Macro – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Lizardo Sighting

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With all the bird activity in our backyard I feared we may have lost much of our indigenous lizard population. But Lizardo smartly moved to the front yard a few years ago. Spotted him on Saturday on the Bottle Brush Tree. He let me get in quite close with the Sony 100mm macro lens. He actually seemed to be interested in his own reflection in the lens, perhaps seeing it as a rival and causing him to stand his ground.

These two images are my best shots of him to date. Click on either image to see the larger size. The detail of this lens is just spectacular!

Lizardo

Honey Bees

Bee-lzebub

I believe this to be a carpenter bee of some kind. Possibly Xylocopa tabaniformis.

Curious Bee

While working in the yard yesterday this guy was hanging around the Meyer Lemon Tree which is currently covered in blossoms for the spring. This bee would just hover near Cynthia as she was pulling some weeds. First he would face her, then he would turn to face the tree and then fly away, usually chased off by another, larger carpenter bee.

The bee didn’t seem to me to be mad or anything. Just curious and very adamant about hanging around in this one spot which was being intruded upon by our efforts to get the garden into shape before summer. Cynthia thought he was being rather aggressive and named him Bee-lzebub.

Curious Bee

The above shots were captured while shooting handheld with the Sony A850 and the 100mm Macro in manual focus mode.

Click either image to see a larger version.

*Photographer’s Note* I was not able to get close enough to the subject to create a “true” macro. These are 100% crops from the original photo. For comparison, this is a resized, but original version of the photo the first shot was taken from.

Original of Curious Bee

A testament to the resolving power of the A850 and the sharpness of the Sony 100mm Macro.

Jeweled Spider

Gasteracantha Cancriformis aka the crab spider, spiny-backed orbweaver, spiny orbweaver spider, crab-like orbweaver spider, crab-like spiny orbweaver spider, jewel spider, spiny-bellied orbweaver, jewel box spider or smiley face spider

When I bought my first DSLR (The Sony A100) I got a good photo of a Jeweled Spider in my backyard using a 50mm non-macro lens with some macro lens add-ons. It came out pretty well. The original blog post from 2009 is here if you want to check it out.

This past weekend I spotted a Jeweled spider in the front yard but this one was not the orange color I came to expect. This one was white with black spots. These shots are with my A850 and the 100mm Macro lens. Click the images below to see the full sized, much more frightening versions:

Jeweled Spider

Noisy Neighbor

Baby Mockingbird

There’s been a baby Mockingbird outside the front window and for the last few days he’s been cheeping and cheeping. He’s not in a nest and he’s super hard to find, especially since he stops cheeping when we go outside to look for him. I finally located him and was able to shoot the above picture using the nifty Sony 100mm Macro lens. He was pretty fearless and just watched me as I put the lens within a few inches of him. If you click to see the larger image you can see the intrepid photographer reflected in his eye.

BUG

Bug

We went for a walk on Saturday down by the bayou just to get out and get a little excercise. Of course I had the camera in tow. Not a lot of photo opportunities, but Cynthia spotted this guy on a flower no bigger than a pinky fingernail. I’m stiff today from squatting down and trying to hold the camera still as the wind blew my subject to and fro.

It looks very much like a Crane Fly (aka Mosquito Hawk) which we see all the time in and around the house. But this guy is much smaller and has a probiscus rather than mandibles. My guess is he’s either a juvenile Elephant Mosquito or just a plane old male mosquito.

This pic remonds me of the album cover of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of The Worlds

On a side note, there’s a 30th anniversary tour in the works which (sadly) doesn’t look like it will make it here to the U.S.

This shot was done with a flash from above.

Bug

Macro Mothra

Best shot of the day at the Cockrell Butterfly Center was of this moth as I was leaving.

Macro Mothra

Camera: Sony DSLR-A700
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/9.0
Focal Length: 100 mm
Exposure: 0.00

There was a little daylight shining right on him so I shot with fill flash which allowed me to take advantage of the natural light for the majority of the illumination.

Check it out when we zoom in a little bit.

Macro Mothra

The detail is phenomenal!

This is a full on, un-resized 100% crop of the original image:

If you are interested in seeing the full sized image in all of it’s 6.2 megabyte, 4272 x 2848 glory you can download it here:
http://www.baldheretic.com/pics/photography/macro/moth.jpg

It’s pretty amazing and worth checking out.

Winged Serpent

Winged serpent made of gold, ruby eye and pearl grasped in it’s claw.
Originally a hat pin, my grandmother had the stem removed and a clasp
put in its place so she could wear it on her lapel.

The above picture is not terribly remarkable until you combine it with this one…

Yes, that’s an American dime.
I had a dickens of a time getting the focus.

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