The dragonfly weekend

You might remember this photo from July 2017. I was out in the garden capturing flowers and this guy landed on my knee. I had the macro lens on so I was able to oh so carefully point the camera and click. You might be surprised to find that it didn't make image of the month. Click here to see what did.

If you're lucky enough to see a dragonfly perched on something, it's usually pretty easy to get quite close to them. I once had time to change lenses and take several shoots, each a little closer. Avoid creating a shadow on them.

I've been spending some time down in Fish Creek, wading through the river, and trying to capture dragonflies in flight. This is an ambitious goal, in case you hadn't thought about it. They are one of the most efficient predators on the planet, capturing their prey almost every time, mainly because they have great vision, and are incredible fliers. Scientist have measured them pulling 9 g in turns. They can turn and dart quicker than human vision can track them, and that's before trying to follow them through the viewfinder on a big lens. They can fly straight up or down, backwards, and nobody is quite sure what their top speed is.

July 26 near bridge 4.

July 28
The engineered wetland south of bridge 3. I got the heron shots here.

July 31
Bridge 4 to bridge 3, often in the creek itself.

August 2
Standing on bridge 2 with 24-105 mm lens. I was on a casual ride through the park, expecting to do landscapes, except there was a huge swarm of dragonflies.

August 3
Standing on bridge 2 with 70-200 mm lens.

Of the Day
Michelle

Curtis

Flowers

White Peony

Driftwood
Starting the two beaches near Taieri Mouth. Lots of wonderful driftwood to see here!

Ribbon Creek

Cloudy

There's a Simon and Garfunkel song with the lyrics,

"My thoughts are scattered and they're cloudy

They have no borders, no boundaries"

You know the one. That's me. I'm struggling with the words for a couple blogs, again. Still. Whatever. So here's some recent clouds for you. From the morning of Aug 1.

And that evening.

No I haven't done anything dramatic with the settings.

Of the Day
Michelle

Curtis

Flowers
You haven't seen much of the roses this year, but I assure you, they're doing well.

White Peony

Driftwood

Ribbon Creek

The bees of July

One of my readers commented, "All the bees, please!" Who am I to argue? It was a good month for bee images. Many, but not all of these have been on the blog already, and some have been only on Facebook or Instagram.

Bees are essential to our ecosystem, and to us continuing to eat. We deliberately avoid using pesticides or other products that might harm pollinators.

We have several different species of bee that visit our flowers. Some are big with a rumbly buzz, others quite small, but we're always happy to see them. It's so nice sitting out on the back patio in the warm weather, drinking something cold, enjoying the bees buzzing as they do their thing.

Many of the photos are taken on our mint plant, but the bees check out the roses, the red peony, and some of the other flowers. Oddly enough, I haven't seen them all over the dahlias yet. Enjoy.

From July 1
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July 5
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My buddy Leaha came over to get some advice on macro lenses and try out some of mine. Of course we had to put our words into practice!

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July 10
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July 17
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This one is actually Image of the Month for July.

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This sequence of three photos takes place at 2:22:53. There is a fourth photo taken at 2:22:54, and the bee is gone. My camera can shoot about 6 frames a second when I hold the shutter button down. So in that last photo as the bee has let go of the flower and is falling off the blossom, and then 1/6 of a second later it's out of frame. An eye blink is typically about 1/10 of a second. These were shot at 1/400 of a second, which is not a particularly fast shutter speed.  And you wonder why I'm pleased whenever I get an in focus shot of a bee.

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July 20
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I'm sure this one was giving me the stink eye.

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July 25
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The weirdest image of the month. I'm not quite sure why it was so dark, when the ones right before and after it are properly exposed. Then I deliberately played with the sliders in Lightroom to emphasize the weirdness.

July 31
26. This is the most popular photo I've ever put onto Neil's Workshop Facebook group.

As a further technical note, almost all of these are shot with the 70-200 mm lens, usually with extension tubes. A few were shot with the 100 mm macro lens.  Of course the images are cropped to varying degrees, depending on the actual sharpness of the image and the various artistic merits floating through my brain at the time.

July Image of the Month

It's been a great month, photographically speaking. I think spending part of most days at a desk buried in SQL had tended to focus my mind on photography when I've got the camera in hand. Plus I've had some great light, so I'm struggling with my choice of image of the month.

I'm down to 41 finalists, and I've been going back and forth, forth and back, in a major league dither. The white peony was in it's prime, and I surprised myself with a black and white shot of it. The red peony conspired with the bees to capture my camera eye. The pink peonies are getting into the game as well. The lilies were getting started, and one of the home grown dahlias got into the action. The bees were busy as always, and after a zillion shots I've got some great close ups photos of them. I'm expecting the bee's agent to send me a bill for modelling services. A couple ants posed, as did a heron, some dragonflies, and of course, Curtis. There was an amazing cloudscape one evening and a sunset with a buddy another evening. Just to round things out, there's a lovely river semi-abstract.

Here's a screen shot of the choices. Most have been on the blog, but not all. Stay tuned for a special blog with all the bee shots in one place. Some of you are going to be giddy with excitement, and will have to take calming breaths.

Honourable mention
I don't do honourable mentions very often, but I keep coming back to this one. I dropped it into black and white just as an experiment since the background was kind of yucky. I almost had heart palpitations at how it looked! This was on Instagram, and garnered only a few likes. Perhaps more of my blog readers will like it. Maybe you have to see the high res version on a big screen to appreciate the subtle shades of white and textures of the petals.

Second Runner Up
One of our new clematis trying to break into the big leagues. The soft light, the delicate lilac shades, the water drops, the crispness of the centre whatever they are, swoon!

First Runner up
I spent a bit of time watching this ant working it's way across the petals. Then I spritzed it a bit to touch up the dew drops, and it churned on through. Then just as I was getting ready to shoot, it came to this chasm, hesitated, and waved it's antennae. Click! Then it was across and out of sight. The white peony is a favourite of mine, and having the ants just adds to the drama.

Image of the Month
How many of you have ever seen a bee six pack? I certainly hadn't. But what gets me about this macro shot is how much of it is in focus. All the tiny spiky plant bits look great on my big screen, and the detail in the wings. Plus that purple!