Meet the Small Fry!
Today was warm for us (89F), so the yard was full of sun-loving insects. When I took a turn about the yard, I photographed several of the critters so I could share them with you, starting with this little bumblebee.
This dragonfly was absolutely enormous, sort of a jumbo jet among the regular-sized insects hanging out here.
To give you some perspective: the cluster of roses this guy (gal?) is sitting on is about six inches across!
When I looked among the zinnas and daylilies, I saw a spot of red zipping about. At first I thought it was a damselfly, but now that I can see it “up close” in the photograhs, I’m pretty sure it’s a dragonfly. It’s about a quarter of the size of the other dragonfly.
Here’s the same dragonfly, seen from the side.
This little Asian (or Japanese) Lady Beetle was hiding in the yarrow. They’re a beneficial non-native insect that can become a nuisance in the fall when they gather by the thousands, looking for warm places to over-winter.
The yarrow was also swarming with soldier beetles like this one. They’re related to fireflies, and are very beneficial beetles to have in your garden. These guys love to munch on aphids, grasshopper eggs and all sorts of bugs that are considered pests.
This delicate little creature is a damselfly. Although it looks like a dragonfly, it’s a completely different critter. The end of the tail was a vivid blue, and its entire body shimmered.
There were many more beautiful insects that I just couldn’t get good images of, including several yellow Eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies that were absolutely gorgeous. The black tiger swallowtails were back, too – but instead of snapping photographs I spent my time convincing one to walk onto my hand.
Butterfly feet tickle!
Critters, Garden, Village Life | JAS | 
August 19, 2008 12:38 am
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By Jane in Minnesota, August 19, 2008 @ 8:35 am
incredible shots – how do you do it?
By JAS, August 19, 2008 @ 11:22 am
Hi Jane (and glad you liked the post on the Mercy). I get these kinds of shots by starting with my brother-in-law’s advice from over two decades ago (he’s a professional photographer that’s had his work featured in places like “Sports Illustrated”: for every shot you want, take 25 to 100 shots and discard all but the very best. With a digital camera, I can actually afford to kind of maybe do something like that! (I actually took 3 to 5 shots of each bug and picked the one I liked best). The digital camera I use isn’t fancy or expensive (it’s an HP R817). I combine its macro setting with a sport settings to get detail without the blurriness caused by the little guys moving. Then I experiment with the other settings to see what works best for lighting and angles. Finding the bugs… that evolved from a lesson a great science teacher taught our class waaay back when I was in junior high. He had us take a small hoop (smaller than a regular hula hoop), toss it out in a meadow, and then spend anywhere from a few minutes to an hour listing all the different plants, bugs, animals and signs of animals we could see inside the circle that the hoop made. It opened up my eyes to an entire universe of critters and plants that surround us, a universe that we don’t usually “see” because our focus is elsewhere.
By Kris, in New England, August 19, 2008 @ 4:59 pm
Speaking as a nature photographer myself, I’ve employed that method for years. You can take even more pictures by doing something called “bracketing” – take your first picture with the camera’s internal meter reading, then adjust up one stop and then down one, both from the original reading. It used to get extremely expensive with print film. Digital – no problem!
The pics are gorgeous as always.
By JAS, August 19, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
Good hint, Kris! The R817 isn’t quite a point-and-shoot as it will actually let me manually set the speed and the lighting (in addition to a whole bunch of ‘modes’) – but it definitely doesn’t have the oomph and versatility of a digital SLR. I love not having to pay for 25 prints to get the one that has the ‘look’ that I want!
By Kris, in New England, August 20, 2008 @ 8:59 am
I do bracketing with my digital SLR, so I’m definitely not using a point and shoot. If you can manually set shutter and F-Stop, you should definitely try bracketing. As long as you know what the initial meter reading is, you can bracket one stop up and down as many times as you want to get the right shot. I tend to bracket changing the F-Stop – seems to work better for me.
By JAS, August 20, 2008 @ 10:20 am
I’ll definitely experiment with it, Kris! I’ve been doing variations of this on an ad hoc basis without even knowing what it was, so it’s going to be fun to experiment and see what happens.