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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While I am happy that I made the switch to HDR, I have still been working on getting the colors right and improving my photos.  In this post, I will discuss some things I have learned during the last few weeks.

Lesson 1 Windows do not always need to be the correct temperature

In this shot, I spent a painstaking amount of time replacing the windows in the original shot with ones of the correct temperature.  This arises because the light inside the house is tungsten, while the outside light is closest to cloudy.

In the original shot, the windows were blue.  You can still see this blue on the floors in this shot, which detracts considerably.  One person mentioned that they look like ‘pools in the floor’.  Despite the amount of work, it wasn’t worth it.  The color shift in the windows looks too extreme - especially given the reflections.  This is one case where keeping the original blue of the windows wouldn’t have hurt the original photo.

I went back to this house to retake a number of shots and this is the new one.

I made a number of changes in this shot other than simply keeping the color.  Actually, I shot this at a cloudy white balance compared to tungsten from above.  During the day time, I felt that the strong light from the windows was stronger than the weak tungsten lamps in the room.  This also accentuates the view - which is a big selling point of the house.

Another big change was the use of exposure blending compared to HDR.  In general, I have found that most of the time exposure blending provides better, more natural results.  There are some exceptions - such as very strong windows - where HDR works better.  However, in my last two shoots only one out of the fifteen pictures was HDR.

I also removed the flash that I used in the original shots.  The first time, I added a flash fired by Pocktewizards with a tungsten gel.  I still think the flash idea has promise, but I do think the tungsten gel may have made the shot look a bit too tungsten.  With a different house, I tried not using a gel on the flash but in some respects it was worse.  I then had colors of 2850, 5500, and 6000 in the same shot - which required some Photoshopping to return to an essence of normality.

Lesson 2 Do not shoot at night and if you do, do not use HDR

There are multiple things wrong with this shot, but the halos certainly do not help it.  The orange color is also too strong - as is the blue.  I spent some time working with this shot, and could not get it better than the one here.

The next time, I changed the angle a bit and photographed during the daytime.

I do think dusk shots can be useful for the outside of the house, but there must be something else in the photo besides the actual house that is interesting at dusk.  This may be a driveway with lights going down it or a beautiful entry way.  In this case though, I do not believe viewing the house at dusk helped at all.  The photo above may be more normal and less dramatic, but it also gives a better idea of what the house actually looks like.

Lesson 3 Be very careful with view shots

There are technical issues with this photo, but in truth there are two things far worse.  First, I took this photo of the view from the house with a wide angle lens.  This is the actual view and is not a distortion of the real view.

The first problem is that people still do not believe this.  Without a frame that indicates that the view truly is the one from the house, a number of viewers mentioned that they thought I took it with a telephoto and was not being honest.

Another problem is the power lines.  Power lines are evil and many people (including myself) run far way from any house that has power lines too close to it.  Although these power lines are not close to the house at all, the image makes it look so.

The fix was a significantly different shot, that also used exposure blending compared to the HDR above.

Here, I added a piece of the porch to show that this is truly the view you get.

Lesson 4 - Avoid the ‘Light of Death’

Again, there are multiple things wrong with this shot.  One of the primary things is the huge blinding light in the middle of it - with radial spokes like a small sun.  While this is a rather pretty light, it certainly takes away from the rest of the shot.

Another big issue is the orange cast in the shot.  The colors are simply off.  Finally, the viewpoint is not so great.  On the left, we have a set of flowers trying to creep in and on the right we have what looks to be a miniature kitchen.  I simply tried to get too much into this shot.  Interestingly, this shot did use exposure blending in the first place.

In this shot, I only focused on the dining room and took the kitchen in a separate shot.  The light is still bright, but since I was further away from it, it does not look like a blinding sun.  Also, the light from the windows - since I shot during the daytime - tones it down a bit.

This was also a good case showing that daytime shooting is almost always better than night time.  The nice green from the windows really helps here - compared with the black from the night shots.

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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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I have learned quite a bit about ducks just from watching them each week.  Several months ago, I noticed the ducks pairing together and suspected that eventually I would see some ducklings.  I looked online and noted that the males usually leave the females when the eggs are laid.  When I noticed that the males were no longer with the females, I suspected that ducklings would soon be there.

Sure enough, several weeks later there were ducklings!

I used my 100-400 to get these shots, combined with a fill flash.  The mother was very cautious with the young ducks and it took me a bit of time before she would let me get close without feeling threatened.  Still, she kept a sharp eye on me while I took these shots.  In particular, I wish some of the plants weren’t there and I didn’t get the angles that I would have preferred, but I still think the shots show that the ducklings were indeed cute!

Interestingly, a bit later a crow came near the ducklings and the mother duck went straight at it.  I later read online that crows will eat ducklings.

Other predators that will attack ducklings in our area include owls.  Hopefully the majority of these cute ducklings made it.

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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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Stage 1

In this stage, you can recognize what insect the photo is of.  With these shots, you feel it is extremely cool that you caught the insect on camera.  What you miss is that the framing may be awful, the insect is out of focus, and the lighting may be poor.

Here is a good example from when I first bought my camera.  You can see that this is a fly, but it is looking the wrong way, is too small for this shot, and should not be centered in the viewfinder.  The focus could also be improved.

Stage 2

In this stage, you have mastered getting the insect in focus, but your framing and other aspects still leaves much to be desired.

In the above shot, the focus is decent and the eyes are in focus.  However, the legs and parts of the antenna are both out of the frame.  The angle is uninteresting and the lighting is too strong.

Stage 3

In this stage, the insect is in focus and either the entire insect is in the shot, or enough of it to not detract from the photo.  However, the shots still suffer from bad placement of the insect in the shot.  The insect may be centered or just approached from an uninteresting angle.

The above shot is a good example.  The pill bug is in focus and all of it is in the viewfinder.  It is, however, a rather uninteresting shot.  It may make a good stock shot of a pillbug, but the bug is centered in the frame and the angle really isn’t that interesting.

Stage 4

In this stage, the rule of thirds and other framing is made use of to make the shot more interesting.  Also, the insect is approached from a more interesting angle.  The result is a more interesting insect shot.

The shot above is a good example that the entire insect does not always need to be in the frame.  By approaching the fly from the front and putting the head off center, it is a more interesting shot.  However, the shot seems to be missing something.  Some may certainly find it gross, but it really isn’t anything more than an interesting fly shot.

Stage 5

Past stage four, improvements generally do not involve technical details.  At this stage, the photographer is able to provide character and beauty to the subjects.  They begin to become interesting even to those who are not into insects.  I do not believe I am fully at this level yet, but I have taken some images that qualify.

I have received a lot of good feedback about this shot, and it is one of my favorites.

Stage 6

At this stage, the shots are not only interesting to people who do not love insects, but they also provide extra emotions about the insect world in general.  These types of shots often involve keeping insects and waiting for particular life events.  Even still, a shot of an interesting event is not sufficient here.  The shot must be something that truly conveys emotions.

These shots are exceedingly difficult to take and I have not yet taken one worthy yet.  You can find one occasionally in National Geographic though.

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First, if you are using autofocus at all when shooting macro, turn it off.  In macro, when you change the focus using the focus ring, you are actually changing the magnification.  Generally, you care what the magnification is on a given shot. The camera, on the other hand, has no idea. Therefore, do not let the camera do this for you.  Set the magnification yourself (most macro lenses have it printed on the barrel) and focus by moving towards and away from the subject.

As you increase in magnification, focus becomes even trickier.  With lenses like the MP-E 65 at high magnifications such as 3x-5x, focusing is incredibly challenging.  When shooting subjects like flowers, typically the camera is on a tripod and if you have Live View you can use the zoom feature to verify focus.  However, when shooting handheld - particularly subjects like insects that are on the move - it is much more challenging.

One trick that I use very often is obtaining focus at a smaller magnification, then increasing magnification to the desired level.  This will only work for subjects that are either stationary or easily trackable.  For very quick subjects like bees, you will need to preset your desired magnification.

I always start farther away rather than close in.  I try to place the lens just beyond the point where it will be in focus, then slowly move in.  One goal, of course, is to not whack the subject with the lens.

When focusing on your subject, there are two things you must always keep in mind.

1) The angle of the subject to the lens.  This will determine what is in focus, and what is not.  This is particularly important as you will not be able to determine the focus for the entire subject if it is moving or may leave any moment.  Instead, you should learn what is possible with each aperture at different magnifications and approach your subject accordingly. 

2) When determining focus in the viewfinder, look at only the most important part of your subject.  When focusing on insects, I look only at the eyes.  I do not pay attention to the rest of the insect, as I already know what will be in focus and out of focus based on the angle of the insect to the camera.  Once I know I have the eyes in focus, I will take the shot.

For insects, the eyes are incredibly important.  With rare exceptions, if the eyes lack focus the shot is lost.

In terms of triggering the shutter, I find it very much like my old rifle target shooting days.  Learning how to consistently get shots in focus takes a great deal of practice, but the following are some tips that may help.

1) Holding the camera steady is huge. Pay particular attention to where your elbows are.  Try to hold your elbow against part of your body.  When sitting, I rest my elbow on my knee.  When standing I try to rest it against my chest if possible.  Standing is by far more difficult than sitting.  Very often when standing, holding the camera steady is a function of getting the right stance while holding the camera with both hands.  I cannot really describe it, but practice definitely helps.

2) When you take the shot, hold your breath.  This will prevent some camera shake, which often is the culprit for missed shots.

3) Do not take a single shot of any subject. Take a number of shots at each angle.  I often take twenty to thirty shots of a single subject if I can, though most of my subjects do not allow me anywhere near that number.  Very often, I find that a number of shots are still out of focus, but if I get a number of frames off there usually is a good in focus one in the bunch.

4) Use a high shutter speed or flash.  If the frame is sufficiently dark, you can use flash to stop the subject and a lower shutter speed.  I will cover this in a bit more depth in a later post, as I have found that there are negatives with using the lower shutter speed.  However, the important thing is to stop the subject, which must use either a high shutter speed and/or a flash.

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