeing a single hummingbird, which looked to be a female, or if there were multiple hummingbirds taking turns.
As you can see from the photos below, the hummingbird gave attention to a variety of different flowers, none of which I can identify for sure—maybe that is bee balm in the second shot. I have read that hummingbirds prefer red-colored flowers, but this hummingbird did not seem to discriminate on the basis of color. It is interesting to see how the hummingbird’s approach varied a little depending on the characteristics of the flower, such as the length of the tubular section into which the hummingbird inserted its long, thin bill.
Be sure to click on the final photo and you will see that the hummingbird is using its tiny feet to perch on an unopened flower to get greater leverage and a better angle of attack. You’ll also see a little bee in flight that had been disturbed by the hummingbird’s efforts.
When I returned home, I saw an amazing close-up hummingbird photo on Facebook taken earlier that morning on the same bluish-purple flowers that you see in my final photo. When I asked the photographer how far away he was when he took his photo, he said he was at the minimum focusing distance of his lens—15 feet (457 cm)—so I suspect he was shooting with a 600mm lens. I think that I might have been at the same distance when I took my shot.
Periodically I think about purchasing one of those monster lenses, but am somewhat deterred by the $12,999 price tag for the newest Canon 600mm lens and by its weight and size. All in all, I am quite content with the results I get from my current camera gear, including these images of hummingbirds in July.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, green spring gardens, Papilio glaucus, Tamron 180mm on July 25, 2020| 33 Comments »
It seems like I have seen fewer butterflies this year than in previous years, so I was especially thrilled to spot this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus) last week during a trip to Green Spring Gardens with my photography mentor Cindy Dyer. Normally by this time of the year I have seen lots of Monarchs and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, but I have not seen a single Monarch yet and only a few swallowtails. This butterfly was the only large butterfly that I saw that day—all of the others that I spotted were the much smaller skipper butterflies.
Generally I prefer to have a natural background when photographing wild subjects, but that was not possible in this case. The blurred background is part of the welcome center of the gardens. The bands of color at the bottom of the image add some visual interest without being distracting, so I am not all that dissatisfied with the way the shot turned out.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in damselfly, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Argia fumipennis, Argia fumipennis violacea, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, Tamron 180mm, Variable Dancer, Variable Dancer damselfly on July 25, 2020| 21 Comments »
This stunning Variable Dancer damselfly (Argia fumipennis) was living life on the edge when I spotted him amidst the leaves last week during a trip to Green Spring Gardens with my good friend Cindy Dyer. Many of you probably realize that this violet-colored beauty is one of my favorites, given that my most frequently used banner image for this blog is a photo of a Variable Dancer. Perhaps there are other insects that are this color, but none come to mind.
As for the title of this post, consider it to be a sign of the times—the content could easily have gone in multiple directions.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Flowers, Nature, Photography, Summer, Water Lilies, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Claude Monet, green spring gardens, Nymphaea, Tamron 180mm, waterlilies, waterlily on July 24, 2020| 17 Comments »
How do you capture the beauty of a water lily? Claude Monet chose to paint massive canvases with wide expanses of ponds dotted with water lilies. My normal instinct is to focus on a single flower and to capture images like the first one below.
My photography mentor Cindy Dyer likes to challenge me to slow down and to look for interesting groupings of flowers. So I lingered longer at the water lilies and tried to compose images in different and more creative ways, resulting in the the second and third images below that contain more than just a single flower.
I took these photos last week during a trip with Cindy to Green Spring Gardens, a local county-run historical garden. In previous postings I have featured the pink water lilies and the lotuses at the small pond there. My goal today was to turn the spotlight on the more “traditional” white water lily.
If you click on these images to examine them more closely, you will see that I captured a number of “bonus bugs” on the leaves of the lily pads. “Bonus bugs” is a term that Cindy coined to refer to insects that show up when you are processing your photos that you never saw when you were taking them.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Dragonflies, dragonfly, Insects, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Blue Dasher, Blue Dasher dragonfly, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, male Blue Dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis, Tamron 180mm on July 21, 2020| 24 Comments »
Blue Dashers (Pachydiplax longipennis) are one of our most common dragonflies and were an early favorite when I started to get more serious about my photography eight years ago. I still enjoy capturing images of them, especially when the lighting is as interesting as it was last Tuesday during a visit to Green Spring Gardens with my friend and photography mentor Cindy Dyer.
I had a lot of fun trying to track the male Blue Dasher dragonflies as they flew among the lotuses and water lilies at a small pond. Most of the time they would perch on distant plants, out of range of my macro lens, but on a few occasions they came closer. The first image shows one perched on the broken-off stalk of a lotus, partially in the shadow of other lotuses. The second image shows a Blue Dasher perched in the light, atop what I believe is one of the lily pads, though there is a slight chance that it might be a lotus leaf.
Yes, Blue Dashers are still among my favorites, even after all of these years.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Flowers, Nature, Photography, Summer, Water Lilies, tagged Alexandria VA, Camon 50D, green spring gardens, Pac-Man, pink water lily, Tamron 180mm, water lily on July 20, 2020| 27 Comments »
There were only a few water lilies in bloom when I visited Green Spring Gardens last week, one of my favorite local gardens, but I was thrilled to see that a few of them were pink ones. I love all water lilies, but there seems to be something extra special and exotic about the pink ones.
I was using my trusty 180mm macro lens, which meant that if I wanted a closer view, as in the first image, I had to physically move closer to the flowers, which, of course were floating in the water. It was interesting to try to vary the angle of view of the same flower by, shooting from a low angle for the first image and shooting the same flower from a higher angle (and farther back) for the second shot.
I also played around with including and excluding the lily pads. The water lily in the final shot, for example, is almost in the center of the frame, which is generally frowned on when composing a shot, but I liked the arrangement of lily pads so much that I kept it there.
I am very much a child of my generation, so I can’t help but think of the video game Pac-Man when I look at the second image. Did anyone else have that same response?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Bees, Flowers, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, bee, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, lotus, lotus flower, Tamron 180mm on July 19, 2020| 11 Comments »
This bee seemed to be having a great time inside of a lotus flower when I spotted it last Tuesday during a brief visit to Green Spring Gardens with my friend and photography mentor Cindy Dyer. This county-run historical garden has only a relatively limited number of lotuses and waterlilies at a small pond, but it is much more accessible and less crowded that Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, an amazing facility in Washington D.C. operated by the National Park Service that has multiple acres of cultivated ponds with a wide array of water lilies and lotuses.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, brown thrasher, Canon 50D, Cindy Dyer, green spring gardens, Tamron 180mm, Toxostoma rufum on July 18, 2020| 11 Comments »
Usually when I see a Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum), it is buried in the underbrush, so I was excited to spot this one in the open during a visit on Tuesday to Green Spring Gardens with my friend and photography mentor Cindy Dyer. Two things that always stand out to me whenever I see Brown Thrashers are their extremely long tails and their beautiful yellow eyes.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Flowers, Gardening, Humor, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Cindy Dyer, green spring gardens, Love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena, Tamron 180mm on June 29, 2020| 12 Comments »
The alien-looking plant in the first photo is a seedpod of ‘Love in a mist’ (Nigella damascena), one of my favorite flowers, that I spotted during a short visit last Monday to Green Spring Gardens with my friend and photography mentor Cindy Dyer. It was a little late in the season, but I managed to spot a few flowers still in bloom, as shown in the second image. This flower is typically blue, but love-in-a-mist also comes in shades of white, pink, and lavender.
When I did a little research on-line, I learned that the striped, balloon-shaped object that I call a seedpod, is actually an inflated capsule composed of five fused true seedpods, according to an article by Wisconsin Horticulture. I also learned that the thorny-looking spikes that make up the “mist,” which are not sharp, despite their appearance, are technically bracts, a specialized kind of leaves.
This is one of the few local places where I know I can find this exotically beautiful flower. If you want to see love-in-a-mist yourself, you should probably go to a large garden. Otherwise you could waste a lot of your time looking for love in all the wrong places.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Birds, dragonfly, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Blue Dasher, Blue Dasher dragonfly, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, green spring gardens, Pachydiplax longipennis, Tamron 180mm on June 29, 2020| 16 Comments »
The shape of the silhouette is familiar and if the lighting is bad, you might be able to convince yourself that a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) is standing in the corner of a small pond at Green Spring Gardens. I have visited the pond dozens of times, so I know that the heron is not real, but it still makes for a fun subject to photograph.
I love the heron’s distorted reflection in the first photo and the touches of green provided by a small tree to the side and the duckweed floating on the surface of the water. I was equally thrilled when a male Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) perched on the heron’s head after I had moved in closer. I doubt that a real heron would have been quite as accommodating in permitting the dragonfly to perch and seem to recall having seen a Great Blue Heron attempt to snatch a dragonfly out of the air as it flew by.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Bees, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, honey bee, honeybee, pollen sacs, poppy, stokes' aster, Stokesia laevis, Tamron 180mm on June 26, 2020| 13 Comments »
When I was photographing bees on Monday at Green Spring Gardens, I had no idea that it was the start of Pollinator Week (22-28 June 2020), “an international celebration of the valuable ecosystem services provided by bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles,” according to the pollinator.org website. All I knew was that I love bees and enjoy trying to photograph them.
I was reminded of this week’s celebration yesterday in an e-mail from Benjamin, a knowledgeable budding naturalist who is almost certainly the youngest reader of my blog, and his grandmother Ellen (Gem). The two of them were busily making special honey treats to celebrate the week.
A honeybee came buzzing by me as I was attempting to photograph a poppy on Monday. Although the poppy was quite beautiful, I quickly abandoned it and decided that it was more fun to focus on the bee. The bee seemed to have been quite successful in gathering pollen and, as you can see in the first two photos, one of its pollen sacs seemed to be filled to its maximum capacity.
The final photo shows a honeybee at work in a Stokes’ Aster flower (Stokesia laevis) that I spotted in another part of the gardens. If you double-click on the image, you will see little white grains of pollen covering different many parts of the bee’s body.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Summer, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, Mimus polyglottos, mockingbird, Northern Mockingbird, Tamron 180mm on June 25, 2020| 9 Comments »
During a brief visit to Green Spring Gardens on Monday with fellow photographer Cindy Dyer, I was thrilled when this Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) landed close to me on an evergreen tree and I was able to capture this shot with my macro lens. I was focusing primarily on flowers and bugs, as one tends to do when visiting a garden, and simply reacted when this unexpected opportunity presented itself.
One of my goals in spending so much time in the field is to become so familiar with my camera gear that I can instinctively capture an image like this without having to think consciously about my camera. It is hard to explain, but it was one of those magical moments when I felt at one with my camera. Yeah, that sounds a little weird, but it is hard to put into words.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Flowers, Gardening, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, spring, tagged Alexandria VA, allium, Canon 50D, g. Tradescantia, green spring gardens, spiderwort, Tamron 180mm, viola on May 14, 2020| 21 Comments »
I often feel a bit overwhelmed when I visit a public garden—there are so many flowers all around vying for my attention. I am rarely attracted to large clusters of flowers, but instead tend to gravitate toward individual flowers that I can photograph up close with my macro lens.
Here are three of the flowers that I photographed during a recent photographic foray to nearby Green Spring Gardens with my friend Cindy Dyer. The first is a spiderwort (g. Tradescantia), a flower that I love for its simple geometric shape. I am not sure if the plant in the second photo, some species of allium, counts as a flower, but I love the way that the partially open “bud” reveals the complex structure inside. The final flower is a simple viola that I spotted amidst a bed of green ground cover—like pansies, violas always make me smile.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Flowers, Gardening, Nature, Photography, spring, tagged Alexandria VA, Asian bleeding-heart, Bleeding Hearts, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, Tamron 180mm, white Bleeding Hearts on May 12, 2020| 8 Comments »
I spotted these beautiful Bleeding Heart flowers (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) during a brief trip to Green Spring Gardens last Tuesday with my friend Cindy Dyer. The colors of the pink ones are stunning, especially against the lime-green leaves in the background. However, I was particularly struck by the white ones, a variant that was new to me.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 