An unidentified tree in our backyard is incredibly noisy during the day – it sounds as if an entire hive is buzzing through it. I set up my camera and waited for the bees to come to me.

A crystal clear night in the Sierras. This is a one minute exposure with minor processing in Lightroom.

View On Black

A bit smaller than camels in the Sahara, and much closer to home.

Sunset Magazine had their annual open house this weekend. Their gardens host a large number of Western US flowers. These Globe Amaranth were attracting quite a bit of bee interest.

Playing around with my macro lens. The seed is from a small dandelion, and is only about 1/16" long. Backlit with my flash, the background is smooth foamcore. I love the transparency of the seed.

Strobist info: Vivitar 285HV flash about 18" away (in the obvious direction) on 1/4 power.

Two ducklings showed up in our pool this afternoon. We were concerned for awhile until the mom showed up half an hour later. Right now she’s napping by the pool while the kids swim around.

I looked it up, and ducklings can fly when they’re about 8 weeks old. These two must be at least that because there’s no way they walked here. Actually they’re way younger than that – they must have hatched in our backyard.

This was taken during lunch at the baylands in Redwood Shores. I’m learning the names of our local fauna (and flora) because I always look up the creatures and plants that are in my photos. That way when I post the images it looks like I knew what I was doing.
The title for this image sounds like a Monty Python routine.

Sarah and I went hiking in Edgewood County Park this morning. Absolutely beautiful, except for the biting wind. For most of the hike you’re sheltered in the trees, but once exposed on the hillside it could get cold. The wildflowers were out, but hard to photograph because of the wind.

I’ve shot a lot of flowers at home, including quite a few orchids, so I wanted to see if I could do something new. For this shot I put my bare flash behind the flower and shot directly into it.

I know this is a video in a year long “picture a day” project, but I allowed myself that when I started. I love animation and thought I’d try out Flickr’s video with this piece. (Besides, it’s really 250 still images!)

Shot with a 100m lens on my Canon 10D, I stood there for 15 minutes counting 1, 2, 3, click, 1, 2, 3, click – 250 times. I then imported the images into Lightroom, processed them for the funky look, exported and imported into Premiere to make the video. The stuff that looks like dirt on film is actually birds flying by.