CalevPhoto

Flies as pollinators

All of us are very familiar with the service that bees perform for us in our yards.  Many of us are also familiar that there are a great number of other things that also pollinate flowers - such as some species of bats.  In the past I have read that some flies also pollinate flowers, but it certainly was strange actually seeing one do it.

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.

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Why I’m no fun at barbecues

Last weekend some friends of ours had us over for a barbecue.  Their property is rather wooded and I had my camera with me from a recent real estate shoot.  Of course, I was curious, so I took a little stroll to see what I could find.

I noticed that there were quite a few flies that were hanging out on ferns.  When I approached them, they did not flinch too much so I knew that I had a good thing going.  I ran back and grabbed my camera to get some shots.

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Mysteries come, mysteries go with the Canon 5D Mark II

One of the things I am getting the biggest kick about with the 5D Mark II is the resolution of the shots.  Very often when paired with my MP-E 65 I see things that I would never have been able to notice.  In some cases they answer questions I had always wondered about.  In other cases they bring up new questions.

Mystery solved: How to harvestmen climb?

Here you can see a closeup of two of the legs of the harvestman.  On the ends of each leg are claws.  They obviously use these claws to grasp onto things.  This shot was taken around 3x magnification and is blown up 150%.

Of course, with each mystery solved a new mystery comes along.  This harvestman was found on a fallen leaf.  Therefore the new mystery is - what are those things coming out of the leaf?  My guess is they are some kind of mold or fungus, but I truly do not know.

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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 noticed a stink bug.  This is a shot after I had moved it to a leaf.

At first I was rather excited because as I prodded it to move to the leaf I smelled something curious.  Had the stink bug actually fired at me?  After all, it is well known that stink bugs defend themselves through a foul smelling mixture that they spray at potential attackers.  I then heard my neighbor cussing that something he had opened really stunk, which culled the excitement.  A closer sniff of the bug revealed that it was not the stink bug itself.  Perhaps it did spray, but I couldn’t smell it.

I then moved the stink bug to a primrose that I felt was more photogenic.

It didn’t seem enthralled to be there and soon took off.

I let it go, knowing that it certainly will not be the last stink bug I photograph this year.  I always enjoy photographing them due to their bright green color and interesting eyes.  The next time though I think I’ll try finding a leaf that matches the color as close as possible and try some photographs on it.  I’m not sure the strong colors of the flower really helped the shot in this case.

Another interesting episode came with an ant that I found crawling in one of our recycle bins.  It took off when I tried to photograph it and crawled into the bin.  I watched it for a bit until it came to the very edge of the recycle bin and we stared at each other for about a minute.

I’m not sure of the species.  It did not appear to be a carpenter ant, but I didn’t get a good enough shot of the entire body to be able to identify it.

Finally, I did not have too much luck with the flies that day - who were a bit skittish, but I did manage to get one fly.  Interestingly it was wingless - though I’m not sure why.

Why this particular fly did not have wings will have to go in my mystery bin.

Insect Wednesday

Last weekend was a productive weekend for me, photography-wise.  I wandered around my yard looking for interesting subjects and found several, without having to look very hard.  This fly was very gracious to let me get several shots off.

I also learned a new trick.  One thing to make sure to not do when photographing flies is to get in their light.  I played around with this one to see how much it does truly matter.  Sure enough, whenever I stood in its light, the fly took off.  Therefore I approached from a direction such that my lens would not cast a shadow on the fly.

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A Respite from Photography

As many of you know, since selling my old 5D and waiting for my new 5D Mark II I have been without a camera.  This has given me the opportunity for reflection on my current status and goals with a lot of things.

For instance, as an aside I have finally figured out a routine for learning foreign languages.  As those of you who know me well know, I speak a good number of foreign languages but I have a problem keeping up with languages I am not actively studying.  I believe I have finally figured out how to do this.

In terms of photography, I have been able to reflect on my current skills and goals.  For instance, I have realized that I need to move up a level in my macro photography to fully understand composition.  Right now, I’m content with just getting a good shot of a bug from a good angle.  However, I need to also take into mind the angles and curves in the shot and other aspects in order to make the shot actually interesting.

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Two flies in love

While shooting some shots this weekend, I found two flies ‘getting to know’ each other.  The following shots tell a little story.  Please note that these images may be inappropriate for some maggots.

If anyone knows the species for these flies, I would appreciate an ID.

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A successful weekend

This weekend one of my friends was nice enough to let me use his 40D to take pictures during several Halloween parties.  Saturday and Sunday mornings, I decided to get a few macro pictures in, as the current estimates say I won’t have the 5D Mark II until the end of the month.

I took this shot of a very patient fly, though I was a bit heartbroken that it took off just after this and I might have been able to get the shot off.  Still, I don’t think this one is so bad.

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Creepy crawly Wednesday

Not too much too say today, so I thought I would post a few creepy crawly shots.  I hope at least one of these grosses you out a bit, because otherwise I’m not doing my job.

I took all of these about two months ago shortly before shooting a house for Nelya.  She didn’t mind too much that I showed up quite dirty from my previous shoot.

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How to photograph flies

When I first started taking macro photographs, I thought for sure that all closeup shots of flies were fake.  How could they get the fly to stay still for so long?  After a number of failed experiments, I finally managed to get my first fly shot.  After that, I slowly figured out the hard way how to get closeup pictures of flies, which I now do rather often.  Once you learn how it’s done, it’s really not overly difficult.

I take most of my fly images with my MP-E 65.  Once in awhile I use my 180L but I like the larger size of the fly that I can achieve with magnifications higher than 1x.  Of course, this requires that I get even closer to the fly.  When I use my 180L, it is much easier to get shots but I tend not to like them as much unless it happens to be a large fly.  For lighting, I always use a MT-24EX.  For the most part, taking high quality pictures of insects with only ambient light is not practical.

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