It’s freezing here!
OK, perhaps I have lived in the Pacific Northwest too long, because I should not be surprised at snow in April, which was very common in upstate New York where I grew up. However, here it is a very strange phenomenon to be so cold and receive snow that actually sticks to the ground close to April! Last week it was cold and rainy almost every day, which has made insect photography much more difficult. On Thursday I spend an hour by the pond near my office and for the first time that I can remember I couldn’t find a single interesting thing to take a photograph of. Other than a few pill bugs there wasn’t much that I could find interesting. I had hoped to find a spider web with dew drops on it, but the majority of ground spiders (the larger orb weavers aren’t out yet) decided to not show up.
However, I felt the need to be stubborn and spent some time on Friday in my backyard, where I have a better sense of where to find certain insects. Still, I found it very difficult to find much of interest to photograph. I eventually decided to cool looking for insects and photographed a dandelion that was ready to burst.
Generally I have found that when I have difficulty finding something, turn to a different subject and your original subject will eventually capture your eye. Shortly after playing with the dandelion, this turned out to be true once again.
The first thing I came across was this small spider.
From the arrangement of the eyes, this appears to be a ground spider of family Gnaphosidae. I found it on a piece of wood that I turned over. The picture is nothing extraordinary, but I find it amazing the number of species of spider that live in my backyard. At first look this seemed like one of the sac spiders that are very common in my backyard, but the eyes are obviously different.
When the going gets tough, go looking for springtails is what I always say. These are by far the easiest insects to find if you know what to look for. There are myriad species of them, but in general the easiest way to find them is to either dig through relatively dry soil (wet soil is much harder) or look on the leaves of plants such as camellia or rhododendrons. The ground was wet, so I didn’t bother to look there but after looking for a few minutes on my camellia I found this globular springtail.
When my wife saw this shot, she remarked “what a cute little spider!”. Nope, not a spider but a springtail. For more information about these little guys, see my previous post on them.
I then gave up looking for insects and played with some of the drops on my Japanese maple bushes, which are great drop generators. I picked a small flower and played with the reflection of the flower in the drop.
Like the other shots that day it was nothing much to write home about, but it was still nevertheless fun getting some shots. However at this point my hands - holding a camera with a metal L bracket attached - were getting rather cold and it had started to rain again, so I went back inside glad that I had the chance to take some pictures. Luckily, over the weekend nature gave me a much better chance to get some shots.
Related posts:
- It’s freezing here! OK, perhaps I have lived in the Pacific Northwest too long, because I should not be surprised at snow in April, which was very common in upstate New York where I grew up. However, here it is a very strange phenomenon to be so cold and receive snow that actually...
- The hidden world out there As I mentioned yesterday, I took some time to photograph under one of my large camellia bushes, while the weather here is still cold. I walked around for awhile to see if I could find something on a leaf, but I had no luck. Therefore I decided to try the...
- An invasion of springtails! This weekend I decided to check around my backyard again for some interesting shots. I have grown to know my yard very well - with a good idea of what I can find where. It’s not a very large yard at 10,000 sq ft and it’s in the center of...
- 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...
- The amazing jumping spider As many of you have probably figured out by now, spiders are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. Besides the fact that they are really cool looking, most species are usually easy to photograph. Once in awhile a particular spider gives me problems, but usually they pose very nicely. ...
Tags: drop, macro, photography, reflection, spider, springtail