Not much writing here, I just wanted to share some shots that I thought you guys would enjoy.
After a very longgggggg time away… I busted out the macro lens.
I was surveying my neighbor’s sunflowers, at about 6:30 pm today, and there was so much action going on, I was really taking a good look and seeing everything. There was so much activity, so many different organisms (nearly all insects) making use of the great gifts of the sunflowers, and I decided, you know what? I’m going to do some macrophotography. The spider was really what made me decide to go grab the camera and the gear, because it was an interesting one, with incredible long front arms. I was excited to take some photos of these creatures, and I tried my best.
I was reminded, and especially after actually pulling up the photos on my screen, just how hard macrophotography is. Especially of moving targets. And not only were the bugs moving, but the sunflowers were often moving around, waving in the wind. You have to do alot of spray and pray, and even when the shot lines up, everything is right, nobody is moving, no wind, the target animal is not moving, still you have your hand movement, and you have to get the focus just right. These things are so small. You cannot capture the entire creature in focus, from too close up, because your focal plane is not big enough. You either have to back up, or choose a focal point, which you would almost always want to be the eyes. You can see that I had this trouble with the leaf-footed bug, because it was large. But the tiny ants, the incredibly tiny ants, the tiny ants in existence, I could get the whole ant in focus, from so close up, because the entire ant fits into the focal plane.
All shots were taken on 1/200 of a second, f5.0, ISO 800, a couple on ISO 200.
The Japanese word for sunflower is himawari (ひまわり). Isn’t that a nice word? Rolls right off the tongue. I think it sounds light and pretty, like the actual flowers.
(Below is an American Goldfinch photo I took at the same sunflowers last year, with my 400mm prime lens.)
HAKUMUSU 