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Early evening visitor
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Early evening visitor

Originally I had planned to water the plants in my garden before lunch this afternoon, but those plans got rescheduled because of a list of other tasks that I just didn't get done fast enough. And with a trip to the bank and Lowe's hardware store still on my to do list as well, the plants in my front yard were going to wait until this evening to get something to drink.

I have a fare number plants in the front yard to water and it takes a while for me to get to them all, and the sunlight was disappearing fast as I worked my way through them. After watering the ones directly in front of the house I moved to the the ones that run between me and my neighbor Cliff and Jessica's house. As my watering can gently sprinkled some of my Black Eyed Susan's I spotted a slim brown figure in the quickly growing shadows of the early evening light that I knew right away was a small praying mantis, the first to visit me that I've been lucky enough to spot in the 15 years since I've owned my house.

I really wanted to photograph him but resisted at first because I strongly prefer available light shooting to flash, and that was going to be impossible with my D300s now decidedly old in the tooth (come on Nikon give us a D400 already!!!) and not nearly light sensitive enough to give me a shutter speed sufficient for such a task. But I did own a few light modifiers for my built in flash, and one of them would probably be successful in this type of condition to eliminate the harsh shadows that my built in flash would create, so I stopped watering the plants for a bit and attempted to capture some shots of the cute little guy while the getting was good.

My camera's light sensor is simply too weak to focus in light this low and it hunted back and forth endlessly every time I tried to take an auto focus shot. So finally I decided to focus all the shots manually. Brutal a task it turned out to be as the image in my view finder was so dark it was impossible to tell for sure if any of the shots were really in focus or not. But focusing manually is not new to me so that did help and maybe 4 or 5 shots ended up in focus.

Soon I was back to watering my garden in now near darkness and the last thing I saw of my little visitor was of him heading toward the shelter of my Wichita blue to get away from the rain shower I was giving my plants. Hope he didn't get too wet!

my front yardpraying mantisNYCStaten Islandsummernatureinsectssld3

  • dsc_0132 autumn inspiration
  • Last night the weather report had a near ideal picture taking prediction, enough possible snow fall to make for some potential shots but not enough to have to shovel. So I packed on of my camera bags with a suit of lenses - not sure of what I'd run into, and this morning despite not being over a bad cold that had me home bound for 3 days, I headed out to Silver Lake to grab my first shots of this near snow less winter season. <br /> <br /> The temperature rose above freezing not long after I finished circling the lake for potential shots, but before the snow stopped falling and started to melt away, at least I was able captured a couple of shots, like this one.
  • Walking through Battery Park City on the way to work yesterday morning, I noticed one of the gardens (closed off to foot traffic since winter) had recently reopened. Exploring the small picturesque park I happily discovered the already planted new tulip beds were growing quite nicely. So I put aside my plans to sleep in late on my day off today and arrived in the city at the crack off dawn, to take advantage of the soft directional qualities of the early morning light at this location.<br /> <br /> After spotting a nice grouping that took advantage of said lighting superbly, I pulled out my trusty MF 200mm micro lens for a nice tulip portrait.
  • DSC_0626 Easter Sunday at the Botanical Gardens
  • This shot was captured with my old manual focus 300mm nikkor and TC-14 teleconverter. When it comes to image quality this was still a better option optically than trying to capture and greatly enlarge this pair of mating dragonflies with my newer AF 70-300mm nikkor zoom. Though I must admit focusing manually while trying to keep my camera steady on my monopod (which was buried in the muck and mire of the pond in Snug Harbor) was no easy feat. Fortunately it was easy to see that this reed was going to be a popular spot for couples to mate on and sooner or later one of my shots was going to come out sharp. Lost the rubber foot off my monopod when I pulled it back out of the mud after this shot though!! Fortunately Manfrotto sells replacement feet, so no big loss and a nice shot for my soggy troubles.
  • DSC_1720 pretty picture mommy
  • After I finished ironing the last of my spring and summer wardrobe last week I had to search everywhere for that box of extra hangers I was certain I stashed somewhere in the house last fall, but to no avail. So I went down into that giant dumping ground I call my basement to look for them there. I didn't find the box of hangers, but I did find an old box of camera equipment. Stopping to look through it for a few moments with nostalgic eyes, I spotted the box that once held my old manual focus 20mm nikkor. As I brushed the box off to one side it felt oddly heavy. I thought I took all my old lenses out of the basement a few years ago when I read somewhere they would develop fungus from being stored in an environment like that - and they did! But with so much old stuff in numerous boxes, I couldn't find everything and my 20mm lens was one of them, till now. <br /> <br /> Dreading what the lens must look after all this time, I hurriedly opened the box so I could rush it out of the cold dark prison it spent the last 11 years of its life in. Surprisingly the old original bag of desiccate jell, and the UV filter I left on it, took the heaviest brunt of the fungus assault. The lens itself was barely affected. None the less I plan to send it out to Focal Point Inc in Colorado to be professionally cleaned as soon as I can scrape up the money to pay for it, which is what I've had to do with a half a dozen other old nikkor optics over the last 2 years. Cleaning it up as best I could, it looked so good when I finished that I decided to drop it in my camera bag today and see what kind of image quality it was capable of delivering in the mean time as I headed out to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to scout out a location for a future shot I had in mind.<br /> <br /> Late in the day as I came upon a spot on my map called "Drummers Grove" (and once you arrive there no explanation is necessary as to how it got the moniker), I knew if I ever was going to have a chance to put my old nikkor to use today this was going to be the opportunity to so. Looking at the images it captured on my ride back home on the ferry, I could see this old lens still has a lot of good images left in it.
  • Balancing a water bottle on your head while dancing, not bad...
  • DSC_2332 foggy morning at City Hall Park (D 40%)
  • DSC_2337 rainy afternoon at the Botanical Gardens (D 35%)
  • In 2012 I totally tore my right rotator cuff. In 2013 I partially tore my left, which lead to a pinched nerve in my neck. But after 2 years of faithful rehab work, my neck and shoulders were finally strong enough to load up my Lowe pro with a full load of equipment. Eager to capture some fall colors for the first time in 2 years, I trekked up to the botanical gardens in the Bronx to see what people were up to this crisp autumn afternoon. Well here's one example.
  • DSC_5246 Ivan's wood carvings
  • DSC_5432 fall scene at Snug Harbor
  • DSC_5713 good times at the Mall
  • I won't lie, this 30 year old 135mm Nikon lens may look quite odd and out of place attached the front of my modern looking DSLR, but as I've said before, when your camera bag is already full there's something to be said for having a telephoto lens with an aperture this wide, that you can slip into your shirt pocket. As for not being able to let the camera do the focusing for me whenever I use it, it didn't stop me from trekking all over the city looking for things to shoot 30 years ago, and it's not stopping me now.
  • Early evening visitor
  • DSC_9980 animal lover
  • I had an appointment in the city today but after that my day was free, so I brought along with me one of my smallest camera bags and stuffed some lenses suited for taking street photo's and headed to Central Park. Reaching the Bethesda fountain area (my favorite location in the whole park) I ran across a group of street performers that seemed to be sharing a pot of tips as they took turns performing one after the other in cycles. This lithe little ballerina provided me with several nice shots.
  • The poster Miriam here put up on the column caught my eye when I stepped out of the mens room, so I stopped and sat down for a spell and listened to her sing (quite lovely indeed) and tried to see if I could grab a nice image or two, while I rested my feet.
  • He was the smallest of the street performers this day but certainly not the least.
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