Monday (30-July-2018) — New Jersey

Backyard Summertime Nature in New Jersey.

I finally saw a large butterfly again in my wildflower plot. This time a Tiger Swallowtail. There have been a lot of tiny butterflies and bumblebees, but the Monarch butterflies and the Clearwing Hummingbird moths have stayed away.  While checking the garden towers, I saw that one type of caterpillar has pretty much eaten all of my dill plants. I’m glad that I collected and froze some of the dill earlier. A different type of caterpillar pretty much ate all of my kale plants (almost overnight). I pulled all of the remaining kale and put them into a sealed mulch container. I also got several images of this strange (Darth Vader) spider.





Individual images in the slide shows can be viewed here.

Five-Years Ago (30-July-2013) — Iceland

Gone to See Iceland 2013 Photography Safari with Mike Hagen. Day 1: Golden Circle Tour.

The Bubble Has Burst. One of our stops for the day was to see Strokkur, a geyser in the Haukadalur geothermal area beside the Hvítá River in southwest Iceland. The geyser erupts every 6-10 minutes, and you can get much closer than Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. It should be noted that there were several tour buses stopped at the site, and lots of folks queued up to view the geyser. I found a spot a bit back on the other side and sent up a tripod to take a series of images with a Nikon D4 camera and 80-400 mm VRII telephoto zoom lens (ISO 100, 80 mm, f/11, 1/320 sec) that were then combined to create a GIF motion video of the bubble bursting.

Five-Years Ago (29-July-2013) — Iceland

Gone to See Iceland 2013 Photography Safari with Mike Hagen. Day 0: Reykjavik.

Silhouette of Sun Voyager (Sólfar) at Sunset. From wikipedia “Sun Voyager is a dreamboat, an ode to the sun. Intrinsically, it contains within itself the promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom.” Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 10 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 160, 10 mm, f/8, 1/400 sec).

I had no control over the folks crawling over the statue, the bikes parked, or the folks fishing – but still like the image.

Silhouette of Sun Voyager (Sólfar) at Sunset. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 10 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 160, 10 mm, f/8, 1/400 sec). Nikonians Photo Adventure with Mike Hagen. (David J Mathre)
Silhouette of Sun Voyager (Sólfar) at Sunset. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 10 mm f/2.8 lens (ISO 160, 10 mm, f/8, 1/400 sec). (David J Mathre)

Saturday (28-July-2018) — New Jersey

Backyard Summertime Nature in New Jersey.

With all of the rain we have been having, the Trolls are happy because mushrooms are starting to pop-up.



Individual images from theses slide shows can be viewed here.

Four-Years Ago (28-July-2014) — Russia

Gone to See Europe 2014. Day 58: Semester at Sea, Summer 2014 Semester Voyage. Saint Petersburg, Russia.

On our last day in Saint Petersburg, I attended a Master Cooking Class. I actually took more pictures than doing any cooking. The Russian food (Stuffed Cabbage and Borscht) we prepared was great, and I used the pictures to create this Time-Lapse Video.