Starving for small, living creatures to shoot during the winter months, I visited the Butterfly House in the Seattle Science Center hoping to get a shot or two up close. Butterflies from all over the world live their brief lives in an 85-degree glass greenhouse filled with tropical plants and it’s open to the public. [...]
I have long admired Paul Bannick’s photographs of Arctic Snowy Owls and, living in the Pacific Northwest, it never occurred to me that I would ever get the chance to shoot them myself without heading north. But the opportunity came my way when I discovered that the owls were making one of their “irregular” winter [...]
This is a photography blog, but sometimes subject matter themes present themselves at timely moments of the year. As we humans celebrate our holidays by consuming turkeys and other animal life, so too, do the bugs around us consume each other and it is all done in concert with the natural law of the jungle [...]
See Shooting Dragonflies: Show Up, Watch Stuff Happen, Shoot it When it Does (Part 1) here. Shooting Roosters Some roosters startle easily so shooting with a longer lens helps. I use a 70-200mm lens with a 1.4 extender and can fill a frame with a dragonfly from about 4-5 feet away or stand further back [...]
Dragonflies are remarkable subjects to shoot. They come in brilliant arrays and combinations of colors from cherry red to sky blue to emerald and olive greens. Each huge compound eye has up to 30,000 lenses and they see better than any other insect. Their four independently controlled wings flap at 30-80 times per second, which [...]
It’s been almost two years since I last wrote about shooting bugs in the act of procreation, and you know what? They’re STILL doing it! Right out in the open in public parks and backyards. This time around, though, I have more macro experience behind me and I’m better equipped to shoot them when I [...]
Raindrops, Dew, and Bubbles: Macro Heaven Climate change has hit hard in most of the nation, but the Pacific Northwest continues to experience even cooler and rainier weather than usual. With the sun behind the clouds much of the time, I took a chance one early damp morning a month ago and ventured out to [...]
First off, I love my Tamron SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 lens. I’ve shot thousands of quality macro images with it, but I began hungering to get closer still and discovered the Canon MP-E lens, which delivers extreme close-up images of up to five times (“5x”) the magnification of the standard macro 1:1 [...]
One exercise that had a lasting effect on me in Elizabeth Stone’s and Doug Johnson’s Intermediate Photography Workshop four years ago was how to work a scene. We learned to shoot from the same spot or shoot a single subject at least eight different ways. In the macro world having the mindset to find eight [...]
Damselflies and Dragonflies are some of the most curious, colorful, and strangest looking creatures I’ve run across in my quest for macro subjects, and also some of the most challenging and rewarding to shoot. I stumbled upon a popular roost for Damselflies in the park earlier this summer and shot them for at least [...]
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