My goal with this shot was to emphasize the legs coming right out at you – as if they harvestman were about to grab you.  I created several versions of this shot, but this one I like the best – with the body of the harvestman just visible behind. 

For those not familiar with our friend the harvestman, they are not spiders.  They are arachnids, but are in the order Opiliones while spiders are in the order Araneae.  Of course, for the squeamish that isn’t very important.  Most people know the harvestman by the common name “daddy long legs".

In this shot, I tried to emphasize more the geometry of the harvestman.  I spent some time trying to get the legs at the correct angle to form a triangle with the two upper corners.  This is the closest I got.  This particular shot is also a focus stack of two images.  The image wasn’t taken as a panorama – but was cropped to remove some distracting elements from the picture.

This shot is a bit closer to my everyday shots of harvestmen.  I wasn’t too crazy initially with the lighting of this shot as it is one case where I would have preferred to use a tripod and a long exposure to get rid of the black background caused by the flash.  However in this case I warmed up to the lighting as I like the emphasis on the right foot.  There’s actually a very small drop at the end of it that I think is rather cool.

In the future I plan to continue to experiment with harvestmen – coming up with even more original shots.  I hope this will become a common experiment with critters that I have already photographed quite a bit – such as spiders and pill bugs.

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It isn’t difficult to find mites whenever taking macro shots.  They are everywhere and you really just have to turn over a leaf that is decaying on the ground to find one.  Photographing one, though.  Well that’s a different story.

Complicating getting a good photo of one of these little buggers are two things.

1) They are extremely small.  The shot above was taken at 5x – and even then I cropped it.

2) They move rather quickly and do not sit still

About a week ago, though, after not finding much anything else to photograph that day, I decided to take my chances.

I spent a good twenty minutes tracking this little mite as it wandered across this leaf.  Most of my shots were blurry – it isn’t easy tracking something at 5x – but unlike past attempts I kept at it and got some decent ones.

Of course, I have absolutely no idea what species this is.  As there are over 45,000 described species of mites and scientists estimate this makes up about 5% of the total species out there, I’m not going to try very hard to figure it out.  Mites are arachnids – just like spiders.  However, they’re not spiders – but are related.

Another interesting fact is that one of the strongest animals on earth is a mite.  It can carry 1182 times its own weight.  I did a quick search on what that would mean, and it’s roughly equivalent to one of us picking up this boat.  Remind me if I’m ever reincarnated as something extremely small, to not mess with a mite.

Of course, most of us know mites as garden pests or waste bin pests.  I doubt this particular one is of any concern as I found it by a trail near my office.  I strongly suspect that these particular mites have a big part in the decomposition of leaves and creation of soil.  In that respect, they’re probably partners (or predators) of our friend the springtail.

So what are the lessons I learned from my little pal the mite?  Well, for one when faced with a difficult subject – take lots of shots.  Also, just because something is difficult doesn’t mean with some patience it’s not possible.  I had numerous opportunities to photograph these in the past, but didn’t bother to have the patience until now.

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This shot was taken a few months ago by the ponds outside my office.  I spent some time photographing one stink bug and when I found another on a different leaf – I figured – why not?

They stayed together for about thirty seconds – but this was long enough to get a decent shot.  They didn’t seem too offended by one another – but soon went their separate ways.

Stink bugs are one of my favorite insects to photograph as they are so colorful.

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From some research on the Internet, I believe this is Tetramorium caespitum, or the standard pavement ant.  They are famous for getting in fights with other colonies, though I do not believe that is what is occurring here.

They are distinguishable from the two spines on its back, which you can see from this shot.  Of course, they are so tiny in real life that you need a good magnifying glass to be able to see them well.

  I took a number of shots of the colony, though I didn’t have a lot of time to stick around there.  It was right next to my work and I felt a bit funny laying on the ground getting these photos while my coworkers were walking by!

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Still, it was a welcome sight to find some aphids in the wild this weekend while shooting near some ponds that are next to the building where I work.

This one in particular is very colorful, although I am not 100% sure it is an aphid.  It almost looks like a little lobster!  Unfortunately I could not find a good identity for it in my literature or online.  I suspect that it does not venture into our gardens very often and therefore to the vast majority of people is uninteresting.  If anyone has an idea about this one I would be very appreciative.

On future outings I think I will take a guide to Northwest plant life.  Many insects reside/feed on specific types of plants and if I know the type of plant then I may have a better idea about the type of the critter.  Of course, plant identification isn’t easy but I do have a book that covers the native plants in this area fairly well.

Just as I was packing up, I found this one on my camera bag.

This one is much more similar to the standard garden aphids.  I have heard that only the females have wings, in which case that would make this a female.

Well, according to my kids this entry is now over as they want to play a game on the computer so…

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I found a number of these flies on a bank of yellow flowers next to a small stream.  I must admit that even after attempting to look it up, I have no idea what type of fly it is.  At first I thought it was a face fly, but according to what I read face flies are quite a bit bigger than this one.

I rather like this view of it.

Here you can clearly see that the fly is getting pollen all over it.

These photos were taken during my weekly photo shoot at some ponds next to the building where I work.  I was a bit reluctant that day to go out and shoot as I had a lot of work to do and had a lot of meetings that day, but I was quite glad that I did! (and yes I finished my work too)

Sometimes it is very nice to just force yourself to go out there and shoot.

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A little bit of research at bugguide.net revealed that these are baby orb weaver spiders.  Everywhere around the stairs they were spinning webs.  They were crawling on the ground and a few of them even tried to create a nest on my camera!  Of course, I couldn’t resist getting a closer look at them.

The kids got a big kick out of watching them, though Nelya was freaked out.  While we were watching them some of them even began spinning webs on us!  Of course they are harmless, but try telling my wife that.

  Here is a shot of one as it spun its web.  I also decided to get an even closer look at one for identification sake.

Of course, the vast majority of these baby spiders will not live to see a few days.  Numerous predators were waiting for them and the odds of survival are not that great.  Of the hundreds of baby spiders, perhaps only a couple will make it to adulthood.  Here is one that didn’t make it – victim to an awaiting spider (I think it is a sac spider).

Each of these spiders will likely eat several of the babies over the day and are just one of the dangers they will face during their first several weeks.

I also could not resist taking the opportunity to take my first video with the MP-E 65!

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Although aphids stay rather still for most shots, they are not one of the easier insects to photograph.  For one, they are extremely small and often require a magnification of 5x for a good shot.  This means that the viewfinder is extremely dark and the lens is shaky.  The also do move, so tracking can be slightly tricky at times.

Here is an aphid family portrait.

Amazingly, an adult ladybug can eat up to sixty of these a day!  I am currently looking for some lady bugs, as Nelya prefers that the aphids stay away from her roses, but I won’t let her use insecticides on them.

While they certainly aren’t a beneficial insect, they do provide some amusement!

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I had hoped to catch a bee in flight, but alas the only shots I got were too OOF.  I could have probably made my life easier by not trying to get the shot at 1:1, but then it wouldn’t have looked as interesting!  From past experience, I have found it’s better to try to take an amazing shot and fail than to take several mediocre shots.

Of course, I did want to come back with something for my efforts so I did take a number of shots of bees on the flowers.

I photographed in three different locations that day.

1) In my front yard (shortly before mowing) where bees were frequenting a number of flowers in the yard.

2) At Bellevue Botanical Gardens

3) In a bush by my house, where tons of bees were flying.

Interestingly, the third location was where I had the best luck getting shots, though I only had a few minutes to shoot there because we had guests over.

Interestingly, all four bees in this blog are of different species.  I also saw several other species whose photos I was not able to get.  I think I will have to spend some time reading up on bees in the near future, as admittedly I know very little about them.

The following are some tips I made use of.

1) As always, I highly recommend the use of a flash.  For some situations, I did meter for the ambient light but kept the flash for fill.

2) Don’t jump from place to place.  Find a small area that bees seem to frequent and wait for a bee to come to you.

3) While foraging, bees don’t seem to mind me.  I don’t think I would want to get too close to their nest, but while pollinating flowers they could really care less if you get close to photograph.

4) Pick your flowers carefully.  Make sure when a bee does come to you, that it is on a flower that is easy to photograph and that provides a good view.  You can do this by staying near a group of flowers that you know will provide this.

5) Longer focal lengths work better here.

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First, I am not a myrmecologist and my knowledge of ants and carpenter ants comes from reading several books and observing them in my backyard.  Therefore, some of the information below may be incorrect.  If you know some of it to be false, please let me know and I will gladly correct it.

To be honest, I’m not sure if all of them were queens, all were males, or if there was a mix, but I suspect the latter.  Their clearly were smaller winged ants and larger ones.  I watched and photographed the phenomenon for a good hour.  While in my opinion none of the shots are great on their own, altogether the tell a very interesting story.

In the picture above, you can see a number of the winged ants (can’t say for sure whether they are queens or males) at the base of the landscaping timbers preparing to leave.  Most of them (or in the case of the males – all of them) will die within the next several days.  Of the queens, only a couple will likely make it – if that.

Here are some more shots of the crowd waiting to take their chances.

One interesting thing that I noticed in the shots, is that some of them appear to be eating something just before leaving.  I am not sure of this, but it certainly does appear to be the case.  In this shot, it looks like the ant is eating something.

 In the following shot, it looks like it is finishing.  At least, whatever it has there is less of it.

Finally, in this shot it looks like it has finished.

  I’m not entirely sure what the case is here.  Perhaps they are eating a meal provided by the nest before their long journey?

Of course, all of these vital elements of the nests future are not left unguarded.  Among the new kings and queens are a number of soldier ants.

  The queens would line up on the landscaping timbers, and then make their final jump from their nest.  Some of them succeeded in taking off and flying a good distance (sometimes into my face), while the wings of others were clearly not ready yet.  A number of them landed on a plant in front of the nest.  They would take flying leaps and land on one of the leaves, then climb on to the leaf, travel to the very end, and take another leap from the top.

You can tell that the effort was exhausting for them, as many of them were still weak.

After climbing to on top of the leaf, they next would make their way to the very end.

Once at the end of the leaf, each of them would open its wings and make its leap of faith.  Some of them would fall to the ground or a different leaf below, while others would finally succeed at flying.

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