Zooming – July 2017

I limited myself to 10 zoomed images this month – and it was quite a challenge to choose the 10! Now that I am looking at them, I realize they reflect the places and sites I’ve enjoyed the most this July. 4 of the 10 are butterflies from Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit. I have enjoyed photographing them (when I am not on Flight Attendant duty) and appreciate the increased optical zoom of the camera I have now.

There are also some plants from the boardwalk between the Brookside Conservatories and the Nature Center: a horse nettle flower and a fiddlehead fern. Zooming allows me to stand on the boardwalk rather than contorting myself into a lower position and leaning off the boardwalk to get close to the plant.

I enjoyed another walk around Kenilworth Gardens this July. Somehow dragonflies and water lilies always draw my attention.

Finally – a walk in my neighborhood had its own photography opportunities. There was a leaf that fell on the sidewalk…tilted a little to show its changing color. And in a tree near the pond, there was a spider wrapping up a large catch in its web.

Zooming – June 2017

I use the zoom on my camera for multiple reasons and I was thinking about that when I selected the pictures from this month’s accumulation. I use the zoom to photography birds and animals that would fly or run away if I got closer. Squirrels fit into that category. This one was exploring the area under the pines in our back yard; I was in my office on the second floor of the house.

The optical zoom on my camera has improved with each new camera over the past few years until now I notice things in the images that are too small to notice with my eyes. Note the hole in the beak of the catbird. It’s a nare (nostril) which leads to nasal cavities in the birds skull.

I also see the changes as birds react to their environment. Take a look at two ‘looks’ of the green heron that is frequenting the pond in our neighborhood.

Sometimes I use the camera almost like binoculars. These structures were in the distance from where I was hiking.

Other times I use the optical zoom to achieve macro-like images….and avoid creating a shadow on my subject (by getting close to it). This day lily petal is a good example.

Other times I can’t get close because the subject is too high or there is a physical barrier. This maple is surrounded by a flower and ground cover bed….and I didn’t want to step on any carefully maintained vegetation.

I tend to use the zoom (both optical than continuing into the digital) frequently and its one of the reasons I use my camera rather than cell phone when I want better images.

Zooming – May 2017

I used the zoom on my camera so much in May that almost every picture was a candidate for this post. I picked some images that were no previously included in posts for the slide show below:

• A fly perched on a tiny yellow flower covered in water droplets
• New leaves at the tips of the maple branch – and a fly that I didn’t see until I looked at the picture on a big screen
• A butterfly head and shoulders…the zoom is enough that the individual yellow scales show in the darker part of the wing.
• New leaves on the sycamore. The size variation of sycamore leaves is very large: small fingernail to dinner plate.
• A resting butterfly
• Peonies: flower and bud
• An insect that looks like dried leaves
• A monarch caterpillar
• A butterfly – again the individual scales can be detected as ‘powder’ over the darker markings
• A chipping sparrow making a mess at the feeder
• A butterfly wing collage

Enjoy!

Zooming – March 2017

I decided against creating collages this month for the zoomed images and tried to pick images I had not used elsewhere. Early in the month there is a little winter weather and I used the camera to create some zoomed images through my office window: snow on maple blossoms and

The top of our bird feeder.

Then it was onto some warmer March days: new leaves on a rose bush trimmed last fall,

Dutch iris in a garden in Texas, and

A cat surveying the neighborhood from the top of a gate (also in Texas).

A few days later – there were lots to zoom items at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh: a slipper orchid,

A Chihuly bowl, and

The inside of a tulip.

The following day there were the birds at the National Aviary: an ibis,

Flamingo feet,

A hornbill (with feathers that look like very long eyelashes and a lot of cracks and scars on the bill), and

The complex features of an Andean condor.

Back in Maryland – the bark of a persimmon tree and

The delicate petals of a daffodil that survived snow and ice a few days prior to this picture.

Zooming – February 2017

As I was creating the zoomed images into collages, I was drawn to color in my February collection of photographs.

• Witch Hazel
• Peacock feathers
• Blue jays
• Flickers
• Skunk cabbage
• The light blue of dove eyelids
• Sunflowers

Enjoy the zoomed images from February!

Zooming – January 2017

I use the zoom on my camera in so many situations – to look at the details of a façade in McKinney, Texas,

A swan and coot at Josey Ranch.

And then there is the combined strategy of photographing through a window and zooming: crepe myrtle seed pods through the window of the hotel in Grapevine, TX (when it was very cold outside),

Kitt Peak (probably) taken through the window of the plane taking off from Tucson headed to Los Angles, and

A tangle of plum tree branches covered in water droplets in the morning sunshine.

Sometimes the zoom is so great that it makes the picture look more like a painting. I thought this shelf fungus looked like a stylized bird!