Macro
Twirling Floral Skirt
Beside my wife’s flower bed, sprouting from a crack in the sidewalk, we have a cluster of sweet, tiny, pink poppies that appeared on their own.
I took this photo in the early morning hours. I call it Twirling Floral Skirt because it reminds me of a young girl spinning around to make her skirt flow out.
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Center of the Cosmos
This bee was about some serious bee work on the center of a purple cosmos flower. I don’t recall seeing this particular type of bee before – with white hair, orange antennae and a yellowish-green eye. However, this year I’ve photographed several.
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Three’s a Crowd
A couple of bees were working on this Sunflower when an ant decided to enter the picture. This is a flower in my wife’s flower bed. Not a flower she planted. One that was added by the birds dropping seeds from the feeders.
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Bold and Beautiful (monochrome)
Sometimes I like taking a favorite color photo and removing the color – making it monochrome – to see how the change affects the image. There are times when the B&W version is better…and times when it is not. This is a monochrome version of Bold and Beautiful. You can look and both and decide which you like better – color or B&W. I like aspects of both and would call this one a toss up.
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Popular Spot
Flowers are blooming and the bees are buzzing. This proved to be a popular spot in the meadow. Honey bees and bumble bees were frequenting this clump of purple spiderswort. It was early morning – maybe 6:30 (notice the dew still on the plants) – and they were already hard at it.
To get this shot, I put my camera on a tripod and simply focused on a colorful, well lit clump of flowers and waited. When a bee would enter into the scene, I would start clicking. The bees you see here are exactly how I photographed them…but they were never in the shot together. Since the focus and framing never changed, it was easy to combine the various bees from separate images into one.
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Bold and Beautiful
These bold, big-as-all-outdoors flowers remind me of purple cone flowers. I’m not sure they are cone flowers because the petals don’t slope downward. I’m not an expert, I just appreciate the beauty.
These beauties were photographed in the center of the circular entrance to the Kraft Building at the Green Lake Conference Center, Green Lake, Wisconsin.
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Monarch of the Meadow
This monarch butterfly, sitting on the head of a cone flower, was stretching its wings in the early morning sun. I like the way the petals from the flower look like trailing streamers.
I was delighted to capture this image because butterflies have been a real challenge for me. Of all my attempts – chasing the fidgety creatures around with my camera – I’ve only been able to catch a couple of images I’ve been happy with. I just happened to catch this one early in the morning, not fully awake. I even had to nudge it to get it to open its wings.
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Unassuming Charm
“Thou unassuming Commonplace Of Nature.” ~ William Wordsworth
This has been a banner year for daisies in our yard. They seem to be popping up everywhere. It’s also been a good year for the orange hawk weed you see in the background.
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On A Pedestal
This is a great time to crawl through the garden looking for bees and bugs. This guy was about his business – working the garden, buzzing from flower to flower.
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Little Bird Dreams
Only a few hours out of the shell, these newly hatched Tree Swallows are resting comfortably. The parents build feather-lined nests in the bluebird houses we have around our yard. In just a few days, those little black marks will become feathers. This nest will quickly become crowded because they grow amazingly fast.
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