Things up close

Finally got around to getting pictures here, the first one is of those dangly things on a birch tree. Then dandelion, wood, bee. 

Insects again

Took out my macro lens today, and loaded some pictures I had taken earlier onto the computer.

More macro fun

Bug on iris

Fern - reminds me of a violin scroll

Columbine

Lupin

 I'm really liking this new lens. :-]

Some random thoughts, plus a few pictures

Lately I've been taking out the fiddle a bit every day, might as well get in practice before school starts. Mostly I've just been playing random things, but I try to get a few scales in too.
Also, I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I finally bought an external hard drive to back up my pictures and other things. I spent $30 on the cheapest one, a 250 gb. It should be plenty of space for a while at least.
Another random thought, I think I'm going to have to figure out a way to enjoy school and homework, and then next school year will go fast. then it will be summer again.
Well, enough with my ramblings, this is probably the most I've written in one post.

One more post before I go...

I have a bit of extra time today, so I decided to put some more pictures up. My memory card came in the mail just in the nick of time, so I decided to test it out. It worked.

The peonies are opening up

The small bee was quite small, I was actually taking a picture of the flower and then noticed it was there.
Well tomorrow I leave, can't wait!

More bugs :-)

I hope you're not getting too sick of all the bugs, because here's some more. I think I'll have to start trying something a bit different with the bugs, or else find some new ones. They're starting to look a bit repetitive to me.

Bit bigger dragonfly, but still not the big one I'm chasing

Mating Flies

 The trickiest part besides getting them to stay in one place might be the focusing, because just a tiny distance will change the focal plane to the wrong place.
Here's a few I tried in the garage, the first one is with the bench grinder, the second with an angle grinder. I had the shutter open for maybe 10-20 seconds on them.

I inverted the colors just for fun

More from yesterday's adventure

 A few more from yesterday. I went out for a second try, and got some more. During the process, I slipped a bit and ended up breaking my lens cap leash thing, so I had to fashion another one. Maybe I'll make a post about making them, they save you about $1-2 and are easy to make.

 The first one here is one of the big dragonflies I've been trying to get, but they like to keep their distance. I don't really like this one, I prefer to get them when they're on a plant. I took the color out from around the dragonfly because otherwise it blended in a bit too much.

 This is a peony that hasn't opened up yet. I'll be sure to get more pictures as it starts to open.

Another dragonfly :-)

Honey Bee

Something different

Today it was actually a bit nicer out, around 75. The last two days were too hot for my liking, yesterday was a bit over 100. Anyways, I went out into the yard with my camera to take more flower pictures, but there weren't any new ones. I ended up going bug hunting.

The dragonflies were pretty small (except for the one in the third picture) but they let me get pretty close. Still, I had to crop the images a bit. 

A skinny one

This one had a nice blue color

A nice big one, but these ones flew off before I could get too close. A 100mm macro would be nice!

Fly (the focus is a bit off unfortunately)

Spider

I ended up using manual focus for these, even with the crummy focus ring on my kit lens. If the creature would stay put, I would focus to the closest distance and just move the camera back and forth. Time to go for now, going to get some more!