These flowers were about 5mm long or so. Very very small. I was impressed at how complex and intricate they are--looking surprisingly like orchids. I have no idea if they are related. The flowers are so small that they are half the size of "bachelor buttons". I'm not sure if these apparently wild-growing tiny flowering plants are called, they don't seem really related to any of the other tiny flowers so I don't know anything about them or where they came from.
NOW HERE is what I like to see the most..this is a very nice jumping spider. She was small, less then 1cm. She will get bigger as time goes on this year. I have two that I "know" well. One on each side of my house that can be seen whenever they are out hunting. I am planning to get another macro lens for my new digital SLR. All 300 dollars of it. For now I'm using the best I have put together. The main problem is that jumpers like to move and get afraid. Even though I can be about 5 or 6 inches away when taking the picture--depth of field is so shallow that I must brace myself.
These flowers are so small I bet you have not seen them. They look like miniature orchids. I have a number of pictures of them. Back when there was still really frozen nights a couple of months ago (go to all pictures--Jan-Feb+) I took allot of shots of a couple of these plants. Then they were not blooming--but stood out like pillars of green that looked really cool with frozen fog on them. I later adapted the picture to make a Photoshop golden image to show how nature reflects itself. (see the last three months under "all pictures")
These tiny flowers are very hard to photograph without a tripod. I have a new really nice tripod, mini and subminiature tripods. The problem is I often forget to take them with me! I need to because they can make shots like this allot less painful.
Spring is in the air, and this busy bee is visiting a flower of some kind that pushed it's way through this leaf in an interesting way. This was shot at stop action to get the allot more clearly.
Another view of the jumping spider. It can be very painful for me to track the spider and try to get the shot as this young and small jumper tries to avoid me and gets camera shy. Catching the image is only possible at high aperture value and a bright flash--even then--too much coffee or pain from kneeling down for a long time can make these shots hard. But I really enjoy these spiders. This is admittedly not nearly the kind of shots I want. But finding a jumping spider that can be shot face on naturally is somewhat of a difficult thing to do. It can take a whole day and sometimes you still don't find one. Or when you do--it frustratingly runs away. My good jumping spider shots can be seen in past posts. I may capture one of these to get some really high macro pictures of the face on these guys. They look allot like Santa with that "beard" on it's palps.
Another shot to get the whole spider focused as pain from kneeling too long had me moving back and fourth closer and further to the spider. 1cm makes the difference between a shot and a blurred mess. I got a few good ones--but I really want to get back to the standards I used to have in previous posts--it will happen as spring slowly works it's magic and really cold nights turn warmer.
MINIATURE ORCHIDS?Surprisingly it's finally spring--a while back I did an artistic creation with these kinds of tiny plants. When I took all those frozen plant pictures I never thought they would live let alone flower like this.
When I first went outside to take pictures I noticed this maple bug stuck inside a tulip. Thinking it would be fine I left. I took about ten shots of it from different angles as it made for a good addition to the flower shot.
This is not the highest resolution fly I've ever shot but close. I have about ten or twelve more shots of this fly. My macro lens reaches out enough to shoot flies if I approach them slowly and carefully. There is no such thing as "digital zoom" in digital SLRs--so I had to optically line up the fly and take a full-frame image of it. I think this one is an ok example of the ones I got.
And the situation at least an half hour later was not any better--this guy was trapped! The bug could not get out of the flower. This is almost certainly how carnivores plants like the Venus flytrap got started. Dead insects leek nutrients and fluids into plants if they die in them. This trapped bug might have died in the sun had I not turned the flower over and freed it.
The bees seem to love these blue flowers. If I'm careful I will get more honey bee shots and better ones too.
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