I spotted several undocumented and unpaid workers in my front yard today. I stooped next to them, took photos of them and told them "thank you." You can clearly see a "yellow pollen basket" on the bee in the top photo.
This is another in a series of posts by a few of us who enjoy photographing critters we find in our houses and yards. This shaggy little guy (he was about 3/8" long) was posing on a screen on my back porch. I don't claim to know enough about spiders to tell you anything about him (Click on the photo for more detail):
I subscribe to National Geographic in part for the great photography. In additional to publishing photos taken by their professional photographers, NG also sponsors various photography contests in which readers send in their inspiring, idyllic and oftentimes stunning images. Here are two of the NG contest sites (here and here), with lots of incredible sights to be seen. I can't say enough about all of the terrific written content of National Geographic either. It is a must-read every month for me. What a bargain! For only $15 per year (a fraction of the cost of a ticket to many spectator events), you'll be transported to the four corners of the Earth (and beyond) every month.
No, I'm not simply trying to curry favor with my mother-in-law. Her name is Cynthia Jay, from Huntington, New York, and she is an exquisite painter and art curator--and a polymath.
She is also learning to use her new camera, the same model that I so often carry around, the Canon SD1100SI (costs less than $200). Cynthia is in St. Louis this weekend, and she shared some recent photos she took in San Francisco. I found two of them especially beautiful. The first was taken in the San Francisco Academy of Sciences Aquarium.
The subject of the second photo is a tree opposite the DeYoung Museum:
As I worked tonight, this little beetle landed on my pad of paper. Hello, Cousin! You fit so easily between the lines of my pad of paper. You make my pen strokes look quick thick!
[For this shot, I was using a Canon SD1100IS (which only costs about $150 now), using the digital macro feature. This bug let me park my camera lens less than an inch away for this photo.]
