Through the lens

This is a flower from a Russian Sage plant that leans over a birdbath in the backyard.  Looking through the lens at this flower, using a large aperture, gave me the depth of field and feel of dreaminess that I wanted/felt.  It is another picture that is not immediately clear what it is and invites further inspection.  The shadows are from the the sun above filtering through the sage branches and leaving their shadow on the water.  The elliptical 'frame' is from the post-crop feature in Lightroom..

Hands

We have a friend that is a nurse and she writes white papers for various companies.  One of her upcoming ones is on IV in older folks, and she asked me to take some pictures of hands of some of the older women in the congregation.

Very much fun - the older ladies are a real hoot and fun to work with.  Here's one of the shots that I like.

Old files

Sometimes I get so wound up trying new things and taking new pictures I don't remember to go look at old files.  Today I was doing comparison shots on hummingbirds between my 70-300mm lens and my 18-200 lens; and somehow got involved importing some older pictures that caught my eye (they had been in lightroom but had lost the connection when I moved files to an external disk). 

So much beauty every day just right in front of us - this rose sits next to the door into the garden shed, and shows it's beauty so well.

Swirling Ibis

Mom and I rode around the wildlife refuge tonight and I captured an Ibis on a structure in the water.  Thinking that I wanted to do something more than just a 'show and tell' picture, I cropped and began to work with it in CS4.  Here's what I came up with - The swirls of its' shadow are reminiscent of the swirls of water that - had they been there - would have distorted the shadow also. 
I've been thinking the last few days how each of us sees the same scene differently - and the question I ask myself is what does my internal eye see?  This is an initial response!

Addendum to closeup lens

If all you saw was my Canon 500D and thought that was as good as closeup lenses get, you would be the poorer.  I'm not an expert on closeup lenses, but a friend loaned me his 105mm Nikon f/2.8 for a weekend to play with.  And I know that I could have fallen completely for it and spent hours/days/months doing closeup shots.  It is an incredible piece of 'glass'.
Here's a shot from it - the DOF is so incredibly narrow it calls for a tripod or support of some kind.  But WOW - what you can get from it!

Close-up lens

With my love for flowers and insects and other features of nature, a closeup lens is a must!  But I've been too cheap to buy a real lens.  A friend mentioned an excellent (and inexpensive) substitute - Canon 500D.  This is a screw-in lens that comes in various diameters.  Nikon quit making theirs a while back, but the Canon fits any lens that accepts a screw-in type lens or filter.  You can find them here.

So what difference do they make?  Here's a couple of pictures shot at the same distance away and at the same lens length - 135mm, f/stop - 5.6 and shutter speed - 1/1600.  The one with the two roses was shot without the Canon 500D and the single rose was with the Canon - as that was all that I could get into the lens!  Well worth the small investment for the return that you get - access to another world!!

Where in the world is .....

We set out a praying mantis 'nest' early this year, and so far had seen only one small green one.  But last night, while bending over to light the grill, there was an adult looking back at me.  The 'Walking Stick' is very well disguised, with it's colors matching it's surroundings so closely.  Look at the top picture to find it.  The bottom picture is the classic praying stance that we see in pictures.  They are actually waiting for food to go buy and grab it - perhaps praying for food?