This hairy spider spent the day guarding my front door. I don’t know why it kept its rear leg up in the air anytime I got close to take a picture. During my daily walkabout I found a number of flowers (daisy, poppy, California poppy, Moth Mullen, yellow prickly pear cactus, etc). Still not as many as last year when I had the electric fence up. I see on my security video cameras the deer coming up every night and nibbling on the plants before they can bloom.
Hairy Spider at my Front Door. Image taken with a Leica TL2 camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. (David J Mathre)Daisy. Image taken with a Leica TL2 camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. (David J Mathre)Day Lily. Image taken with a Leica TL2 camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. (David J Mathre)
Violet Cosmos Flower. Image taken with a Leica TL2 camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. (David J Mathre)Yucca about to bloom. Image taken with a Leica TL2 camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. (David J Mathre)Black and White Cat trying to Hide Image taken with a Leica TL2 camera and 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. (David J Mathre)
Blue Jay’s and Northern Cardinals at my bird feeder. I don’t think that these images taken with a Fuji X-T2 camera and 100-400 mm OIS telephoto zoom lens are as sharp as the ones taken with a Nikon D5 camera and 600 mm f/4 lens. Part of the issue may be that the images with the Fuji camera were taken hand-held vs. on a tripod for the Nikon camera.
Individual images from the slide shows can be viewed here.
Afternoon walkabout. The zucchini plants were getting too big in the Garden Towers because they were using too much water, and their leaves were blocking sunlight from the other plants. I attempted to transplant the zucchini plants. After a day they still seemed to be alive and still flowering. The Garden tower (level 1 (top) — tomatoes and carrots; level 2 — various lettuce; level 3 — various herbs; level 4 — peppers and peas; level 5 — zucchini (now gone) and swiss chard; level 6 — broccoli and cauliflower. The blue jays have become the dominant bird at the bird feeder, even though they are too big. It is funny to watch as they have to take the sunflower seed away and find somewhere hard to break it open, whereas the cardinals and house finches are able to open and eat the seed just with their beak. The only wildflower for the day is a daisy.
Zucchini and Zucchini Flowers. Image taken with a Fuji X-T2 camera and 100-400 mm OIS telephoto zoom lens (David J Mathre)Zucchini and Zucchini Flowers. Image taken with a Fuji X-T2 camera and 100-400 mm OIS telephoto zoom lens (David J Mathre)Garden Tower. Image taken with a Leica CL camera and 18 mm f/2.8 lens. (David J Mathre)Blue Jay. Image taken with a Fuji X-T2 camera and 100-400 mm OIS telephoto zoom lens (David J Mathre)Daisy Flower. Image taken with a Leica CL camera and 18 mm f/2.8 lens. (David J Mathre)
I heard that a neighbor recently trapped 8 raccoons. But apparently, not the ones getting into my Garden Tower. I refilled the composting tube with kitchen scraps, and last night the raccoon tried to get up on the Garden Tower to check for a free meal. Instead it found that the electric fence was on. Infrared Video recorded by an Arlo Security camera.
Firefly trails. I added long exposure noise reduction to the Fuji X-H1 camera for the 120 second exposures. It helps, but reduces the number of images that can be taken by half. Bottom line, the Nikon D810a camera does a better job for long exposures.
Firefly Trails. Composite of 541 images taken with a Nikon D5 camera and 200 mm f/2 lens (ISO 3200, 200 mm, f/8. 30 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and PhotoShop CC (statistics, maximum). (David J Mathre)Firefly Trails. Composite of 157 images taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 58 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 1600, 58 mm, f/8. 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and PhotoShop CC (statistics, maximum). (David J Mathre)Firefly Trails. Composite of 72 images taken with a Fuji X-H1 camera and 56 mm f/1.2 lens (ISO 1600, 58 mm, f/8. 120 sec). Raw images processed with Capture One Pro and PhotoShop CC (statistics, maximum). (David J Mathre)
