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.

macro photography – spiderlings

The trip out to the footpath with the garbage bin this morning was made all the more interesting by a mob of baby spiders, aka spiderlings, who’d set up residence near the lid. Another macro opportunity!

macro photography – portulaca grandiflora

There seems to be a wet flowers theme developing. The garden ponds brought by heavy rain have drained away and the wind is doing its best to dry out the place, despite occasional showers.

Here’s the pick of this afternoon’s photographic expedition into the garden. I had to go scrambling for the garden text books to identify this plant, Portulaca Grandiflora.

macro photography – still raining

It’s still raining. There are signs that this system will move away from us soon. In the meantime, the rain play continues with continued lessons from the macro lens and the joys of accidental success and images that surprise.

macro photography – rain

Soaking wet.

We will be feeling the effects of this weather system for a while yet, so why not capture some of the rain in action?

  

macro photography – tiny flower in big rain

The rain is descending in proverbial bucket loads today as a result of a cyclone hundreds of kilometres north of Brisbane. We can expect the rain to continue falling for at least another couple of days as we watch the impacts of this latest storm come to light.

Up until today, I’ve not ventured out into the rain with the camera. It’s still dark outside despite the fact that it’s mid-morning. Here are the results with no flash and a shutter speed of 1/1250.