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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We watched the ducks for about a half hour.  I didn’t get any shots that I am particularly crazy about, but it was interesting watching them.

From watching them I learned that each pair of ducks seems to have a territory.  Generally the territory is defined by some natural obstacles – such as a fallen tree or some branches.  When another duck (particularly a male) enters this territory the other male will slowly glide towards it.  Most of the time, the intruder responds by backing off and leaving the duck’s territory.  However, once in awhile they start fighting.

In this shot, I tried playing with the reflection of the bird.  I did this in a number of shots, but none of them came out as well as I hoped, which is OK.  After watching the ducks for awhile and failing to get a shot whenever they took off or started fighting, I took out the macro lens and looked around for what I could find.

  I found this harvestman on a leaf and discussed it in an earlier post.  Harvestmen are always great to photograph as they sit still for the camera.  What many people do not know about them is they are not spiders.  While they are arachnids, they are in a different order than spiders – kind of like scorpions.

While finding things for another macro photographer to shoot, I came across this woodlouse and couldn’t resist taking a few shots of it.  They are one of the easiest subjects to find and many of them are also very patient for the camera.  Other names for the woodlouse include roly-poly, pillbug, and sowbug.  This is actually a sowbug I believe, as it did not roll into a ball as pillbugs do.

One of my favorite subjects by far to photograph is the springtail.  Tey are so tiny that few people know what they look like up close and they are often very interesting insects to look at.  I recently found a used book at the bookstore with a first chapter on springtails.  I hope to have time to read it soon so I can blog more about the collembola family soon.

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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.

New mystery: What is this thing?

I wasn’t actually trying to get a picture of this.  The actual shot is of a centipede that I found under a piece of wood and that was the subject I was focusing on.  However, when I edited that shot over the weekend I noticed this thing.

My guess is it is some type of root or a sprout.  I’m sure a botanist would have a better idea, but it sure looks strange.

Mystery: What are these green spots on this fly?

I posted this picture a few weeks ago and thought little of it.

However, when I edited this weekend I noticed these green spots.

The original shot was taken around 2x and this shot is blown up to 278%.  You can see a number of green spots on the back of the fly.  The spots go along the entire back.  What are these?  Are they just the way the fly looks or are they some kind of fungus?

These came up just from editing a few pictures.  In the future I think I need to look at my macro shots more carefully as I’m sure there are a number of new mysteries already there waiting for me.

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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.

The post processing may be a bit much on this shot.  What do you think?  I had to edit the JPG because I haven’t downloaded the latest Adobe Camera RAW that supports the 40D and I don’t have Canon’s RAW converter installed.  When I buy Photoshop CS4 I’ll be able to edit this better.

One thing that struck me was how spoiled I am with RAW.  Only after going back to JPG do you realize how much less dynamic range it has.  I also think the camera did too much processing of the JPG, resulting in some rather ugly banding that I tried to fix.  On my old 5D I turned all processing off.

Harvestmen make excellent subjects because they rarely run away – unlike many garden spiders (though note that the harvestman is not a spider).  I liked the arrangement of the legs on the cinder block, and tried to capture that in this image.  This shot probably would have been better with the 180L but I didn’t feel like going back into the house and changing the lens.

I was very tempted to move the top leg on the right just a little bit up in order to be symmetrical, but in general I am against doing changes like those.

I cropped this shot a bit in order to deliberately place the leafhopper in the middle of it.  Leafhoppers are one of my favorite subjects because they are so brightly colored.  This one appears to be of the ‘army soldier’ variety.

I think I will revisit the post processing of all of these shots when I buy CS4, but in the meantime I think it was a very successful weekend in terms of photography.

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When I first installed it I received an error – spyder3.cpp 297 65550 (0×10004).  I am currently running Windows Vista 64 bit and I figured they probably didn’t test against that.  However their web site states that it is compatible, so I downloaded the 3.0.4 version of the software (3.0.1 is in the box) and I still had some problems.  Then I realized that the older version was still running, so I made sure that I was running the new version and the error went away.  I then had problems getting the suction cup to stay but like the software says if you wet the suction cup slightly it sticks much better.  Finally, the software had a hard time recognizing the device.  To fix this, I just unplugged the USB cable and plugged it back in and then it recognized it.

After all that, the monitor calibrator did make a difference with my monitor.  The before and after shots definitely showed and improvement.  More important, I opened a shot that I created before I calibrated my monitor and I fixed it.

The following is a shot of a harvestman I created before.

A number of viewers had mentioned that the shot is too yellow and is a bit overexposed.  Obviously the overexposed part was not affected by monitor calibration, but I suspect the yellow tint was partially because I had previously not calibrated my monitor.  Here is the new shot after a bit of editing.

I think I like the second shot a bit better.  What do you think?

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I spent not too much time improving this shot from the original.  Mainly, I just strengthened the shadows, increased the contrast, removed some dust spots and used the burn tool around the right eye.  I took a number of shots of this harvestman but I think I like this one the best.  I like how the harvestman is positioned diagonally in the shot on the balance of light and shadows.  I also like how its two front legs go towards the viewer – almost like it is grabbing you.

What do you think?  How would you improve this shot?

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Literally a few meters away from the path, I noticed a strange sign.  There was no path down to the side, but not much in terms of brush preventing one from taking a look, so I decided to see what it said.  What I found, sitting on the Microsoft campus in a spot where even we weren’t familiar with, was a new world that I am just beginning to explore.

The sign mentioned that about one hundred years ago, someone built a mill on the very spot I was standing.  The mill was later moved and little remains on the site to prove that it was there, save several small ponds.  These small ponds are teeming with life, and I knew that I would be spending a great number of lunch hours investigating this area.  I quickly went back to my office and e-mailed the photography alias at work.  The next day we had a mini event there, without perhaps eight of us photographing.  I suspect that some of them may have been disappointed – nothing is in bloom yet and from first looks the area seems rather lifeless and dull.  Of course, this was far from the case.

I’m not sure what the thing pictured above is.  Given the number of pincers on the front I certainly wouldn’t want to come across it as prey.  The following is a wider shot of it.

I found a number of cute snails there.  This one I found just before leaving.

Here’s another one of the same species burrowed into a log.  I’m not sure exactly how it wound up in this position.

I also found a very interesting ant in a log.  Unfortunately, among the number of shots I took of it none of them came out as I had hoped.  I am still trying to look up what species it is, but I suspect that I will need to purchase a better book on ants.  Off hand, my guess is it is some kind of carpenter ant – based solely on the fact that I found it in a log.  Interestingly enough, I did not find any similar ones in the vicinity.

Another member of our group found a wasp sitting on a log.  The wasp was good sized, but appeared to be either cold, sick, or dying.  It wasn’t very active, though still alive.  I didn’t take too many shots of it as there were a number of us interested in getting pictures of it.  Normally I fear wasps, but I kind of felt sorry for this one.

It obviously needs some Photoshopping, which I may do later.  The final interesting critter of the day was what I believe to be a harvestman.

All in all I believe the shoot was successful.  During subsequent lunches I expect to come back here and see what else I can find.  As it is very difficult to get the opportunity to shoot at places other than my backyard, I couldn’t have been more excited to find such an interesting location so close to work.

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