My Phoenicia azalea always puts on a stunning show for a brief period in April. I wanted to capture the mounds of lavender-pink blossoms that obscure all of the leaves on the plants but I couldn’t do it justice for some reason so I focused on just a few of the flowers. After featuring a bee gathering pollen in a sad looking azalea blossom yesterday, I felt the need to show some of this azalea’s finer specimens.
My gorgeous pinkish purple sun azalea, Phoenicia, is in almost full bloom in the front of my house but sadly, the unseasonal summer-like weather (mid 80’s when I was outside taking photos late this afternoon, about 20° higher than normal for this time of year) coupled with compulsory drought required watering restrictions, have wilted the lovely blossoms. I don’t know if my emergency application of water will save them. Normally, the plants are a sea of color for a couple of weeks in April but about half of the blooms were droopy and withered. After I spritzed a bit of water on them, I noticed there were a few bees flitting about. The late day sun shining through the flowers made quite a beautiful scene, despite the wilt but capturing a bee on the flowers proved almost impossible for me today, partly because I was just as wilted from the hot sun as the flowers were. Of course none of the bees chose to alight on any of the back lit flowers and the only decent shot that I got was of a bee on a wilted and bruised flower.
Continuing with my creepy crawlies collection, I took the closeup of this eight legged creature on a wall in my house this morning. I was almost late for my dentist appointment because I noticed it just as I was leaving. I took six shots, four of which were not in focus. The background (my stucco wall) was uninteresting (although in this extreme closeup, the texture of it is quite noticeable) so I added a vignette. Although it is tarantula-sized in this macro shot, the size of it was really only about 3/4 of an inch, legs and all. It’s amazing to see how much hair these ordinary house spiders seem to have. I would love to have the nerve to photograph a wolf spider but despite their tiny size, they jump! I don’t think I’d have the nerve to get this close to a jumping spider…taking this shot was hair-raising enough for me!
I suppose I would be justified in calling my oldest brother a big green weenie. After all, I have been subjected to Arthur’s relentless teasing for more than 60 years and, during my formative years, I’m certain I must have called him a big green weenie and probably a few other things as well, but the title of this blog post doesn’t refer to Arthur, but instead, to Arthur’s very own creation, The Big Green Weenie, a fly fishing fly that he uses to catch bass. This past weekend, I spent two days at the Shasta Trinity Fly Fishers annual Fly Tying Expo in Redding, CA, photographing more than fifty men and women, all demonstrating their fly-tying techniques and their creations.
Arthur was one of the demonstrators on Sunday morning. He wasn’t demonstrating how he tied the Big Green Weenie, though and to be accurate, he told me its correct name is the Shasta Grande Green Weenie but I think Big Green Weenie is just as descriptive and all of his fly fishing buddies called it that. He was demonstrating tying an “emerger nymph” pattern (fly-tying techno-speak for how this fly goes together). Fortunately, he had the Big Green Weenie with him to show off.
I used my macro lens for the closeup shots. The nymph fly is about a quarter of the size of the Big Green Weenie but looks just as big because I focused so closely on the nymph.
The gorgeous red fuchsia hanging on the the patio at my brother’s house in Redding drew me outside the other morning. I had my macro lens on the D800 and wanted closeups of just the flower. I took several shots of the flower but wasn’t really excited about the shots until I walked around it 90 degrees and saw the gorgeous back light.
Here are two shots of the same flower. They are both nice but I love the drama of the second, including the tiny web. Just turning 90 degrees made such a huge difference. I sometimes forget this simple rule of photography: just move around a bit…it can make a huge difference.
When I walked out to the patio this afternoon, I spotted one of the hummingbirds fly away from the fountain and land in the shrubs. I went back inside for my camera, the D7100 with the 70-200mm lens attached, hoping to capture the hummer in motion—flying that is. There was no flying but there was plenty of motion as I watched him (and he eyed me) preening. This little guy was intent on getting rid of the excess water, stropping his beak and chin on a branch, and shaking all over. And, he didn’t have to bend over to shake his tail feathers.
I spent some time this afternoon stretched out on the walkway to my front door trying to get a ground-level photograph of a whimsical garden head leering out from behind the azaleas. It was not easy, mainly because my body doesn’t seem to be able to get down and back up again as easily as it once did and the ground is certainly harder than I ever remember it being, even with a kneeling pad which I placed strategically under my hip. I placed the camera on a magazine so it wouldn’t get scraped up from the concrete walkway and I flipped on “live view” on the camera so I only had to contort my head a little bit to see what I was doing. I tried several different shots and views, struggling up and into the house to download the photos, being unimpressed with any, and returning to the damp concrete. I got this shot on my fourth trip out, after I had taken a completely out of focus one by mistake but after seeing its composition I realized that the shot I was seeking was an in-focus azalea and an out-of-focus head, not the other way around which was my original intention. I think the azalea could have been in better focus but by the time I got this version, I was done with the ups and downs!
