Feeding Birds

Put up a couple of bird feeders last weekend along with a cake of suet. All this was in the backyard and the starlings immediately took over and none of the other birds would use the feeders. There is a medium size flock of starlings living in the trees in the adjoining years (they have the larger trees).

So i bought another double-hanger and moved it all to the front of the house where we could see them from the front room. Occasionally a starling stops by but i chase it off and the wrens, cardinals, etc., seem happy to use it.

A couple of shots from the first day:

Sometimes, he thinks, and behaves, as though it was his stash of food.

Fireworks, sorta, well maybe . . .

Its not that i don't like watching fireworks - rather they all seem sorta the same after a while. Obviously they are not the same and are mostly different in color and patterns — mostly.

So when they are going off i usually don't bother going outdoors to see them. And because this is a tourist town and Biltmore is here, there are often fireworks throughout the summer. Yesterday when the fireworks for the 4th of July began to go off, i didn't give it much thought. At some point S asked me to step out and look, that they were really beautiful ... so i did, step out.

And they were, beautiful; so i picked up my new Sony and began to shoot and ... what, it wouldn't work, wouldn't focus, nothing. So i ran upstairs to my bird lens and camera, which was already set up and began to shoot thru the screen on the upstairs window.

And lo, i loved the results:

Don't really look like traditional fireworks, eh? And watching thru the screen they didn't look anything like that either ... only with the camera photographing thru the screen did they turn out like this ... i like 'em better then the traditional ones.

Enjoy —

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.