Almost…

…spring. As this is posted we are probably in full swing with spring. Hey! A rhyme!

I love this flower. It looks like it has a little tongue sticking out at you. I know the name of it. I search for the plant in the nursery every spring. It makes me smile all summer long.

In this instance a macro lens helps. The flowers are tiny. Every task has its best tool. For closeups… well, rest assured, you can get a shot without a special lens. I did it for a long time. But the purchase is justified in the end by the results and the ease with which the proper tool makes it so much better. Does it? Hey! One always tries to justify expense to my dear wife in the face of a lot of $$ going out the door. My previous macro lens was so old… how old?… it still focused manually. I would liken it to a hard line phone in your home. How quaint!

Once more

I remember this fondly enough to do it again. Fascinating. It is how film, photography, light, lens, and the eye works. Light hits the retina focused by the lens of the eye aided with or without the eyeglasses we wear. It hits as an upside down image. The brain translates and the world is right side up. After all gravity must have its due.

Camera obscura. Yes, full sized. You walk inside. The image appears on the back wall. It is indeed upside down. I righted it. And out of focus – it is because the lens is small relative to the wall behind me. Hey! I got a photograph of the whole thing. I love it when science works. Shamelessly, I am posting this again. It was so much fun the first time around.

Work

Too many (potential) shots, not enough time…

Photography as I have said, is not my day job. That said, I work at it. Confused? My goal was to see the puffins. Easier said than done. I had several unsuccessful prior attempts to see the cute birds. This process involved a lot of “chumming” as I was amply seasick on the boat rides over to the island in the Atlantic. And when I got there, I discovered that I had left my “big” lens home. Nope, no big telephoto to get up close and personal!

Lemons? Make lemonade.

I used my 70-300 mm zoom. So what if the “better” 80-400 mm zoom was home in NY. Dammit! What a simply stupid mistake. It could have been worse I suppose. I was using my second “good” digital camera body the Nikon D200. Why am I equipment obsessed? A better camera does not a better photographer make. But it helps. Oh well!? I shot a lot that/this day. They had to drag me out of the blind when time was up. Sometimes the work you do to get “there” makes it all the more precious. My images were fine and you’d never know the difference my other lens might have made. It remains unfinished business and I’d go back again in a heartbeat – seasickness and all!