Poke Weed

A few days ago i was trimming around the fence and cut down some very tall weeks. I saw that they had small blooms and some had opened into small flowers. I decided to keep two of the tall weeds and then cut a few of the blooms, with stems, and brought them into the macro photography area. They seemed to be an interesting way for me to learn more about stacking macro images. Here are some of those results:

leaves, stem and small blooms; the top ones

not open yet and the bottoms ones fully open.

I think this is the first series i've felt that i actually was able to do what i was trying to do which is give a sense of the whole plant (the stem-branch) down to its smallest component.  

There is still more to go as the pistil can be photographed separately and the green pillow-stool is pretty amazing.

Stay tuned, more to follow.

Some birds

Flicker - looks like he has leggings

House Wren (Sparrow?)

Bathing

Mourning Dove

Bathing

Join me - its cool and refreshing

Around The House (ATH)

I want to see if i can post a series, over time, of photographs around the house — indoors and outdoors.

Orange Day Lily

I have been cutting 'about to bloom, you can see a couple in the photograph, and putting them indoors to open and occasionally they don't open and just fall off. This one opened wonderfully.

Pink Oxalis - doesn't bloom very often but has beautiful beet-pink tiny flowers.

The top Pink Oxalis was photographed in the afternoon sun; the leaf above was photographed only with general lightening of the room.

Yumm-

Rhododendron

Rainbow

In the same yard as below, this showed up a couple weeks ago:

If it looks a little dark, that's cause it was. We are in the rain/thunderstorm period - this afternoon there is a 60% chance of another thunderstorm; i love 'em!

The photograph above i did move a couple of items out of the picture as i like the wide open space of the image: there was a small evergreen tree in the foreground and the neighbors (on the right) raised garden jutting into the photograph. I like it this way.

Ornamental Japanese Chestnut

This is the second year this tree in our backyard as bloomed and it is one of the most beautiful trees i've seen when its blooming. It also has a strong aroma, pungent, musky and very invading as some aromas can be. I can sometimes smell it a block away if i'm downwind. If you are not familiar with the aroma, then i'm guessing it just an unpleasant smell.

Mushrooms forest

Four days ago i picked up a stick — a small piece of wood, from the ground and when i looked closer at it i saw there were many very small mushrooms; a forest of mushrooms actually.

They are super small, maybe half the size of a grain of rice. It is the first time i've seen one of the ways that mushrooms spread their spoors - the outer cover splits and the hundreds of seeds spill out to be carried away on the wind.

To give a sense of their size, i put a penny beside the wood and took a photo of both the penny and wood:

Yes, that is really how small they are; about the size of the lettering on a penny.

I wanted to see if i could take some photos there were down in the middle of the forest —

I haven't done any cropping, these are all full frame. I think they are tight enough that i can crop tightly around one or two of the mushrooms which would give a good idea of how they are growing attached to the wood.

Currently i am storing the mushrooms in the refrigerator which seems to preserve them well so i can have another go at photographing them tomorrow.

Blooms with the Sony

Continuing to work with the Sony, yesterday i spent sometime learning how to use the camera for macro work:

Full image of a rhododendron 

cropped to the center

This is 21 images that are stacked focused. It turns out that neither Helicon Focus nor Lightroom will allow the Sony to tether into their software. Bummer, really. Makes this kinds shooting much more difficult, not impossible but certainly challenging.

A bit over a week ago i took the Sony to the local botanical garden and came away with these:

I didn't seem them at the time but there are a lot of aphids on the second flower stem clearly visible against the green background. I don't know what the name of this flower is.

There were also Lady Slippers that a passerby mentioned to me and they were beautiful and, i believe, i'd not seen this kinda of flower before other then a picture in a magazine:

And then there were these very cute little bells:

The plant that had these bells had hundreds of them and the difficulty was deciding how many to focus on.

All in all, the Sony is working out very well and i feel i've just barely touched upon its possibilities.