CalevPhoto

Previous Post: Playing with bugs on flowers   Next Post: It’s freezing here!

Some new bugs for the year

I always enjoy getting out and taking some pictures of bugs, so I was very happy that during the weekend we had a brief respite from the rain so I could get out and photograph.  The frustrating thing with insect photography is figuring out what I took pictures of afterwards.  Despite the fact that most of my shots are from my backyard, I’m still finding new bugs each time I photograph.  At first things were a bit slow, so I took this picture of a dandelion while looking for interesting critters.

This image is part of a ‘geometry in nature’ series that I am working on, though I doubt it will end up in the final collection.  It came out as I expected, but I haven’t been able to make the yellow stronger and I think the shot is missing some ‘oomph’ in general.

Soon after that my patience was rewarded with a small beetle.

After spending some time going through my insect books, I can with confidence say that I have no idea what type of beetle this is.  The large eyes and markings on its back should make it conspicuous, but I didn’t find anything that looked like it in my books.  As there are a tremendous number of beetle species, it’s possible I will need a specialist book to identify it.

A short time after the beetle I got my first fly of the year (as Tom would say “CHECK”).  Obviously I have seen other flies this year, but this is the first one that was still enough to let me get a good shot.  I hope to have some better shots as things get warmer and I have more opportunities to shoot flies.

Interestingly some of my coworkers found this shot interesting for the drab colors - almost like a black and white image.  I may play with this image a bit in the future to see what I can do with it.  I haven’t spent much time figuring out what type of fly this is, but given the number of families and species I suspect it won’t be easy to figure it out.

Finally I found this interesting bug.

This is the leaf that I found it on originally.  I then tried to use it with my flower experiment but it didn’t want a part of that.  I’m still not exactly sure what this is, but given the antennas, back, and eyes I suspect it is a type of fly.  From my insect book it looks similar to a xylophagid fly, but there are a number of differences in the pictures I have seen.

So in terms of photography it was a successful day, but in terms of figuring out what I photographed I have some work remaining.

Related posts:

1. A different rove beetle? Some time ago I blogged about a rove beetle that I found in my backyard.  It was very peculiar in that it raised its tail like a scorpion and confronted me as I tried to take its picture.  Looking at the date, I blogged about this beetle in January of...
2. The beetle from hell Most of my insect shots come from my back yard, where I often walk around picking up objects and seeing what I could find. One recent day, I was rather excited to find this interesting little bugger. At first I thought it was a type of earwig as they look...
3. The bugs are back in town! (Part II) I had to finish yesterday’s blog due to a FlickR outage (they host the pictures for the blog), so continuing with the story I was amazed with how many bugs were out.  I picked up the lid on one of the trash cans in the back of our yard and...
4. Playing with bugs on flowers This weekend I finally found the chance to get out and take some pictures, as Saturday was a very nice day.  I wandered around in my backyard for awhile, looking in the normal places, and found nothing that I hadn’t photographed several times already.  The shoot was briefly interrupted as...
5. The mysterious beetle solved? I mentioned in a previous post that I found a strange new insect when photographing this weekend.  I picked up a bag of dirt and found some interesting things underneath to shoot.  As I was above to coax a millipede onto a white sheet of paper, I noticed something tiny...

Tags: beetle, dandelion, fly, insect, macro, photography