WHEN YOU GOT NOTHING, YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE

So said Bob Dylan in the primordial times when I was young. I got no new material and have to wing it with what's on hand. Some days it's surprising how little spare time a retired person can have. This tiny, tiny bug spent the day on our front door. It couldn't be more than 2 or 3 mm long. The sharpness and depth of field was terribly difficult to catch shooting handheld, even with a macro lens. So, not the best image but a striking little creature. Diligent research by Mrs. C revealed that this is an ailanthus webworm moth, atteva aurea. The orange, black and white areas are folded wings.         

YOU CAN ALWAYS DO MACROS

I thought I was running out of material but I forgot that Mrs. C and I recently did a long springtime walk through our wonderful botanical garden. Lots of opportunities to get in close.                   

IR FLORAL CLOSEUP

Still walking around Forest Park with my infrared-modified camera. I brought a macro or close-up lens. This flower was tiny, no more than two or three centimeters across, but the lens produced fine details. The color, light-dark tonality and contrast involved significant Photoshop tricks too complicated to describe here.             

AN ASSIGNMENT

I learned most of what photography skills I have at the Maine Media Workshops, a bit of paradise for people like me. Throughout the summer they run week-long, work-your-ass-off programs in every aspect of photography, video, fine art printing, you name it. I've been there five times. They were some of the best weeks of my life.

And the best teacher I had there, in fact the best teacher I've had from kindergarten through incipient old age, was Bobbi Lane. I took her portraits course and I've never had a week in which I learned more. We keep in touch. She has sort of a daily assignment or theme on her Facebook page for her former students. We post pictures and comment on one another's stuff. Wednesday's theme was macros, something I don't do a lot. My camera bag was in my car so I went out hunting and found this.

          

Macropalooza

When I was shooting at the orchid show I used only my 100 mm f2.8 macro lens, sometimes with an extension tube added on. The idea was to get deep inside the blossoms. This is some of what I saw.                   

At The Orchid Show

I'm going to bounce back and forth between the floral event at the art museum and the orchid show at the botanical garden. I get around to shoot that more years than not, even though it is not much different over time. It's sort of a technical exercise.

In the past, I've mostly shot the orchids with my 16-35 mm or 24-105 mm lenses, using extension tubes to get the macro effect. If there was need for it, I used my flash gun with a diffuser. This year I took a different approach, using only a 100 mm macro lens and a ring flash (not a fancy one like this but the cheaper kind that slips over the front of your flash gun and then has a series of reflectors that encircle the lens). It's supposed to create smooth, even light. I didn't much care for what it did to flowers - the effect was more flat than smooth. See what you think.