More hairy butts. I mean buds.

Some of you probably think I have a bit of an obsession going here. Those hemispherical symmetrical curves. What can I say? All I do is try to please my readers.

Double luck?

I went to bed early last night. Just as I was drifting off Linda called me about a double rainbow. Strong. You guys will be happy to know I put on pants before looking outside. Very strong. Switched lenses. Still pretty strong. Got the wider lens on, just able to capture it from end to end. It still didn't turn out quite like I'd hoped, but still. This shot is very little editing in Lightroom.

Heres another view of it with a bit more tinkering to bring up the colour.

And just a piece of it, again with a bit of tinkering to bring up the colour. I was mainly interested to see if I could get the image to bring up colour we know is there, but our eyes can't quite see.

And for those that know what our car license plate is, the above images explain it.

This one is for Michelle, while I'm thinking of it, liking the martian plants going to seed. Soon, I think.

Short swim today, just to get moving again. My legs and back are feeling pretty good from the rest. I probably should have done this a long time ago. No idea how the race on Saturday will turn out, and no expectations either. I'll need all the luck from the rainbows.

Michelle says she's going to try to do her best to fill up a camera memory chip with such good photos I have to put them all on the blog. If that happens, she will have earned the photographer of the year award. I figure if there's ONE photo worth putting on the blog, she's doing well. In this case the problem is the subject, not the photographer.

I know you need your fix

It's been a while since you've seen kitties snoozing, and you need your fix. Never let it be said that I'm not responsive to the wishes of my small but loyal band of readers.

I've been on a bit of a macro tear lately, and there are more in the pipeline so don't think you've seen the last of them. I found this while looking for lily beetles and was quite taken by the shape and colour of the decaying petal. In some ways I'm as big a fan of decaying blossoms as when they're budding and in full bloom.

I'm not sure what this was, I think an Iris.

And lastly, a cheerful happy purple plant. I think it's a pansy.

Nearly 20,000 or MacroMonday or HairyAntButts

I couldn't decide on the title.

A year ago I brought home a new Canon T6i. I've been out on any number of photo trips, some hosted by my buddy the famous Neil Zeller, some with other less famous buddies, and some by my not famous at all self. If I believe the image file numbers I've taken just under 20,000 photos this year. That comes to about 50 a day.

All the trips have been fun. The furthest is down to Waterton Park. Some of been as close as our back yard or even inside the house, but I guess they don't count as trips. But the photography itself has been more fun than I had imagined it would be. The camera sees things differently than our eyes do, which has been a learning experience in so many ways. I see the world differently now. I think about composition, and lines and shapes and colour. Even when I'm looking at a flower, I'm realizing there is stuff there I can't see. Plants are surprisingly hairy.

Lots of photos get a big X on first view and they get trashed. There's been about 1000 of them since I last deleted a bunch.
Most are so-so for whatever reason and nothing happens to them.
Some (about 4100 so far) get one star and I look at them again and decide what to edit. I might go back and edit for something else, or someone might happen to see it and like it. Hey, it's happened.
Editing a photo gives it 3 stars (Not quite 1100 of those). These are the ones I'd show people if asked. Lots make it onto the blog.
Then we get into the good ones.
There are 212 with 4 stars. These are ones I like a lot for whatever reason.
There are 55 with 5 stars. These are my WOW! shots.

You can do the math on the percentages in each group. I'm always striving to better myself, knowing that on average 1 in every 400 shots is a Wow. The more shots you take, as long as you are honing your abilities, the more good shots you'll get. You can see lots of my 4 and 5 star shots here, if you haven't looked already.

Some days are better than others. One morning I was up on Tom Campbell hill shooting skyline and I was so disappointed when I got home that only a few of them were in focus. They looked ok in camera. Turned out it was a gusty day and the tripod was moving ever so slightly. That's all it takes.

Today was a great day! I was out this morning with good light and no wind. I put all the extension tubes on the 100 mm macro lens and captured 167 shots. Some were hand held with one tube instead of three. Imagine my astonishment when my initial pass gave me 87 with one star! More than half! Of course, I downgraded some of them when I looked more closely.

I still ended up editing 20 shots, which is a huge percentage for this kind of photography. Here's a few of them, including more hairy ant butts! These are on our peonies. If you look carefully there are two different species.

Here's another random bug I found. No idea what it is.

The bee's knees and Greenway

We are a little concerned about the bees this year. Last year we had lots of bees from each of several different kinds. This year we haven't seen so many. It was a long tough winter so we don't know if the hives survived or not, or they're finding food elsewhere, or what. We like having them around, and miss them.

This year I've only seen a couple. I managed to get some shots of this orange tailed one, and it's really the one. Normally we'd see lots, I've only seen the one. It must be a lonely bee if all it's buddies are sick or dead. The one of the bee flying is slightly out of focus, but that's a tough shot.

Today BRBE and I chanced to run way up in the far mystical lands of Tuscany. She gassed up the car, we both packed food and water for the trip. Part of the run was on the Mattamy Greenway thingie and that was lovely. They've got quite a nice ravine there. Some of it was on sidewalks and that was, well, sidewalks. Some of it was a trail run in the utility corridor. Much of it offered a nice view of the mountains, and we touched the bison! We were thinking about going north on the Greenway a bit, but didn't find it. The maps are kind of sucky.

We are considering making it a project to ride our bikes on the whole thing this year. Not in one go, of course, but over several weekends. We first thought of running it, but the logistics are pretty formidable. It runs right past my place a very short run away, but then everything else is further away. Lots further. Parking near the path at the far end of the city could mean an hour's drive each way, over many weeks if we're doing 5-7 K out and back each time. Trying to take two cars so we can do the path in 10-15 K chunks is almost worse. Still, if it's all as pretty as this (and it's not) it would be worth doing. Anyone wants in, let me know.

The Allium episode

So here goes, the long teased Allium photos. I started with this one, having captured it by accident one morning.

It would be cool to set up a time lapse movie of it budding out, but the darn thing keeps waving in the wind. I settled for trying to shoot it at regular intervals, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening. Some close up, some more distant.

Here's a series of shots, featuring a white one and a purple one. These are the winners, 27 out of 243 shots overall, out of 1751 photos since the above shot.

Quite nearby I noticed a purple one coming along too, so started getting shots of it.

200mm. Compared to the 100 mm just below

100mm. I suppose to be fair I should have shot these from the same angle, but the point I wanted to make is the background. In photographic terms, the background on the 100 mm shot is better, more pleasingly blurred.

The much hyped Allium butt. I hope you're happy with it.

Here's the overall view. The featured white Allium is at the far right of this shot, and the featured purple one is the next left big one.

The Alliums are starting to look a little ragged now, what with some of the heavy wind and rain we've had over the last day or so. Sill, they were beautiful. I think of them as the Jetson plants.

There are lots of other beautiful flowers coming along, stay tuned!