The Small World around Us

Orange-spotted Jewelweed (the leaves are treatment for poison ivy)

As I wrote in yesterday's blog, prior to the Beach Ramble, I spent my time mostly around Allens Pond butterfly garden photographing macro subjects, insects and plants.  My equipment was Nikon D810, Tamron 180 mm macro lens and the Nikon R1C1 Wireless Close-Up Speedlight System, handheld.  To an macro photography, you must be patient, wait, and always return to where you have been before.  Why do I say that, on a second walk around I found northern walkingsticks hidden in the low aspect of plants.  After taken the photographs calming reviewing and deleting the out of focus pictures, the next hardest part is to identify what species you have found.  Sometimes you only can get down to two what family.  It belongs to.  I have a number of field guides, which I use for us to help me and also there are a number of sites that are available for identification purposes.  Bugguide at www.bugguide.com is free to join and you can post photos of insects and spiders and people will identified them for you.  For wildflowers I use http://www.mywildflowers.com/identify.asp and https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org/.  Even with this help.  There are many times it is almost impossible to identify what you photographed.  Eventually, most of the time you can find out an answer.  So get out early and photograph the small natural world around us.

Ant Exploring

Baltimore Checkerspot

Bumblebee Feeding

Common Fleabane

Japanese Honeysuckle – Invasive Plant¶

Northern Walkingstick

Plant Bug

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Macros at Allens Pond

I have started a project which will be writing a E-book on a guide to Allens Pond Audubon Sanctuary and the vicinity that will help visiting photographers on locations and time of year to photograph the natural beauty of the area.
Yesterday, I was out to an macro photography, utilizing my new Tamron 180 mm f/3.5 1:1 macro lens, which has a minimum focusing distance of 18.5 inches, allowing me to photograph skittish subjects went out getting too close to them.  We began photographing by 7 AM to take advantage of the dew that was present on the subjects, and at that point, there was no wind.  However, within the next 45 minutes., the wind started to pick up which shot and our shooting time down because of motion that the wind caused in the vegetation.
Here is a selection of pictures from the morning shoot.

White-lipped Garden Snail

White-lipped Garden Snail

Marsh Snipe-fly

Baltimore Checkerspot Caterpillar

Baltomore Checkerspot Caterpillar -close up of head

Spittlebug

Peck's Skipper