Rascal in 2 1/4 Square

I finally got the 4 films that have been sitting in the fridge for a couple of years developed and scanned. They were 12 shots per roll but I only got 36 returned, most likely I screwed something up with the exposure and they were blank. I was playing around with flash so thats the most likely explanation. Here's one I like of little Rascal.

Rascal

Hummingbird Clearwing

It wasn't that hot this afternoon, just in the uppers 80's so I decided to pop up to Memorial Lake and have another session with the Butterflies and Moths. I made sure I'd got my flash and flash extender and as I walked over I set the camera to the same settings I used on Sunday to freeze the wings. Slight snag however. The flash batteries were dead. Well I managed to get one nearly frozen, I must have just caught it right at 1/2000th of a second.

Hummingbird Clearwing

Swamp Milkweed....

and a Monarch. No doubt that between Common  Milkweed and Swamp Milk the Monarch's far prefer the Swamp variety. One year I grew a load of Tropical Milkweed from seed and they really liked that but in this climate they don't survive the winter. Orange Milkweed is pretty good but being in a woodland they don't seem to do that well. There's several dotted about the yard but they seem to be later in flowering than the Swamp's.

Monarch on Swamp Milkweed

 

Monarch on Swamp Milkweed

Monarch on Swamp Milkweed

Lebanon Reservoir

I've often noticed Lebanon Reservoir on the maps and Google Earth but never actually visited. It's about a 2 1/2 mile walk in from the car park along Goldmine Road. Nice and flat as it used to be a rail track years ago. It was quite shady all the way under the old trees even though the temp's were in the high 80's. Lots of Bluegill fish in the sunlit shallows. Very nice early morning walk on what turned out to be a very hot day.

Lebanon Reservoir

Lebanon Reservoir

Cracked the Code

Well; not a code exactly, more a technique. I did a bit of reading last night and today armed with my new methodology I went back up to Memorial Lake to give it a go. I took a few of the Hummingbird Clearwing's but it was the Swallowtail's that got most of my attention. See for yourself how it went.

Clouded Sulphur

Hummingbird Clearwing

Pipevine Swallowtail

Pipevine Swallowtail

Pipevine Swallowtail

Pipevine Swallowtail

Pipevine Swallowtail

Pipevine Swallowtail

Buggy Days

No, not Muggy Days....Buggy Days. Lots of different bugs; some I know, some I don't have a clue. I did try several times to get a shot of the Hummingbird Clearwing's wings.  Never really managed it despite trying very high shutter speeds and I even tried using flash at manual 1/32 power. I'm going to have to read up on photographing hummingbirds to see how they freeze the wings. I think that the Moth's wings beat even faster than a Hummingbirds.

Bee on Mountain Mint

Blue Dasher

Cicada Killer

Cicada Killer excavating nest hole

Cicada Killer nest hole

Damselfly (I just like the simplicity)

Hummingbird Clearwing on Wild Bergamot

Hummingbird Clearwing on Wild Bergamot

Hummingbird Clearwing on Wild Bergamot

Hummingbird Clearwing on Wild Bergamot

Unknown on Swamp Milkweed

Unknown on Swamp Milkweed

Unknown on Swamp Milkweed

Pearl Cresent

Monarch on Swamp Milkweed

Unknown Bug

Monarch on Swamp Milkweed

I had pre-empted the camera and lens fogging up by leaving it out on the deck. Light was not great but I managed this one shot that I can work with. Actually there's about 20 shot as I was just shooting them at high speed. It's digital so I can throw away the rest. Just looking through the rest of the shots I made an amazing discovery. Just moments before it took off it retracted and curled up it's probosis. Makes sense. I'll look for that next time.

Monarch on Swamp Milkweed

End of the Line

It's been raining on and off today and extremely humid with it. I happened to see a Zebra Swallowtail out of the window and grabbed a camera and dashed out. As it's about 74f inside and about 85f with lord knows what humidity outside the camera and lens fogged up more or less instantly.  Bye bye, Zebra Swallowtail.  I did see a Black Swallowtail caterpillar that wasn't going anywhere fast so I left my camera outside for 10 minutes and went back out to photograph it. He'd by this time chewed the leaf and was at the end of the line. I didn't stay and watch how it turned around.

Black Swallowtail

Butterfly Time

It's that time of year again, the birds are pretty straggly after raising their broods. The flowers are blooming nicely in my rather overgrown butterfly garden and the butterflies are pretty active. I noticed a Monarch a couple of days ago and I saw another that was frequenting a Swamp Milkweed so I went out to try and get a shot or two. There's loads of white's out there, hordes of Silver Spotted Skippers and the odd Monarch. They must have been around longer than I though because I found a couple of little Monarch caterpillars. On the way back into the house I found this Emperor Butterfly on the siding. I get both the Hackberry Emperor and the Tawny Emperor in the yard and they look very similar. This is a Hackberry Emperor from the spot markings the wings. 

Monarch

Monarch

Hackberry Emperor

Comet Neowise

Not every day you get to see a comet. I couldn't be bothered to get up before dawn to see it in the Morning Sky but it was well worth it staying up latish to get some shots of it.

Comet Neowise

Comet Neowise

Comet Neowise

2 1/4 Square

In the early to mid 70's the camera that most of the professionals used was a Hasselblad 2 1/4 Square (more or less 60mm x 60mm) which compared to the much more common 35mm film allowed much bigger prints to be made of far better quality. I wanted one of course. I couldn't afford one as they were extremely expensive. In 1978 I was walking down a street in Masan on the South Coast of South Korea and I came across a shop that had a Hasselblad in the window. This was totally out of place for such a wonderful looking camera. I came so close to buying it, oh so close. I didn't. In hindsight it was the best thing as they are a bit finicky to say the least. Fast forward to the mid 2010's and you could pick up 35-40 year old Hasselblad's quite cheap. Digital has overwhelmed the old film camera's and film is expensive, developing is expensive and you have to wait a couple of weeks to see if the shot you just took is any good or not, no instant gratification using film. Only 12 shots per roll of film so it's not for everyone. I did succumb and bought one. I don't use it as much as I thought but I have 4 rolls of film sitting in the fridge to be developed when I get around to sending them off. I send the rolls off to a lab in California and they send back the negative  but also scan them to 2048 x 2048 pixels which is not bad, you can scan them on much more expensive equipment but the cost goes up astronomically. Here's a couple from a couple of years ago.

Pumpkin

Indiantown Run

The Rocky's

Not the Rocky Mountains but Rocky Raccoons. There’s Rocky 1, there's Rocky 2 and there's Rocky 3. Heres a few of the Rocky's from last night. Obviously there's 3 of them (honestly there is)  but I can't tell the difference.

Rocky 1 or maybe it's Rocky 2 or Rocky 3

Rocky 2 or maybe it's Rocky 1 or Rocky 3

Rocky 3 or maybe it's Rocky 1 or Rocky 2