Following my adventure with bees, I put away the Speedlite, screwed on Canon’s dual macro flash (with diffusers), and haven’t looked back. The versatility of being able to so easily adjust the intensity (exposure compensation) and direction of light along an arc has opened up new possibilities for lighting and clarity in my macro images. [...]
For the macrophile in search of fascinating subjects, colorful backgrounds, and technically challenging photography, look no further than the nearest stand of pollinating flowers. There you will invariably find buzzing, herky-jerky bumblebees bouncing from one flower to the next collecting pollen. How do you shoot something that is so small and in perpetual motion? After [...]
Spring finally arrived in the Northwest and new life popped up in familiar places. The Mallards and Canada Geese babies showed up at the local park and in the macro world, hundreds of tiny orb weaver spiders emerged from their nest in the eave of the roof over my deck. The subjects were a study [...]
(Note: I decided to forego my scheduled installment of the Nicaragua series in lieu of the latest and greatest opportunity that has come my way.) Rrrrrrrrroller derby! The words evoke names of stars like Joannnnnnn Weston of the Bay City Bombers when I was a kid. Now the names have morphed into monikers like Farrah [...]
I attended Billy Howard’s Documentary Photography workshop at RMSP in 2009 with the hope that one day I’d have the opportunity to put what I learned into practice. That day came this past December as I joined a team of researchers from the state of Washington and the University of Nicaragua (UNAN) to photograph and [...]
Being Candid I don’t do so well taking posed portraits whether it’s in a studio or not. Directing people, choosing backdrops, controlling lighting – not my strengths. But shooting candid shots, well, THAT gets my blood flowing. What could be better than capturing a spontaneous, unselfconscious look that tells a great story in and of [...]
I’m pretty sure Henri Cartier-Bresson didn’t have insect mating in mind when he coined the photographic term “decisive moment,” but I can’t think of a phrase that better describes these momentary opportunities that often happen by surprise. More often than not catching insects mating at the decisive moment is just dumb luck, although it helps [...]
Spiders. Few things are more unnerving. When I was six years old I freaked out and crashed my bike when one crawled onto my wrist. I’ve had a love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with them ever since. And, as accustomed to them as I’ve become since shooting them up-close (as in photography, not guns), I still [...]
In my last blog I had just begun to shoot bees hand holding my camera in natural light. This month I’ve experimented with my ring flash, shooting bees and bugs during the harsher mid-day light, and intentionally finding the most colorful natural backdrops possible. The result is that I’ve experienced a much higher shot-failure rate, [...]
One of the consequences of “Going Back, Digging Deeper” (last month’s blog entry), was getting attached to the wildlife I was photographing; in this case, a family of Canada geese. I discovered my growing attachment to the geese when I began to feel protective of them when dogs or children approached early on in my [...]
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