Daily Archives: August 14, 2009

Come see what all the buzz was about

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I was at a friend’s house the other night when I noticed that they had some of the most unblemished flowers that I’d ever seen, just sitting there beside the garage waiting to be photographed. I had some time this afternoon so I stopped by with my camera, caught a fleeting bit of sunlight between the clouds, and snapped away. Bonus: the flowers were crawling with various species of bees.

“Say, do you mind? I’m working here.” This fella didn’t look particularly thrilled at my nectar interruptus. This is perhaps my favorite shot of the day.

I caught this bee coming in for a landing along one of these pale yellow flowers. I don’t know what plant species it is, but it’s handy that they are as tall as I am. For the shots on the orange flowers I was pretty much laying in the grass and on the sidewalk.

Even bugs stumble sometimes, and this was one of those rare occasions where I was in the right place to catch it. Oops. “I meant to do that!”

“It’s coming right for us!” This was pretty trippy through the viewfinder. I took most of these at a distance of approximately six inches, the closest my fancy macro lens is able to focus.

Bring your own straw and drink up good, because the forecast was calling for a 50% chance of thunderstorms this weekend. Yuck. I’m glad I was able to share this little window of sunlight with the bugs. Maybe this weekend will contain some thunderstorm or lighting photography!

This year’s Perseid meteor shower

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Earlier this week I was able to go out in the middle of the night and deprive myself of sleep in order to observe – and attempt to capture – the Perseid meteor shower. Despite the overwhelming light of the moon, I think it was a success.

Balancing a camera for long stellar exposures gets a bit more complicated when the moon is visible and bright; it brightens the sky considerably, drowning out many of the meteors and putting more light into the camera than one would like. While I was able to perform that balancing act ok, it did affect the kind of pictures that were possible.

I’d hoped to catch a brilliant, sparkly meteor painting a broad, sweeping arc across my camera’s field of view. Sadly, that didn’t happen this time around. I did, however, have a really nice time with my best friend and get to drink some ice cold Dew out in the middle of nowhere with my camera. I even had some pro HD video gear with me from work, but it simply wasn’t sensitive enough for the task.

Lots of Bismarck-Mandan residents were “in the know” about the meteor shower; I spotted many of them in my trek out of town to escape the city light. Hopefully they got as good a show as we did. There are more meteor showers coming up this year; if you missed this one, look out for more! Central North Dakota is a great place to go for watching these events, so be sure to take advantage of our location.