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.

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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.

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Still, I decided it was time to play around with Photoshop and see what I could do.

One thing that has really torn me has been whether to try out focus stacking.  Last week I sent out a link to a very well known photographer who uses focus stacking with his dew drops.  Interestingly, most of my fellow photographers seemed to think the technique made the shots look too fake.  I have yet to try focus stacking, and I did not try it last weekend.  I think I prefer the natural look a bit better – though in the future I may give it a try so I can see the results for myself.

This day I decided to try playing with black and white images.  I almost never use black and white in photos.  While I agree it does significantly improve a number of photos – I generally prefer color myself.  I decided to try juxtaposing a black and white image with a part of the image in color – as I have seen several very effective photos that do this.  This was my first attempt.

I rather liked this shot, but my wife hated it.  Her feeling was this shot is too fake (of course! It’s Photoshopped!) and asked that I make the following one.

She liked this one much better, though I’m not sure I like it.  I rather prefer the first black and white juxtaposition over the second one.  What do you think?

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