The water collected in nasturtium leaves after a shower looks like droplets of mercury:
They refract outdoor lighting when seen from the correct viewpoint:
These were at the Morse Estate. Hand-held with the Canon SX230HS in low light conditions.
Category: Photography & Images
Taking & making images.
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Turkey Vultures Afield
We don’t often see Turkey Vultures on the ground, so this gathering was unusual:
Turkey vultures on the ground The depression in the grass suggests something keeled over right there; perhaps they’re rummaging around for leftovers. Although they’re totally graceless on foot, it works well enough for them.
There were two vultures on posts when I stopped, but one joined the ground party before I could deploy the camera. The other bird kept a close eye on me throughout the proceedings:
Turkey vulture on fence post Look alive!
Pix from the Canon SX230HS, zoomed to its optical limit, and certainly not prizewinners…
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The Hazards of Being a Pocket Camera
I carry the Canon SX230HS in my pocket, so as to have a decent camera ready when it’s needed; yes, it’s in a cloth case. Unfortunately, in recent weeks a tiny hair made its way into the lens stack, where it shows up as a slight blurring just left of center in high f/stop images:
Cheap cartridge heater insulation With the camera attached to the stereo zoom microscope, the hair becomes painfully obvious:
Hair on SX230HX Sensor Of course it’s in the middle of the image. [sigh]
A bit of searching turns up a bootleg technique to remove the front lens from the turret (basically, just twist and pull), but neither of the internal lens surfaces thus revealed lie near a focal plane and, in any event, were surprisingly clean. The hair is probably lodged just in front of the image sensor, most likely stuck to the back of the final lens where it casts a shadow on the sensor. If it wandered around you’d call it a floater.
Dismantling the entire camera and opening the lens stack seems fraught with peril, particularly as the camera pretty much still works fine for normal picture-taking. More pondering is in order…
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Monthly Image: Alien vs. Predator, Backyard Edition
Late August is, as always, the season for giant orb-weaving spiders, one of which spun a web between two tall cactus plants on the patio and greeted us with this sight one morning:
Spider vs. Dragonfly – overview We’re big fans of both spiders and dragonflies, but it was obvious who came out on top in this contest:
Spider vs. Dragonfly – front These things are unimaginably weird:
Spider vs. Dragonfly – bottom detail Even with the spider busy at lunch, she has four eyes to spare. They reflect the flash and appear as white-centered dark dots near the middle of the image:
Spider vs. Dragonfly – many eyes I’m sure the red spinnerets are diagnostic:
Spider vs. Dragonfly – side detail The spider tossed the empty husk over the side, then spent the next two nights and days parked in her lair, presumably digesting that big meal, and didn’t bother repairing the web:
Spider vs. Dragonfly – spider at home She spun a fresh web on the third night and caught a more manageable insect:
Spider with smaller prey All hand-held with the Sony DSC-H5, some with a 2x close-up lens. All the pix are tight crops, crushed to fit my arbitrary 750 pixel maximum and 200 kB size limit. If you need high-res original images for anything, drop me a note; I took far too many pictures of this encounter…
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Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly
These bits of flying jewelry enjoy the Butterfly Bush out front:
Eastern Yellow Tiger Swallowtail – tattered This one has lost both “swallowtails” and a chunk of its left wing. The blue spots indicate it’s a female; we hope it laid a bunch of eggs in the magnolia bush next door…
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Giant Swallowtail Butterfly: Up and Away!
The Giant Swallowtails once again returned to the Butterfly Bush at the front window this year:
Giant Swallowtail – Liftoff Their wings never stop fluttering while they feed:
Giant Swallowtail – feeding I’ve never seen butterfly wings in this position:
Giant Swallowtail – Downstroke All hand-held with the Sony DSC-H5 and no additional lenses. The top picture was underexposed by two stops to remove the background. The bottom picture has fill flash in addition to full sun backlight.
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Decorative Slug
This critter trundled across the driveway after a shower wetted the area:
Orange slug on asphalt They do some damage in the garden, but we let them alone elsewhere…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 