Life Hangs On — 100 mm | f/3.5 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/800
I didn’t expect to see this today. Despite progress well into Fall I somehow have a path of thriving daisies in my backyard. I spied them unexpectedly today while making a quick pass through back there—about ten blossoms in all. More surprising was the amount of insect life teeming about the blossoms. Bees, flies, and some kind of beetle/yellow ladybug type thing; there must have been a dozen or so creepy-crawlies getting in a late season feed. Or maybe they’re just in calendar denial like me? I’m still wearing flip-slops after all. We’ve already dipped below freezing a couple times so this patch of my yard is demonstrating some unusual tenacity. Or maybe I’ve just never noticed the late season prowess of daisies and the requisite wildlife they sustain?
Update: Hat tip to Jeff Ruemeli for being googler du jour and identifying this little flying fellow as a hoverfly.
Set a Screen — 100mm | f/3.2 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/320
Last Saturday, before the Mullica River sunset, and long before the grilling and chilling, there was hummingbird watching going on at the Wurst Family kitchen sink. While Ben and Jen were dutifully putting in work to prepare a tasty summertime dinner, I was derailing any kind of kitchen progress as is my style. I’m good at getting in the way.
You see right outside their window atop the kitchen sink hangs one of those nectar/sugar water hanging things that the New Gretna hummingbirds oh so love to suckle. This fly thru hanging restaurant was loaded down with about six hummingbirds bebopping in and out of the feeder and my field of view. Enthralled and in the way, I first started getting some footage with my cellphone. That worked well and on Ben’s recommendation I captured a pretty cool slow-motion video. It’s pretty damn impressive what you can capture with a handheld cellphone these days.
Not content to call it a day with just an iPhone video, I went to the car and retrieved ye olde camera bag. With macro lens fixed I first tried to capture the hummingbirds from the outside. I initially set up shop at the corner of the house a few feet from the kitchen window and the feeder. Unfortunately my presence (stank?) was too much for our little bird friends. They wanted no part of my camera and me. Back to the kitchen! Back to being in the way!
Once inside I took over the kitchen sink area. Again. Like magic the hummingbirds came back almost immediately. It seems the darkened screen on the window provided an illusion of safety for these birds. Despite being only a foot or two away from me, they had no problem flying in and out of my frame. While shooting through the medium of a window screen is suboptimal from a clarity standpoint, it was my only hope for capturing these elusive birds. Not only was the end result solid, I actually like the effect the screen has on the finished product itself; the subtlety of the screen grid works nicely with the bokeh in the shot.
This One’s for the Introverts — 100mm | f/2.8 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/400
Photography as metaphor? Perhaps. Despite taking this photograph two weeks ago to the day, it wasn’t until last night that this image made a connection to my own self, and my own experience of the world. You see last night I finally made it out to one of the weekly free concerts at Harvey Cedars Sunset Park. Sure it was the last concert of the season but better late than never. Conveniently concert time synched up nicely with sunset and conditions looked promising. But it wasn’t until walking through a packed park of maybe a thousand or so peaceful revelers that I noticed my discomfort. Here I was, a fierce introvert loathe for attention walking through crowds brandishing camera and tripod. Even if the eyes drawn upon me were in my own head it was more than enough attention to heighten my heart rate. My brain downshifted into full on Imposter Syndrome, and my insecurities were happy to remind me that I’m somehow not worthy to have a camera in this space. Paralyzed by my environment I made no pictures.
So how does this rambling anecdote into the spotted mind of Greg Molyneux relate to this photograph? Well it’s all about the desire to be left alone, an anonymous face in the crowd. While we see brightly illuminated flower petals filling the focused foreground, it’s what’s behind the petals that hits closest to home; a lone blossom set back, cast out of focus and into the shadows. This is me. This is how I live my life. Content to do my part on the periphery. And just like those bright petals I’m happy and eager to share myself and my photos open and honestly via social media and this website. It’s that I get to do so at arm’s length that most suits my introverted proclivities.
But it wasn’t all bad. Oh no. Once I returned the camera gear to the car and walked back to a jammin’ Sunset Park, I took a seat toward the back of the grass. Relaxing in my beach chair I watched day glow fade to black, all the while being serenaded by Eagles covers. That was a good time.
On an administrative note: this was the 200th photograph I’ve uploaded since launching this website on 18 January 2014. Pretty cool. To all of those who’ve visited—thank you!
While they may not get the same play on social media like my vibrant landscapes are wont to do, a big soft spot in my heart exists solely to express myself through the macro and black and white medium. Five minutes on a psychologist’s couch would most likely reveal this proclivity as a merger between my primary and secondary school days as something of a black and white pencil drawing enthusiast, coupled with my more recent start as a photographer who worked almost exclusively in the macro world for the better part of my first 20,000 photographs. Roots, man. You just can’t shake ’em.
Here I’ve presented a very simple composition of one of my favorite flower subjects: the purple coneflower. Using a near side-on perspective the depth of field is quite thin. leaving only the front section of the blossom in sharp focus. Shallow depth of field brings a welcome sense of whimsy and wonder to the composition, enabling the eye to move, leaving the mind left to fill in the fuzz. By introducing noise into the photograph during post processing I intentionally wanted the resulting graininess to layer an aspect of grit and imperfection to the shot. In some ways a hat-tip to the tendency of grain to show up in old school film photography—not that I’ve ever shot a roll of film in my life. It’s OK, feel free to revoke any photographist street cred I may or may not have established up and until this point.
It’s funny how the mind recognizes patterns and builds associations. You’ll see, smell, or touch a thing and, boom, the mind’s eye reflexively retrieves a memory. Anytime my macro lens and I get low to go side-on with daisies or coneflowers familiar MIDI sounds of my youth start humming, and my brain renders a primordial 8-bit Mario jumping from mushroom platform to mushroom platform. You know? These guys. So here I am transforming an innocuous Black-eyed Susan chilling in my front yard into the digital joy of my youth; smooth, clean flower petal edges become jagged lines of a pixelated past. Brains, man.
How about you? Have any examples of when you see (smell or touch) a thing, and your mind works naturally to retrieve another?
Your Moment in the Sun — 100mm | f/4 | ISO 400 | EXP 1/2500
Most always when shooting macro I rely on the camera’s autofocus system to home in on a single point of focus of my choosing—within the camera’s autofocus grid selection, that is. But for this shot I switched over to full manual focus. The system was struggling to capture optimal sharpness of the fly—if anyone can identify said fly that would be great!—so I took matters into my own hands. Literally.
All factors were ideal for the making of this shot. Wind was no issue, keeping the Black-eyed Susan still; there was a happy little fly confident enough to sit motionless for well over a minute; and lastly, a lone sunbeam illuminating what otherwise was a bed of flowers slumbering in the shadows with a welcome dose of drama. Altogether creating one of those moments were all I had to do was steady the hands, take a deep breath, and depress the shutter before the exhale.
Daedalus Bid You Take Heed — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/125
This is abstract. Is this abstract? I think this is abstract. A quick googling of abstract art returns the following—
art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.
Once I decided to roll with low key black and white processing, all my mind could see is an unnamed papier-mâché sun, brooding near unseen amidst the vastness of space. The way the would-be corona is captured frozen in its solar flare tango as countless sun spots blot out the surface. This is no coneflower—this is a sun. Will our telescopes ever fix on such a sight? Of course not. But another photographer’s macro lens just might.
Just Missed The Round Up — 100mm | f/3.5 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/640
Here’s another shot from last Sunday’s macro session. And as the title would suggest I just missed my focal point. You can see the sharpest section of the photo happening over the silver-spotted skipper’s right wing instead of its eye and proboscis—thanks Google for letting me know what a butterfly tongue is called. This mess-up could have been mitigated with 1) steadier hands, 2) a tripod, and/or 3) stopping down to let’s say f/4–4/5.6. Shallow depth of field can be a beautiful thing, but it’ll kill ya when you miss. Such is the way of things.
Many far better photo making type peeps than I preach photographists should only show their best work, leaving the mishaps for the doldrums of our digital libraries. There’s certainly wisdom in these words, but I’ve carved my place in this hobby without paying much attention to the rules. This is not to say sound guidance is not important, I think it’s more to say that sometimes we need to make, or at least break, the rules—particularly if it’s an activity your doing for your own sanity and growth. After all how can we grow without exposing ourselves warts and all?
Slacker Greg is is running a bit of a backlog so I beggin’ your pardon if my words are short—though let’s face it you’re here for the photos and not these silly word things, right? Right!?
Bloggers . . .
Anyways, this photo dates back to 25th July, and you’ll see something of a theme in the next few posts—flower and insect macro hybrids. My run of buggy good luck began last Sunday, and over the course of the week netted me bumblebees, a skipper butterfly, and some kind of cool ass fly. In each instance our bug friends were using purple coneflowers or black-eyed susans as their stage. It’s a p kool feeling when your able look down the barrel of your macro lens to dial in an insect with tack sharp focus. It’s a whole new world down there. From there it really makes you wonder what things look life down in the world of the planck length.
As for the title? This comes from a song I’ve only recently been exposed to, though I’ve been told it represents an anthem of sorts from my friends’ hooligan heyday.
