last days of winter in the garden

Last week I took the macro lens out into the garden for the first time in a while.  Spring is certainly upon us.

macro photography – tibouchina flower

When I was growing up, these plants were more commonly known as Lasiandra. A Lasiandra by any other name (now Tibouchina) still shows off its delicate whiskers on its claw-like stamens.

macro photography – grappling with spiders and depth of field

It continues to be a challenge for me to find ways of improving focus points, both their selection and execution, when depth of field is so shallow using the Canon Macro Lens with an adapter on the Sony A6000.

Today the dome spider helped out a little bit by being in a position that I could catch some profiles and get some semblance of focus on his eyes and across other parts of its body.

Today’s shots are untreated except the last two which have been cropped.

macro photography – dome spider #2

It’s a windy day today with blue-glare skies, the kind of wind that feels like it might blow in a storm, or not.

The dome spider’s web is holding firm. Today’s first picture may not hit the mark as far as macro-focus goes, but it does show that this spider is not letting go, no matter how bumpy the ride.

macro photography – dome spider

This afternoon’s subject was a dome spider. After the cropping exercise this morning, I thought I’d try to get even closer with the camera to see what emerged.

Macro photography – orb spider

It’s an experimenting kind of morning. This includes playing with aged effects and cropping on this morning’s photographs of a garden orb spider, and testing watermark software, placement and fonts.

macro photography – spiderlings 2

The spiderlings survived the tip of the garbage bin when the truck arrived this week. Strong webbing skills obviously develop early.