The aviator

My wife had a hankering for photographing dragonflies. I had a hankering to photograph storms expected to sweep through the lower tier of Wisconsin counties. What to do?

Make a stop at Volo Bog, near Ingleside, Illinois, just a few miles from the state line on the way to the Badger State. They got dragonflies aplenty there.

This fella (we could tell because we could hear the beating of his wings) continually circled a stand of wildflowers near the parking lot. He would dart about, then hover and glide, then take off again. After a lot of trial and error, I found that I could focus on him while he hovered. I moved around the bed of wildflowers, getting a good angle on the sunlight as well as a clear shot of the sky and waited for Mr. Dragonfly (a common green darner) to circle back and hover. One hover brought him to within a few feet of me and I was able to fire off three shots. This is the best one.

Dragonflying complete, we headed into Wisconsin to visit Kenosha and Racine.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Got pollen?

If not, there's plenty more where this came from.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Rocking the poor man's macro

A photo of a hover fly, not hovering. The guy was hanging around on a seed pod at the top of a stalk of grass next to my garage (don't ask why my grass is seeding out).

I don't readily have $1000 laying around to spend on a macro lens, so I make do with a couple of cheap 50mm f/1.8s taped together, face-to-face. A new 50mm lens will set you back just $130 or so. When not shooting bugs, the 50mm makes a great portrait lens (on a DX sensor camera, it's equivalent to a 75mm). The other lens is an old manual job from an older film camera that doesn't get used any more.

A couple of people have asked about the setup I use to shoot insect macros. I've posted photos of the lens combo, flash setup and sample pics on the James Jordan Photography page on Facebook. There's a pretty thorough explanation of how I go about using the equipment and how I approach shooting bugs and other small things. And if you're also on Facebook, be sure to "Like" my page, mkay?

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Turnabout's fair play

We've made the turn from spring to summer and with that, it's time for me to do my annual "turn the lens around and shoot something small" photo trekking.

In this case, I gaffer-taped two 50mm f/1.8 lenses together face to face so the back of one of the lenses points toward the subject. I can focus down to less than half an inch with this setup. Add a flash on a bracket that dumps light just past the lens and I can shoot just about anything that will stay still long enough for me to move in. You lose the corners of the frame, but a little cropping takes care of things nicely.

This damselfly was one of dozens flitting about my backyard yesterday, enjoying the warm weather.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Snow, up close

A little pile o' snow, macro style. It's interesting how transparent snowflakes are. And they're awful tough to photograph. If they don't shatter into pieces upon landing, there's the chance that they'll melt before you can focus and shoot. Then there's lighting them so they actually show up. At this point, any measure of success I have in capturing snowflakes on camera is due to luck, not skill.

Happy Groundhog Day. Here's to an early spring!

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Getting flaky

I woke up Saturday morning and discovered that this fella and a few million of his buddies decided to drop by.

I put together my tried and true DIY macro photo setup (taped two 50mm f1.8 lenses together face-to-face, attached them to my camera along with a flash bracket and flash aimed just in front of the lens combo) and headed out to get a few shots of the guests.

I set up a mirror on my deck to collect some subjects, then moved in and fired away. The dark background is courtesy of the reflection of my camera. The blue tone was provided by setting the camera's white balance to incandescent. The flash (at 1/16 power) added just enough definition to the icy flakes.

Brrr. Nice.

Settings: ISO 100, f/16 @ 1/80. Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Shy hopper

Now that we've made the turn into September, it will only be a matter of a couple of months before we say goodbye to our exoskeletoned friends. So I thought I'd close out a summer's worth of insect macro photography (and get to a backlog of archived photos) by posting some of my favorites.

It took a while to get a photo of this guy. Grasshoppers like to split whenever something large, like, say, a photographer with a large camera, lens and flash setup strolls through the meadow. Mr. Hopper hid from me behind a blade of grass. As I moved into position, he would peek at me and move back behind the blade.

After a few rounds of peek-a-boo, he showed his entire face to me and I got the shot. What I love about it, besides the even lighting on Mr. Hopper and the focus on his face and foreleg, is what appears to be sunlight falling on the blade of grass. It's not. It's the flash. The blade of grass was angled in such a way as to catch the light from the flash on both sides. The shadow of Mr. Hopper is actually on the other side of the blade -- being somewhat translucent, you can see the shadow.

I also got the anntenae in fairly sharp focus. I've found that one of the bugaboos of insect photography is that you tend to lose one of the anntenae no matter what you do. Depending on the angle from which you are shooting, it will appear as a blurry line across the head or body of the insect. I hate that.

It's always nice when everything comes together just right.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

RIP, Japanese beetle

About this time a year ago, I was bemoaning the fact that Japanese beetles were wreaking havoc around my house. I first noticed some brown leaves falling from a large birch tree in my front yard. They all seemed to be skeletonized -- the only portions that remained were the veins, all else had been carefully eaten. A little Googling identified the culprits -- Japanese beetles, which have no natural enemies, therefore giving them free rein to do the two things they do best -- eat like gluttons and make baby beetles.

When a few beetles discover an ideal food source, say, the birch tree in my front yard, an ornamental shrub with reddish leaves, roses or fruit bearing plants, they set up residence and send out pheromones that other beetles can detect up to two miles away. Party's on.

Even more disturbing than the lawn bags full of dead leaves was that as I blew bushels of leaves out of my driveway day after day, I noticed a fine layer of coarse black dirt that blew off along with the leaves. It took me some time to realize that it wasn't dirt -- it was Japanese beetle poop raining from the birch tree.

I posted my situation on this blog last year and got a few good suggestions as to how to keep Japanese beetles at bay this time around. One of them was to dose the tree's roots in the springtime with an insecticide. The idea is that the tree will draw the chemical up from the ground and render its leaves poisonous to insects.

In late May, I poured two gallons of insecticide around the base of the tree as the leaves were just beginning to emerge. Then I waited for the beetles to arrive to see if it worked.

So far, so good. To date, I've only found two leaves with beetle damage that have fallen in my yard, and one of them had a dead beetle attached to it. My birch tree is still lush and green, while two trees across the street have long since turned brown and are losing leaves. Other trees around the subdivision in which I live have suffered a similar fate. Two trees never recovered from last year.

The Japanese beetle above is just one of many that I find in my driveway on a daily basis.

What is it that they say about payback?

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Whattaya know?

So why am I following up photos of my daughter’s wedding with yet another bug photo? 1) Because I can. 2) This isn't just another bug. 3) This katydid was actually a part of the proceedings.

As daughter and newly-minted husband were packing up the getaway car to make the drive to Tennessee and a new life together, I spotted something small and green on the tip of the antenna on the car. It turned out to be a katydid that had somehow perched itself there. Its picture now resides in the same collection as the wedding party, relatives and reception activities.

In Cherokee mythology, the katydid has the ability to forecast the future. This one wasn’t talking, so we’ll leave the future of the newlywed couple up to the One who knows it best.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Ah, motherhood

Just when you thought it was safe to visit this blog without seeing extreme closeup photos of bugs, I hit you with this. Mwah hahaha.

I was pulling weeds in my garden yesterday when I spotted what looked like a miniature white styrofoam ball (a little less than 1/4 inch in diameter) moving about in the dirt. Since miniature styrofoam balls tend not to move about in the dirt by themselves, I took a closer look and noticed a spider was attached to the ball. The ball was an egg sac and the spider was a female wolf spider (exact species unknown at this point).

The spider hunkered down under a clod of dirt. I placed a stone near the clod so I could find it again and asked momma spider to stay put for a couple of minutes while I dashed into the house to assemble my insect macro setup.

I returned with camera and flash unit five minutes later, located the dirt clod and was pleased to see that Mrs. Wolf had graciously decided to stick around for a photo session. I coaxed her out into the open (not an easy thing to do) and took several shots while laying on my stomach in the dirt (I wonder what the neighbors think).

Wolf spiders tote their egg sacs around until the young hatch, then the mother bites open the sac and the spiderlings climb onto the mother, where they ride around for a few days and gradually disperse.

And they never call after that.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

This fly didn't

So while it sat among some day lilies, I took its picture.

Full moon tonight. We'll see if I can get some shots of something besides bugs.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Who did?

Katy did ... stand still long enough for me to get a couple of shots of her on a pink geranium on my deck, that is.

Some whirlwind posting this week ... more pictures than words. Have a good Monday.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

An update on firefly flash photography

From the damage on its wing coverings, it looks like this firefly has had a hard go of it in its brief adult existence. Fireflies do not eat and live for about two weeks before starving to death. In that time, they have one item on the to-do list -- ensure the next generation of fireflies.

Another photography session in near darkness where we both tried to use our flashes to best effect.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Firefly, on and off

Firefly, off

I’m sure that I really disrupted things for this female firefly last evening. I’m assuming that she’s female because firefly females tend to not fly while flashing and this gal stayed put on a blade of grass in my backyard during the entire photography session. Mr. Firefly will fly about and flash his light, hoping to catch the attention of a female, who will light up in return if interested in a little romance.

I took several shots of this lady with my macro setup while lying on the ground. This particular firefly may or may not have been impressed with the off-camera strobe going off above her in the deepening twilight, but several others landed about me while I was shooting. I presume they were males who were probably thinking, “Holy cow!”

I dialed down the flash and slowed the shutter speed hoping that the combo would help show up this lady’s tail light should she decide to let it shine. She started crawling up and down the blade of grass, flashing her light every so often. It was tough keeping her framed and in focus as she moved about, and each time she lit up, I hit the shutter button and fired some light right back at her.


Firefly, on

The best shot of the bunch shows the yellowish glow of her light very nicely, but because of her orientation toward the camera, the focus is not where I wanted it to be. Hopefully, I’ll have better success should I try again this evening.

Here’s an ethical question, though – does firing several hundred watts of light at a firefly constitute sexual harassment?

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Red-eyed fly

Up until now, I've been unable to get a real decent shot of a fly. It seems the weight of my glance is enough to send one airborne -- as soon as I spot one, it takes off. This one was an exception. I spotted it on top of a tall plant about five feet away while walking through the Paul Wolff Forest Preserve near Elgin, Illinois.

I took my time moving into position and slowly pushed the camera ever closer. The fly came into focus and I fired, but the fly was turned more face-on to me and I really wanted a side view, so I came at it again. The fly turned sideways while I focused, then froze. Got it.

I am continually amazed at the level of intricate detail in the macro world.

I'm also pretty happy with my lighting setup, which delivers a nice dose of soft flash on the subject while maintaining a minus one to two stop exposure on the ambient. Makes the shots more dramatic that way. And it's all done with a 25-year-old flash unit, a cheap bracket and duct tape.

Pretty fly for an old white guy.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

A coupla more bugz

Don't know why, but this bug made me think of the actor who played Officer Murray in TV's The Odd Couple.



This one looks like a cross between a gymnast and a zucchini as it hangs by one leg from its web waiting for a hapless schmuck to come along (the photographer doesn't count).

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Peenchers

The nasty end of a male earwig. Males tend to have larger, curved pinchers while females' pinchers are shorter and straighter.

These nocturnal critters are on a continual search for water and damp places and can squeeze into the smallest areas. They'll follow exterior water pipes into houses and they loooove basements.

They rarely do so, but earwigs are capable of flight. I once had one buzz around my head as I sat near a light one summer evening. It then flew down my shirt collar and delivered a couple of pinches to my neck before I gave it the ultimate pinch.

Using the extremely shallow depth of field of my lens reversal macro setup to advantage here.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Mmmmm ... blood

They're heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere! A mama skeeter tanks up on some O-positive so she can make some more skeeters. We've had lots of rain over the past several weeks here in northern Illinois. Now we have the by-product of all that moisture -- mosquitoes are beginning to emerge. And they're hungry.

I was out looking for insects to photograph over the weekend and several mosquitoes found me first. This one was tapped into my elbow and was nicely engorged when I discovered her.

I had my macro rig with me, but it's heavy (camera, two lenses, metal bracket and flash unit) and requires two hands to keep it steady (one to hold it and the other to trip the shutter). Since one hand was unavailable, I set the self timer and moved the camera into position within the ten second time frame, resting it on my upper arm to steady it and get a low angle on the blood-sucking bug.

No mosquitoes were harmed in the making of this photo. After I had snapped a couple of shots, I flicked her off my arm and headed home. No sense making a mess.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Fallen

Gossamer wings that will fly no more. Tyler Creek Forest Preserve, Elgin, Illinois.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

And the anther is ...

... the part of a flower that produces pollen. Usually found atop the stamen.

This is the stamen and pollen-coated anther of a red lily that had just opened up for business in my backyard. More closeup macro goodness via lens reversal and off camera flash, which creates a portable mini photo studio approximately one cubic inch in size. All the better to capture the marvelous details of our world that escape our attention each day.

Tech info: ISO 400, f/16 at 1/125th with flash on a bracket bounced through a diffuser. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.