Aliens in the backyard

This is an automeris io larvae, otherwise known as a caterpillar that will eventually spin a cocoon and emerge as a striking, if short-lived, io moth. It caught my eye last week on one of The Wife's rose bushes in the back yard. It surprise me 1) because I'd never seen one in person before, and B) we'd had several freezes and I didn't think there were any caterpillars around after that.



I love macro photography because it brings out things that you'd never see with the naked eye. This caterpillar is a case in point. How alien is that? It normally looks like a fat, fuzzy green worm, but up close, wow! Those little tufts of spines, when magnified, reveal even smaller needles full of venom emerging from their tips. The face, which looks a uniform green, is actually heavily spotted with yellow dots. And the feet are hairy! Who knew these caterpillars were related to hobbits?



These shots were taken with a Nikon 50mm 1.8 AI-S manual focus lens mounted on a reversing ring coupled with a 2x telextender on a Canon 5D II. That's a pretty low-budget macro setup (well, except for the camera). I hope to some day own a real, honest-to-gosh macro lens like the Canon EF 100mm 2.8, along with some Kenko extension tubes. Until I can save up that kind of scratch, though, I'll have to make due with my current setup, and find backyard aliens where I can.

Now Playing: Talking Heads Stop Making Sense

Danaus gilippus

I haven't done much photography of late, other than assisting The Wife on a number of shoots, but serendipity met happenstance and all that on Sunday. I was walking with Bug along a country lane outside of Bastrop when this colorful little fellow caught our attention. We watched it for a while, then continued our walk. I returned shortly with my camera and makeshift macro setup, and went about trying to capture this spectacular little caterpillar.



The results were better than I expected. In fact, I feel this is probably my single best effort at macro photography, and the attractive colors come dangerously close to "fine art" territory. So I committed a bit of composition in Photoshop, and the result is the high-faluting triptych above (click for a larger version).

For the curious and entomologically inclined, the caterpillar is that of the danaus gilippus species, better known as the Queen butterfly. They're closest relatives are the more famous Monarchs. I've never seen one before, and from the maroon and gold coloration, I'd assumed it was the larval form of a Texas State Bobcat...

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My weekend

My Weekend
by
Jayme Lynn Blaschke

On Thursday I drove to Kenedy to interview a person for my book project on the La Grange Chicken Ranch. We met at Barth's restaurant. I had an iced tea and fried jalapenos. He had a Diet Coke. The weather was blistering hot outside but nice and cool inside. The restaurant was quiet, as lunch hour had passed, but 30 minutes into our conversation a group of women who apparently work together came in for an afternoon party or something. Out of an empty restaurant, they naturally chose to sit at a table adjacent to our booth. They laughed and shouted and jabbered for two hours or so, and were still going when I left. Recorded portions of the interview are not of great quality from the point of their arrival. sigh But as Thursday is not technically the weekend, you don't need to read the preceding paragraph.

On Friday (which is still not technically the weekend) I hired an intern. She is an enthusiastic over-achiever, willing to work for no pay to get valuable real-world experience. She's also over-extended herself with senior year commitments, I suspect. This tends to be a pattern with summer interns. We shall see.

Friday afternoon, at which point the weekend had actually commenced, the family went to Landa Park to swim. Monkey Girl and I went to the big spring-fed pool, which is one of the universe's joys. It's like Barton Springs pool, only less Malthusian. Ostensibly, I was there to keep an eye on her in the deep water, but it quickly became apparent that not only could she swim circles around me, she could swim circles around half the lifeguards as well. Hoo. Later that night, The Wife and I watched some more of season 3 Buffy. The ones where Faith kills a guy and goes bad. The Wife drank chardonnay and I drank blueberry ale (store bought, alas, not my own brew). Looking forward to seeing how this resolves. The Faith storyline, not the libations.

Saturday I did not sleep in, which is a shame, since Saturday is my designated sleep in day. Instead, Monkey Girl had a swim meet, so we all got up bright and early and headed over to Landa Pool. Monkey Girl kicked serious boo-tay. She's been moved up to the top heats in her age group. And her dive/entry and turns have improved astronomically since last season. She's a much more powerful swimmer, and it shows in her upper body definition and muscle tone. She finished with two fourth-place finishes, a third and her freestyle relay team took first. Whoo hoo! Her first blue ribbon! Her butterfly--which is also her favorite stroke--has improved dramatically as well. Her upper-body form is very good. Now all she has to do is improve her kick and she'll be taking first in that stroke as well. Overall, she shaved a minimum of six seconds off her best time in each event.

Afterwards, we packed up the kids and dropped them off at their grandmother's in Bastrop while The Wife and I swung over to Austin to take in the Austin Photo Expo. Best part of the event: Absolutely free admission. We enjoyed ourselves. It was laid out not unlike a science fiction con, with a dealer's room (Canon, Nikon, Tamron, Olympus, Sony etc. instead of Edge Books and Adventure In Crime & Space) and three tracks of programming. Being held in the conference center at the old Northcross Mall, there was no evening programming and no con suite. Lots of lens lust, though, and camera lust, and accessories lust there in the exhibitors hall. The Wife tried out the Canon EF 70-200 2.8 IS and fell in love. Duh. The sales woman there asked if we were aware of the on-site discount. Discount? The Wife's ears perked up. I have to admit mine did as well. $350 the Canon rep informs us. I do a quick calculation--that'd be about $1,250, assuming the base price of $1,600 online. We didn't have that kind of money, but that was a great deal. Dare we break out plastic? The deal was too good. Double-checking with the rep, I learned that the discount applied to the MSRP, and after the discount the lens would still set us back close to $1,650. Nevermind. For my part, I'd heard of and seen pics online of the Sigma 150-500mm supertelephoto zoom, but being able to handle one in person really amped my desire up to 11. That's really a solid, well-built lens. The Wife looked at it and asked "How big is it?" I answered 500mm. She responded, "All riiight!" Who says size doesn't matter?



The lectures were packed. Very good attendance, so much so that the venue was inadequate I'd say. I attend a number of writer conventions during the year and this Expo could definitely move up into bigger digs. Of course, then you'd start having to deal with hotel room blocks and probably membership fees, so it might not be worth it. But it definitely has the potential to grow into a full-blown conference with evening events and such. On the way home, we stopped at Austin Homebrew Supply so I could get a packet of Sparkolloid. No idea where my supply has vanished to.

On Sunday The Wife packed up and trekked back to Austin for a bridal photography workshop. She picked up a lot of good techniques, not to mention some killer portfolio shots. I'm jealous, but then she's the professional and I'm just the husband. Although it amuses me how just a year ago she mocked me for my comparatively modest photography expenditures whereas now she looks at $1,600 Canon "L" glass ("White lenses are sexy," says she) and starts figuring the budget.

Once The Wife got home and we reviewed her shots (they're here if you're curious) I potted up some passion vines I'd gotten in trade, then cleared away a heck of a lot of passiflora vines from the front of the house that'd been denuded of vegetation by voracious caterpillars. That evening after getting the kids to bed we sat back--The Wife with a glass of moscato and I with another blueberry beer. We watched the first season finale of Big Love and were more than a little underwhelmed by it. And that was our weekend.

The End

Now Playing: The Police Message in a Box

50mm Mark 1

I have a new lens! The 50mm prime lens is probably the most basic lens for any SLR platform (ie Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, etc.). Generally "fast" lenses that excel in low-light conditions, they're relative simple and traditionally have good optics. We have one, a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, that is more than 15 years old. The Wife bought it when she first got into photojournalism and it has stood the test of time. It's a good lens. I used it to good effect at a photo shoot over the weekend, which I'll share with you at a later date.

But the 50mm II that Canon sells these days has shortcomings. In an effort to make an extremely cheap entry-level lens, Canon redesigned the 50mm f/1.8 (hereinafter known as the Mark I), which was one of the very first EF lenses Canon ever marketed. The Mk I was a traditional lens, with a distance scale window, manual focus grip and a metal camera mount. The Mk II used the same high-quality glass, but did away with the distance scale and manual focusing ring, and made the body entirely out of plastic. This brought the price down to the $75-80 range (earning the nickname "Nifty Fifty"), but made the lens pretty much a bargain-basement autofocus affair (users could still opt to manually focus, but this involved rotating a knurled endpiece that isn't very convenient or user-friendly).

Now, I enjoy experimenting with infrared photography, and Mk II is adaptable to this, with no hot spots showing up in images. The fast 1.8 aperture means that I can cut down exposure times significantly (15 second exposures are the norm with my slower lenses). Yet with infrared, you have to re-focus to account for the longer IR wavelength, and the missing distance scale on the Mk II means there is also no IR focal mark. And it's a pain to manual focus the Mk II. BUT the Mk I has that distance scale, an IR focal mark and is easily focused manually. So my course of action was clear: I must have one of these 20-plus year old lenses.

Thank you Ebay! I won an auction for one of these on Friday from a guy in Vermont. I paid that evening and the lens arrived in the main on Monday. Talk about fast shipping! The body is in excellent shape. There's one small scuff on the front collar maybe 2mm across. That's it. The glass is pristine, not even a fleck of dust inside (which is more than can be said for our Nifty):



Build quality is indeed far superior to the Nifty. This lens just feels more substantial in your hand. The manual focus grip turns freely when in autofocus mode, and gives a suitably nice traction when in manual focus mode. I love the distance scale--which is why I bought this one even though I've already got the Nifty. I enjoy infrared photography, and this lens lends itself to that nicely with the distance scale, IR focal mark, nice manual focus grip.

Other than that, it is indeed the Nifty in nicer packaging. The optics are identical but so is the autofocus. Buzzy and temperamental in low light, it's no worse nor no better than the Mk II. But at least manual focusing is a viable option with this one. Here are some test shots I snapped yesterday in the back yard.

The Bug:


Beagle:


Coral honeysuckle:


Grape flower buds:


Rose:


Passion flower:


Now all I have to do is order a 52mm infrared filter and I'm all set...

Now Playing: Various Classical Masterpieces, Vol. 1

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

Bluebonnet shoot

The Wife had a photo workshop Sunday, a "trash-the-dress" style bridal shoot in a bluebonnet field in Brenham. This is in support of her nascent photography business, Lisa on Location. The general concept behind this kind of photography workshop is that photographers pay a modest participation fee and, after a minimal amount of tips and photographic instruction from the event organizers, are turned loose to flex their picture-taking prowess on a bevy of models assembled for said event. The "trash the dress" aspect involves shooting the bride in informal situations where the dress isn't kept in a necessarily pristine condition. In real life, such "trash the dress" shoots are normally scheduled some time after the wedding, for obvious reasons.

This was a homecoming of sorts for The Wife, since her first job out of college was working for the Brenham Banner-Press. She doesn't hold a wealth of fond memories for the job (although I did learn--much to my surprise after 13 years of marriage--that she is the reporter who broke the story of Blinn College disbanding its national champion track team) which ended after approximately a year when the publisher eliminated her position in order to buy himself a new car. Yeah.

So she and I get up absurdly early to make out way to Brenham, leaving the kids in the care of a grandmother. We arrive as the sun is peeking above the trees, and are heartened somewhat by the fact the fields are more scenic than Google maps had led us to believe (they were bordered on three sides by Wal Mart, Home Depot and La Quinta, you see). There are roughly 15 models total, but it was hard to tell since many listed online as attending didn't show, and some who showed were never listed as participating. On top of this, only four or so women in their early 20s were actually modeling in wedding dresses. There were a number of teens who weren't doing wedding dresses, and the bulk of the models present were younger children available for family and youth bluebonnet shots. The one thing The Wife doesn't have need for at this point is kid portraits--she's already got far more than she can use on her website, and as it can be time-consuming working with children, ultimately that part just wasn't worth the hassle, so she ended up with relatively few kid shots.

The ratio of models to photographers, as stated by the event organizers, was roughly 1:1. But the bulk of these were children, and some of the children were siblings and a package deal. As the event was billed as a bridal shoot, guess what the bulk of the photographers were primarily interested in shooting? Four models in wedding gowns had clusters of photographers swarming them most of the time, stepping over each other and generally trying to stake out a good angle for the shot they wanted. That's not to say that the participating photogs weren't polite or professional. There were some good conversations to be had and most folks were in a good humor throughout the day. But it quickly became apparent that if you weren't aggressive, you wouldn't get your shots. The models responded to the loudest commands, and any photog meekly waiting their turn would get trumped by the next person with a camera that asserted themselves. Judging from the number of wedding dresses that were waiting to be worn in the dressing area, along with the number of adult models listed as attending but nowhere to be seen, it's hard to blame the organizers. I've dealt with scheduling models a fair bit in recent months, and "flakes"--that is, cancellations or no-shows--run about 50 percent. Apparently there are a lot of people who like to play at being models, but when it comes time to actually roll out of bed at 7 a.m., they'd rather just hit the snooze button.

I, by the way, wasn't shooting. The Wife had registered for the workshop, not I. Instead, I was relegated to the role of "Lensboy," packing the equipment, holding the reflector, offering suggestions and anything else that needed doing. As I'm holding the reflector to soften the shadows on one model's face, I commented to The Wife that it was interesting we had bright morning sunlight when the weather forecast had indicated it'd be overcast that day. Cue gale-force winds and heavy cloud cover. Temperatures dropped about 10 degrees, and what had started out as a balmy, breezy day quickly turned chill. The clouds acted a great light diffusers, but The Wife wanted a warmer look to the shots, so I held the gold reflector up as she bounced the on-camera flash off it. The effect was muted but perceptible. Of immediate concern to myself was the inclination of the huge reflector panel I was holding to whip off into the sky, kite-like, never to be seen again. The models had it worse, though. Those with long hair--ie most of them--fought a losing battle to keep it out of their faces. And pretty much all of them were wearing short, summer weather outfits that offered little protection against the chill weather. A few models simply packed it in once wind picked up and temperatures dropped. I can't say I blame them. Then, after an hour or so, the clouds abruptly rolled away and the brilliant sun came out again to screw up everyone's white balance. It didn't get any warmer, though.

It was interesting to observe the other photographers, as I was able to do since I wasn't shooting. The majority of photogs were shooting Canon, with Nikon, not surprisingly, making up the rest. I didn't see a singly Olympus, Pentax or Sony, which surprised me a little. Those other brands are distant also-rans behind the Big Two in terms of market share, but I know there are lots of photographers who use them to great effect in their photography. Just none who attended this workshop, apparently. I observed an array of Canon's top-of-the-line L series lenses in action, a smattering of mid-grade consumer glass and some basic kit lenses. One Canon shooter had a big Sigma telephoto zoom she was using. When I asked her about it, she got defensive, saying she couldn't afford the equivalent Canon lens and moved off before I could say anything else. I've been looking at Sigma's massive 150-500mm super zoom telephoto lens, mainly because there's noting else comparable to it and the price makes it attractive. I wanted to talk with the Sigma owner about her experiences with image quality and autofocus with her telephoto zoom, but obviously never got a chance. Rats.

Ultimately, we shot for two and a half hours, and The Wife got scads of good bridal portraits, a few glamour-style shots, some excellent senior portrait-style shots and a handful of kid shots taken when none of the older models were available. All in all, it was an interesting experience, and an educational one. We'd never participated in anything like this, and likely won't ever do a bridal again, although it could be fun for other specific themes (I know a few months back there was a pirate-themed shoot in Galveston on the tall ship Elissa). My biggest regret is that I didn't get to shoot any myself, but such is the lot of Lensboy.

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Passiflora tenuiloba

Passiflora tenuiloba is a small, unassuming passiflora native to south and west Texas. I'm partial to them, and have several potted at home. One's been blooming for the past week, with flowers maybe 3/4 inch across.



I've played around with macro a little using a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AI-s I inherited from my father-in-law with a reversing ring. I like the manual focus and aperture control which gives me more flexible say over the final image, but it's not tremendously powerful as far as macros go. Straight shots of the tenuiloba flower weren't particularly impressive. Then I remembered that my brother'd given me a Vivitar 2x teleconverter a while back that he'd played around with but lost interest in. Could I use it for macro? First attempts resulted in error messages from my camera--the lens wasn't communicating with it, the camera said, and recommended I clean the contacts. The Vivitar had autofocus contacts on it, and somehow these were causing problems. Solution? I taped over them. Presto! No more error message. And wow, were the results striking--I've lost two stops on the lens, but fortunately it was a fast f/1.8 to begin with. I'm happy with the results, and hope to take the assembly out tomorrow and see what I can find.

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Pictures at and exhibition

I've accumulated quite a few photographically-inclined images of late. This isn't surprising, seeing how I'm taking two photography classes this semester. These aren't those. The photojournalism pics are very limited in scope and wouldn't be interesting outside of the classroom context, and my intro to B&W photography are actual darkroom prints which I've not yet had a chance to scan into digital form. So these are other, random, photos that I've taken over the course of the past month.

First up is a squirrel I saw last week as I walked to my car in the parking lot. It was actually in the cypress tree above my car, feasting on the seeds from cypress cones. I used my 75-300 telephoto to zoom in tight, and the end result isn't too bad. Nice colors.



Next up is mint in flower, from my back yard. I recently acquired my late father-in-law's 50mm Nikon AI-s lens, which is a quality manual focus lens from back in the day. All my equipment is Canon, though, so I couldn't directly mount it on my camera. So I ordered a reversing ring and mounted the lens on my camera backwards, converting it to a nifty, high-magnification macro lens. I'm able to control the aperture and everything this way. Sweet. This is one of the first successful macro shots I took with it. Nice colors, and a nice, creamy bokeh (background blur).



Bees gathering nectar from passion flower vines make good macro photography subjects as well. I'm just saying.



I didn't take nearly as many photos during the Comal County Fair this year as I'd expected to. Between the heat and chasing kids there just wasn't much opportunity for me. But as we were leaving Thursday night, I did a quick point-and-shoot at this ride on the carnival midway. I'm more than a little shocked that it came out so well, since I didn't put much effort into it. Strong colors. It looks more dynamic than the scene really was. Fun stuff. Next year I hope to really prowl the midway and get some good motion blur lighting effects...



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