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I was out in my yard with my macro lens on Thursday to see about getting a few shots of my coneflowers. I was fortunate enough to have this little bee who was all covered in pollen to pose for me very patiently. It was on the windy side so it took a few shots before I managed to get a couple that I could actually use. This was my favorite.

The tripod was pretty useless under the windy conditions, so I shot hand-held which I don't normally do with the macro lens since the focus is so darn finicky. I went for a high key exposure on this and then when I was processing it to post I realized that black and white was perfect for it.

I've been asked about the original color version of this so I decided to post this link so you can have a look.

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News Flash

This photo of the Bucknell Quad is a 2 page feature photo in the Summer 2008 issue of Bucknell Magazine.

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As of July 2008 I have decided to post the same photos on "Parallel Universe" as I do here. It has become too complicated to maintain two different photoblogs on a regular basis. Feel free to visit "Parallel Universe" and look through the portfolio/archives since there are quite a few photos there that were never posted here. I will continue to post on both since each one gets different viewers.

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I want to thank everyone for the wonderful comments on my last post. It is one of my favorites. Those two fawns were just too sweet.

On Monday I took a vase of sunflowers out onto my deck in the sun, sprayed them with water and started to photograph them. Before long I was joined by this tiny little fella who decided that he was thirsty. He was no more than 5 mm in length, about the size of a pencil point. I shot him with the macro lens, handheld no less. I was really amazed that I managed to get this clear shot of him. The background is not Photoshopped at all. I only did Lightroom adjustments and curves for contrast and balance.

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Back in October while on the 2006 NJ Lighthouse Challenge, my son Jon, found this dead Monarch Butterfly on the lawn of the Cape May Lighthouse. It was in nearly perfect condition so I brought it home and placed it in a glass bowl in my china cupboard and forgot about it.

Well on Sunday I was playing with some still life vignettes and when I went into the cupboard I saw the Monarch still in fair shape, a little worn from not being properly preserved, but it was still fairly intact and retained most of its scales and color. So I put the Monarch on the wood shelf and snapped a couple of photos at High ISO with my macro lens.

I was experimenting in low light using high ISO's to see how well my camera can handle high ISO shots under different low light sources. These were shot at 1600, and did pretty well. There was some noise in the shadow and background areas, but really very little and virtually none in the detail of the butterfly's wings. But since I just had installed a new (to me) noise reduction plug-in that I had heard raves over, I decided to apply it and see how it would affect the detail in the Butterfly's wings. I was really quite impressed at the result. In the second photo you can still see the scales, they kind of look like the weave in a fabric which was really interesting to me.

I should mention that the banding you see in the lower part of the top photo is the grain in the oak wood shelf of my cupboard, it's nothing to do with the camera, and not JPEG artifacts. The blue in the corner is the edge of a plate that was in the cupboard. When I shot these I really had no intention of posting them, but today I was looking at them and found them interesting enough to post. So here they are for what it's worth.

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Since some people have asked, I decided I probably should tell you what Noise Reduction Software I used. It's called "Noiseware Pro" by Imagenomic http://www.imagenomic.com/.

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After trying all summer to catch some decent shots of butterflies I finally got some! Who knew all I had to do was wait until the fall to do it. The cold weather slowed them down significantly. Unfortunately I think the Monarchs I saw, and I saw a lot of them, probably missed the mass migration which I understand occured sometime in September from what some other people had told me.

This was shot during the weekend Lighthouse Challenge tour. I found this guy near "Old Barney", Barnegat Lighthouse. It was the first stop we made on the tour Sunday morning at about 8 AM. It was quite chilly in the early morning air which explains the ease at which I managed to take the shots.

At our last stop, my son found a Monarch lying lifeless on the lawn at Cape May Lighthouse. He was beautiful, his wings were still so vibrant. I collected him up carefully and brought him home. I'm not sure what I will do with him. I don't know how to preserve them or anything and his body was shriveled, but he was still lovely. His wings are about half spread so you can still see all the detail on both sides.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
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Justin Gaynor

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