A dandelion's seed head sparkles in the sunlight. This photo is a continuation of my exploration of little things made big through coupling two lenses face-to-face.That said, I think this is a pretty cool shot of a large (1/2 inch) jumping spider. I taped two lenses together, face to face, to get the magnification. A 135mm prime was on my camera and a 50mm prime attached to the front of that with the small end aimed at the arachnid. The camera was mounted on a tripod and extremely small adjustments made to get the eyes in the plane of focus.
I used a variation of my standard window lighting setup with this shot. Instead of a large sheet of colored paper for the backdrop, I used a light blue Post-it Note. A small folded sheet of white paper was used to reflect some light onto the shadow side of the creature. The tough part about such closeup shots is that the lens ends up so close to the subject that lighting becomes an issue. There was enough sidelight from the window, along with the reflector, to give a fairly even light to the spider, which really brings out several of his beautiful blue-green eyes.
You may be wondering how this spider managed to stay still during all the fuss of setting up. He spent a little time in a refrigerator to slow him down prior to his appearance on the set. Some extremely talented veterans of insect photography like Kim and Meng Foo (two of my contacts at Flickr) might scoff at me for doing that, but I’m sure I’ll get better at this as I go.
It's a pretty auspicious start.
Click on picture to enlarge even further. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.
Remember the movie Fantastic Voyage? That’s the one where a team of doctors and a small submarine was shrunk to the size of a cell and injected into a patient so the team could remove an inoperable tumor - kind of an extreme inside job. Along the way the crew dealt with some life-size biological entities that they had only previously seen under a microscope. A couple of days ago, I took my own Fantastic Voyage and experimented with some extreme macro photographs. There are a number of ways to get extreme magnification on your photos. One technique involves reversing the lens on your camera – sort of like looking through the wrong end of the telescope. A single lens can be reversed or two lenses can be coupled face to face. I coupled a 135mm prime lens to a 50mm prime using good old masking tape.
When using such a setup, the focus is fixed, so the only way to focus is to move the camera back and forth until a portion of your subject comes into focus. The experience is like peering through a periscope as you descend into a sea of blurry colors. Eventually objects will snap in and out of
focus quickly. Depth of field is extremely shallow, so a fast film or ISO setting allows you do stop down the lens to try to regain some DOF.
This flower was shot hand-held in bright sunlight. 400 ISO film allowed the shutter speed to be set at 1/500, otherwise a tripod would have been needed to keep the image steady. I made several descents into the flower, pressing the shutter when parts I wanted in focus passed by. The bright sunlight created rich saturated colors. The inset photo shows the flowers seen without the macro lens setup.
After shooting large sweeping landscapes, it’s interesting to see how such small objects have a landscape all their own. More macros to come this week, including a friendly, fuzzy eight-legged creature.
Click on picture to enlarge (as if it needed more). Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.
Thank you to all who have served our country in the armed forces. Thanks to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. You are not forgotten.
Though surrounded by industrial parks and major expressways, the Teeple Barn in From the McHenry, IL Northwest Herald:
“There was some wood damage inside, and it just could notstand up to that wind,” said Carroll Teeple, whose husband’s great-grandfather, Lester Teeple, had the barn built in 1885.
The barn’s roof, she said, had only tar paper and was awaiting shingles. When it rained, the inside would get wet and weaken the structure.
“Time was just not on our side, and Mother Nature had gotten to the barn before we did,” Teeple said.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is unlikely that the barn will be restored.
Top photo © 2007 James Jordan. Inset photo © 2007 The Daily Herald.
The Breakwater Lighthouse in Manitowoc, Wisconsin sits at the end of a pier extending into Lake Michigan. The first light was established here 168 years ago in 1839. Several iterations of towers, lights and locations followed over the course of the years, an unbroken string of lights guiding sojourners in the night. The additions and subtractions over the years have resulted in a hodgepodge style of architecture. The lighthouse was built for functionality, not looks. Quaint it ain’t. The walk from shore around the harbor to the pier and then to the lighthouse is a round trip of a little more than a mile and can be a pleasure or a pain depending on the weather.
I decided to focus on the pier leading to the light rather than the light itself to depict the ever-present nature of the light. Whether in or out of mind, the light faithfully does the job for which it was designed.
Hope your weekend goes well. Summer is here. I haven’t seen any cidadas in Elgin yet, but I’m hearing them at night in the distance and their song is getting louder each day.
Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.
The Cloud Gate sculpture (aka “The Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium Park is perhaps one of the most photographed landmarks in the city. And as such, it becomes a challenge to get a photograph that is truly unique. But hey, that’s what makes it so much fun.
The Northern Illinois Brood XIII of the periodical cicadas has not yet made its appearance in Elgin. June bugs are also emerging right now, but are being upstaged by cicadas. I was out last night doing some practice shots with a digital point and shoot and still find myself impressed with what those cameras can do.Here is another set of cicada photos captured by James Workman in LaGrange, IL and posted on Flickr.
Here is a very good blog that presents updates on cicada sightings across the Chicago metro area.
Update: Here's an interactive map that charts Cicada sightings in the Chicago area, courtesy of the Lake County Forest Preserve District.
Here's what one sounds like. For full accuracy, turn your volume up until it's about as loud as a kitchen blender.
Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.
Cicada
Cicadas
A once-in-17-years event is about to take place in northern Illinois. This is the year that Brood XIII of the 17-year cicada emerges en masse from underground. The stories from those who endured the last event are plentiful – billions of insects emerging across Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan; several days of 100dB mating calls; a month later scooping the dead bugs off driveways and sidewalks with snow shovels; restaurants serving deep-fried cicada.
"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door."
Hope your weekend is not one of those things. Have a great one!The stated mission of Earthshots.org is to "celebrate the beauty and diversity of our planet." Photographers are encouraged to submit their photos for consideration for their "Photo of the Day" feature.
I've been fortunate enough to have had two photographs chosen over the past 100 days. They are featured, along with 98 amazing photographs in this video slideshow they created to celebrate their site's second 100 days of existence (which in internet years is what, a decade, maybe?). I think they've done a pretty good job of achieving their mission. Makes earth a place you wouldn't mind living in. Sit back and enjoy.
(If you're a teensy bit curious as to which two photos are mine, you can check at the bottom of this page's sidebar and click the two Earthshots buttons. But I'll give you a hint - one of them is the last photo in the show.)
This flower was part of my wife's Mother's Day gift from our youngest daughter. The entire arrangement was photo-worthy, so I spent some time on Mother's Day with a point and shoot digital and my tried-and-true window photographic lighting setup. Orton effect added in post-processing.
The profusion of threes (three leaves, three bracts, three petals) no doubt caused Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus to give this flowering plant, common to forests in North America and Asia, the name trillium.
This fire hydrant wasn’t placed at the edge of a farm field to keep the crops from burning. It’s there in advance of a subdivision of homes or a shopping center. In fact, this vacant field is adjacent to a shopping center in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I noticed the scene while sitting in my car waiting for my wife and daughters to pick up a few things. I wandered over with my camera and shot a couple of frames. Open space is a vanishing commodity as the metroplex spreads ever outward from the city center. I guess it’s the price of being such a popular place to live and work.
Hydrant, field and sky, Algonquin, Illinois. 35mm lens and circular polarizer. 1/125 at f8, 100 ISO film. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.
If you've visited here for any length of time, you know I have an affinity for twilight - that in-between time that is no longer day, yet not yet night. There is a sense of sorrow for the end of the daytime, yet there can be rest and repose in the nighttime to come - and hope for the next day, as well.
To all you moms out there ... enjoy your day!
A lock on the door of an empty shell that once housed a family of faith. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.
I never saw the stars, the fence or the shadows on the road when I shot this at 4:00 a.m. I wasn't even quite sure the photo was in focus. Part of the adventure of doing moonlit night shots is that you never know for sure what the final image will look like, if you shoot film, like I do.
In a world yellow and white daffodils, it's okay to be a red tulip. Do something to make yourself stand out today.
This is Third Street in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin at a little past midnight on May 5, 2007. The sounds of music from a late-night establishment wafted through the chilly evening air. A moon on the wane watched over the cars cruising the street. An occasional walker materialized out of the darkness, then disappeared down the street.
This is a photo of stability in the midst of turmoil. Last Friday was a stormy one in the Yet there is peace and stability even as the storm clouds roll overhead. The Bible describes God as a rock, a fortress, a very present source of help in times of trouble. Can’t get much more stable than that.
This month marks the two-year anniversary of Points of Light. I started it to show off some of the photographs of lighthouses I had taken. My photography has stretched and grown into different areas in the last two years, but my fascination with lighthouses continues, because they represent what I think all of us are looking for.
Sherwood Point Light, Door
Just got back from a spring weekend in These tulips graced a pottery and print shop in
Stay tuned.
Magical Rose Garden has nice things to say about Points of Light. I discovered upon my return this evening that POL was honored last Friday as the Spotlight blog at Magical Rose Garden. Many thanks for the kind comments! A number of blogs have been discovered and reviewed at MRG. I hope to return to check out some more!
Photo: Tulips,
Sometimes you can only see a sliver of sky from the road you’re on. Drive on anyway. Have a great weekend.
In the late 1800s, thirteen-year-old Albert Flesch arrived alone in Chicago from Hungary to live with an uncle and discover the opportunity that was America. Albert scored his first job in the camera department of Siegel-Cooper, one of the large downtown department stores of its day.
I noticed this nifty little parking job while touring Chicago last weekend at the North America Photobloggers meetup. I love examples of non-linear thinking. A long time ago, I learned a lesson about the value of redefining a problem in order to break out of the rut and come up with innovative solutions.
In a city of angles, squares and rectangles, the Cloud Gate, aka The Bean, located in Chiacago's Millennium Park, is at first a jarring sight. It's an intruder, an alien, a drop of liquid mercury fallen from the sky.A traveler through this life collects photographs of and shares words about the points of light discovered along the way.
My photo gallery on Flickr
Want to take better pictures? Read some of the secrets behind my photos at Ready, Aim,Click.
