Unexpected houseguest

Last night--with the possibility of snow, yes, snow, in the forecast for today--I brought in some of my potted passion flower plants, because, you know, I didn’t want them to freeze. I didn’t check them over too thoroughly at the time, because it was cold, I was tired, and with the stress of losing our kitten still weighing heavily on the family, plants were pretty far down the list of things I wanted to concern myself with.

Lo and behold, this morning I found this little fellow had set up shop on the window blind of my office where I'd stored the plants overnight. The caterpillar must've been sheltering under one of the leaves, and the warmth of the house revived him enough to start looking for a nice place to pupate.



I counted half a dozen chrysalises outside this morning, and those caterpillars may take months to complete the metamorphosis because of the cold weather, but because of the warm, cozy conditions this one's found, I expect it to emerge as a beautiful Gulf fritillary butterfly sometime within the next two weeks. By the time I return home tonight, it'll have fully shed its skin and fully turned into a chrysalis. I'll post pictures when I can.

Now Playing: Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Christmas Album

Insects up close

I inherited a manual Nikon 50mm AI-s lens from my late father-in-law, and have used it on my Canon with a reversing ring for a DIY macro lens. Recently, I added a Vivitar 2x telextender (which I got from my brother who wasn't using it) to the assembly, and have been pleased with the results. Yes, that fast 1.8 Nikon lens loses two stops and is much darker and slower with the telextender, but I'm able to get significantly larger magnifications with it. As long as I shoot in bright daylight, I can stop down to f/8 or even f/11 for a decent depth-of-field.



So, yeah, I've been playing with macro again. Took some shots in Columbus over the weekend, and yesterday ventured into the backyard after work. I'm generally pleased with the results. At these magnifications, there's some blur due to camera shake, but it's not terribly visible unless the images are blown up quite large. Once I actually get a real macro lens, with autofocus and perhaps built-in image stablization to control camera shake, I might be able to do some real damage.





Now Playing: Brian Wilson Imagination