Macro Photography in Bosque del Apache Desert Arboretum

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The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge’s Desert Arboretum is near the visitor center…and was the location of our first formal activity of the Festival of the Cranes last week: macro photography.

I started out with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) and a tripod. I learned very quickly that the tripod was too heavy and unwieldy for me. I struggled to get myself positioned without stepping into the beds to get close enough to the plants. The macro lens that I’d added to the camera did not work well enough for me either,  so I reverted to hand held and using the zoom from just far enough away to allow the camera to focus. I photographed cactus spines, screwbean mesquite…white crowned sparrows.

I had the best results with my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max). Cactus fruits and spines dominated but I also managed to photograph some creosote bush seed pods and some bark. I challenged myself to pay closer attention to focus and background along with overall composition.

The session would have been more enjoyable had a opted to bring my collapsible stool so I would not have been standing the whole time (my back was painful by the end)….a lesson learned that I will (hopefully) remember for next time.  

Previous Festival of the Cranes posts

Frost Patterns

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On one of the mornings I had an early Physical Therapy appointment, the temperature was in the teens and sunny. When I parked, I noticed the car parked next to me had frost on all its non-vertical surfaces. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures with my phone!

A little magnification made the variations in the crystals more visible. Some looked like feathers, others like brittle stars from the sea. In some places the crystals had become so dense that they became an aggregate. The sun was beginning to melt some of the crystals; I thought about why some areas were melting and others were not.

A few seconds of photography and I hurried into the building feeling grateful for the little bit of creative time – one of my favorite ways to start the day.

Zooming – October 2024

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All the pictures in the slideshow were taken in the Springfield Missouri area: my home, the Missouri State campus, Lake Springfield, Busiek State Forest…the majority were during Missouri Master Naturalist or Identifying Wood Plants class field trips! October was a great month for being outdoors. Enjoy the slideshow of zoomed images!

Zooming – September 2024

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Lots of photography done since my last Zooming post. There was travel to Arkansas and Texas…and then the classes (Missouri Master Naturalist and Identifying Woody Plants at a local university). I’ve used all three of my cameras this month: Canon Powershot SX70 HS (bridge), Canon Powershot SX730 HS (point and shot) and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

September has been a busy month, and I am still trying to settle into the higher level of activity away from home! Enjoy the slide show for September 2024….

Identifying Woody Plants (Month 1)

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The Identifying Woody Plants field class I am taking at Missouri State University has met 5 times. There have been two off-campus field trips that I’ve posted about previously: Springfield Botanical Gardens and Lovett Pinetum. The other sessions have included walks around the MSU campus identifying trees. Just as in the off-campus field trips, I’ve tried to get good pictures of the trees so that I can include them in my PowerPoint based ‘flashcards’ to help me learn all the woody plants presented in the class (even though I am not taking the class for credit).

In the first class, I tried using my cell phone…juggling it with my small notebook for note taking. It did not work so well; I only got reasonable pictures for three of the trees we encountered.

Black gum – Nyssaceae – Nyssa sylvatica

Buckeye – Sapindaceae – Aesculus

For the next campus walk – I used my small point-and-shoot camera and managed more pictures. I had front pockets for both the small notebook and the camera. It was a very hot/sunny day; I wore my fingerless gloves to keep my small notebook dry. I did not feel well during the later parts of the walk even though I was drinking plenty of water.

American Sycamore – Platanaceae – Platanus occidentalis

Yew – Taxaceae - Taxus

Flowering dogwood – Cornaceae – Cornus florida

Bald cypress – Cupressaceae – Taxodium distichum

Shortleaf pine – Pinaceae – Pinus echinata

American basswood – Malvaceae – Tilia americana

The third walk around campus was easier; I had my system for juggling the notebook and camera…and it wasn’t quite as hot. I also wore my hiking boots, so my feet did not hurt like they did on one previous campus walk. I am still not managing to photograph everything during the walk; for the ones I miss (i.e. not listed in this post) I glean photos from the class charts and/or web searches to populate my study Powerpoint.

Red Maple – Sapindaceae – Acer rubrum

Burning bush – Celastraceae – Euonymous alatus

Northern red oak – Fagaceae – Quercus rubra

Northern catalpa – Bignoniaceae – Catalpa speciosa

Yellow poplar – Magnoliaceae – Liriodendron tulipifera

True cedar – Pinaceae - Cedrus

Siberian elm – Ulmaceae – Ulmus pumila

Sweet gum – Altingaceae – Liquidambar styraciflua

Pin oak – Fagaceae – Quercus palustris

Honeylocust – Fabaceae – Gleditsia triacanthos

There is some memorization involved…but I am beginning to find that I remember the scientific names as well as the common names as I continue to study…adding new woody plants to the list each week. The class is living up to my expectations in helping me expand my identification skill of woody plants of Missouri.

Previous posts about my experiences in the Identifying Woody Plants class at Missouri State University

Yard Work at my Daughter’s

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Last week my daughter and I finally got around to cutting down a mimosa tree we are trying to kill that keeps returning to her yard. I took our Ryobi Sawzall (battery powered) for the job.

It made quick work of the long but relatively small branches/trunks.

We used long-handled pruners for the last cut and for the pokeweed that was growing rampant nearby. My daughter was the one that waded into the bed…her gloves and clothes were covered with burrs; we are going to proactively get rid of those plants next year while they are blooming (before the burrs form)!

I enjoyed taking pictures around her yard between handing tools to her and carrying away the branches as they were cut. There is a small solanum that has produced black fruits. The Southern Magnolia pods are forming. Miniature roses are blooming again; I like the color variation the small bush supplies. The Black Eyed Susans are a little battered but still brilliant color in the flower beds.

I tried photographing several Queen Anne’s Lace seed pods. They always look like a jumbled mess but there are a lot of seeds in there!

Then and Now – Photography

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Photography has changed a lot between the 1960s and now.

My mother was the photographer in my family and, as we got old enough, she allowed us to use her camera. It was an Instamatic that had a flash cube option. Film was expensive enough that we were careful to make the most of each shot. I remember sending off the rolls of film to be developed…another expense. She had taken pictures of us as babies earlier (in the 1950s) – with a camera I don’t remember – and the images were all black and white. By the mid-1960s, there are more family images in color. She often wrote on the back of the pictures: date, names of people, location.

Cameras that produced digital images became broadly available in the 1990s and now a lot of images are produced with our Smartphones. The two ‘cameras’ I used now are a Canon Powershot SX70 HS and an iPhone 15 Pro Max. The Canon is best for instances where I need the optical zoom capability (for bird and butterfly photography, for example) and I find that I can hold it steadier than the phone (i.e. the form of the camera is easier to ‘hand hold’ than the phone) The iPhone is best for macro photography. The iPhone also has the advantage of being with me almost all the time.

There are many advanced functions on both cameras. The only one I find that I use is the ‘night scene’ one that stacks low light images into a single image. Both of my cameras have the function…and it works well.

Digital cameras allow easy review of pictures immediately which shortens the photographic learning curve – no waiting until the film is developed to see if the image captured was as anticipated. I love to experiment with different settings to create high key images…and reduce the ‘burn out’ in part of the image on sunny days.

There are a lot of ways to edit pictures now – both in the ‘camera’ and post processing. I choose not to use any of them except cropping. It makes me uncomfortable to change an image to something the camera did not ‘see’ --- and it’s not something I want to spend time doing. I challenge myself to get the image I want with the camera I have! With the optics and image stabilization that cameras have today that is not as hard as it was in the 1960s.

Previous Then and Now posts

Wildcat Glades

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My husband and I visited Wildcat Glades one morning last week. He did not feel up to hiking, so we did some photography near the Nature Group buildings. There were several varieties of sunflowers. I did some macro photography with my phone (iPhone 14 Pro max); my favorites are the landscape oriented one and the flower with a petal across its center…a shy sunflower.

I also took some others with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) since I couldn’t get close enough to them with the phone

The Queen Ann’s Lace was in a grassy area…so the bridge camera’s zoom was used for those one too.

There was a small water feature that was almost surrounded by taller vegetation.

There were several birds (Eastern bluebird, House Finches, Eastern Phoebe) that I photographed although the cloudy day was not great for bird photography. We’ll have to visit on a sunny day next time.

One insect was still for long enough for me to go into macro mode again!

Our Missouri Yard – July 2024

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The wildest part of my yard is the wildflower garden I planted last summer.

In front of the wildflowers are some pumpkin vines, lambs ear, and fragrant sumac. Behind the wildflowers there is a rose bush that has died back to the roots during both winters we’ve lived in the house but has come back each year to form a low bush…blooming small red roses.

That area is always a good place to do some macro photography with my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’ve noticed that the native plants tend to harbor more insects although most of them are quite small. We’re missing the big butterflies in our yard too.

When I mow the grass, I stop to photograph anything I find of interest…like the shell of a robin’s egg (was it taken by predator or did the young hatched and the parent clear the nest?) and a plant that grows reliably by our mailbox.

There are frequently mushrooms that come up on the area where a tree was cut down (and the stump ground up) before we moved to the house. This month there were at least 2 different kinds.

One of our pine trees is not old enough to produce cones…but the other one is prolific and I wince when I run over a cone with the lawn mower (they probably cause the blade to get dull faster). The cones look good with green needles – or grass – around them!

I still have a few areas of the yard that I have not mowed this year. In one area – violets have escaped from the flower bed and spilled out into the unmowed area. I mowed some of no-mow May area and the clippings are slowing/stopping grass from growing there and the violets are moving there too! I am getting other ideas on how to extend the flowerbeds in a way that results in less need to use the weed-eater…and overall less lawn….that remains compliant with the Home Owners Association of our neighborhood.

Aurora Experience

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We didn’t do anything special to see the aurora on May 10th – simply walked out of our house and onto our deck about 9 PM. There was still light on the western horizon and the moon was out….a few stars visible.

The first few pictures I took with the iPhone 15 Pro Max toward the north were the most vivid. My husband was surprised that the phone did such a good job of capturing the aurora…better than what we could see with our eyes. We continued to look at the sky for the next 30 minutes or so.

I got up just before 4 AM to look again. The color was not as bright but seemed more like a curtain that the earlier pictures.

It was very worthwhile to make the effort to see this usual event in the night sky! 2024 has been a big year for sky events already with the solar eclipse on 4/8 and then this aurora being visible for most the US on 5/10. I wonder if there will be more this year.

First Road Trip to Texas in May 2024

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I’ll be making 2 road trips to Texas to visit my dad this month; my sisters have more than the usual commitments elsewhere, so I am filling in. The first trip was in early May. It was still dark when I left about 6 AM but the streetlight and the photographic smarts of my iPhone 15 Pro Max did as reasonable job of capturing the Kousa Dogwood in bloom near our driveway just before I left.

Rain was in the forecast…but it only impacted about an hour of the seven the road trip through Oklahoma. It was hard enough to slow traffic dramatically. I noticed that Lake Eufala was colored by silt – the result of run off after so much rain there recently.

Fortunately, the rain was over by the time I got to Texas and stopped at the Texas Welcome Center on US 75 as I entered Texas from Oklahoma. I had enjoyed the wildflowers there on a previous drive down and there seemed to be even more this time.

The bluebonnets were waning. At some point I realized that there were seed pods forming! I read up more about growing bluebonnets when I got home; unfortunately, it is hard to grow them in Missouri (it gets too cold in the winter, so they do not reseed themselves once established like they do in Texas).

I ate a picnic lunch near my car before continuing on to Dallas to visit with my dad. I opted to visit my dad the next morning before heading home; we had a good walk…finished a puzzle and started another before I left. This time as I passed Lake Eufala, I noticed a dock that was under water…another indication that the area had experienced a lot of rain and the lake’s water level had gone up!

On the way home, the drive was easy until the last hour…and then it was rain and fog. I decided my adaptive cruise control was not reliable enough in the sloppy conditions so was driving without it…increasing the stress of that last hour of driving. Fortunately, I managed to get home in good shape and didn’t see any accidents; it seemed like everyone decided to drive a bit slower!

Rhododendron

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Our rhododendron bloomed profusely this year – no frost damaged buds like last year. The whole bush was covered with blooms. It started in mid-April and all the buds had opened by the first few days of May.

I couldn’t resist a round of macro shots. It was good experience with my new iPhone 15 Pro Max. I like the individual flowers, the flower clusters, the new growth – it is full of photographic opportunities. The bush seems to be growing a lot better this year too; maybe it has recovered from the big drought the summer we moved to Missouri.

Do rhododendrons make good cut flowers? I did a search and discovered that yes…to cut a cluster with some unopened buds and slit the end of the stalk to allow easier water uptake. I put the cluster in a wine glass my parents got for their 50th wedding anniversary from a couple they had met in college and remained friends through the years….savored the flowers in my office.  All the buds eventually opened just as they would have outdoors.

I also learned that sometimes rhododendron need to be pruned but it won’t be this year…and maybe for years to come. My bush is in a place where it can expand in almost every direction. I will probably cut more flower clusters next spring now that I know how well they last indoors and, I guess, that will be the extent of the ‘pruning’ done!

Ten Little Celebrations – April 2024

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April 2024 has been even more full of little celebrations than usual; it was challenging to choose the top 10!

Traveling with my daughter. Taking a road trip to Dallas (a familiar trek) is quite different when my daughter to with me. We start the driving a bit later and, this time, we stopped in Joplin on the way home for lunch. I celebrated the time in the car…the great conversation.

The life of a cousin. It was bittersweet to go to the funeral of a cousin that was younger than me…but it was clearly a celebration of her life.

20 puzzles for $2 each. The Friends of the Library book sale in my county included puzzles and I celebrated getting 20 of them for my dad and the other residents at his assisted living group home. I also celebrated a return to volunteering - helping with the book sale.

iPhone 15 Pro Max. Getting a new phone is always cause to celebrate….even though I started out a little anxious that it would a little challenging to go from my old Android phone to an iPhone; it was a pleasant surprise to realize it was pretty easy. The only downside was the reduced functionality of the Windows phone link app for text messages; that issue was resolved as soon as I transitioned to a Mac later in the month.

MacBook Air 15”. More new technology I am celebrating; it only took about 24 hours for me to become a fan of the Mac after using Intel-based machines since the 1980s.

Irises. The plants bloomed all at once. In one bed the stalks were too tall for them to remain standing to I cut them to enjoy indoors – celebrated the buds opening all along the stems.

14 ducklings. Seeing Mom Mallard with her ducklings is a great celebration of spring.

Solar Eclipse. So glad we made the effort to position ourselves to see a 2nd solar eclipse (the 1st for me was in 2017). It’s a phenomenon rare enough to be a celebration.

Belted Kingfisher. Celebrating a bird I didn’t expect to see around our neighborhood pond.

Kite and Pinata Festival. The botanical garden is a great place for outdoor celebrations like this.

A Big Tech Transition

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My PC has been Intel-based since the 80s…but I transitioned to an Apple MacBook Air 15” last week (after transitioning from an Android-based phone to an iPhone 15 Pro Max earlier in the month). So – April 2024 has been a big tech transition for me. Now that I am through most of the it– I am thinking about my impressions of how it all went.

It was not as traumatic as I thought it would be although I was anticipating that it was going to be harder than a transition to a new Intel-based laptop and it was. But not as hard as I thought it was going to be. That could have been because:

  • My most active files were already in the cloud (OneDrive) and the huge bulk of my photographs were on an external drive.

  • I knew all my passwords. I am sometimes anxious about passwords (remembering them and changing them often enough) but I’ve managed to get better at it over the years.

  • My browser was the latest version.

  • The docking station I had used with my laptop worked with the new machine too (so the two external monitors were available immediately).

It only took me a day to begin doing some of my normal things on the Mac: writing and posting a blog, browsing some books, checking my news feeds, copying photos from my camera’s SD card to the Mac and tagging the best ones, sending/receiving text messages. Other than installing Microsoft Office and my favorite browser, I found myself minimizing the other apps I installed; I wanted to thoroughly explore the capabilities of the apps that came on the Mac; of course, Finder was a big focus for me since I was looking for ways to tag and resize pictures almost immediately along with moving around files.

On the subsequent days, I made tweaks – changing some settings to be more familiar to me (scrolling…the CTRL key to mimic the CMD key for cut and paste). I also installed the driver for my scanner, and it worked without any issues at all (the scanner was connected via the docking station, so it had been attached physically from almost the beginning). Tweaking will continue until I am thoroughly comfortable with the way the software is configured. Since I feel comfortable now, I suspect further tweaking will be minimal.

What I haven’t done yet is clean up the dock – taking off apps that I am not using and making sure the ones that I use frequently are always there. I will gradually try all the apps that are on the doc now and make the decision.

My overall impression of the transition at this point is positive. I am doing my normal activities – often in a slightly different way but acceptable (often improved). And I have cleaned up my environment considerably.

And – everything works faster! I’m very happy I made this tech transition!

Irises and other Yard News – April 2024

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The irises, that were already growing in flower beds when we bought our house, are blooming profusely; the ones I transplanted last fall/winter will take another year to build up the energy to bloom. I was surprised that the most prolific bed this year grew very elongated stems that fell over as soon as they started to bloom; I didn’t remember them being so tall last year. The irised in another bed looks the same, but the stems are very short!

I ended up cutting the long stems to bring indoors and enjoyed photographing them: macro shots with my iPhone 15 Pro Max and

And Canon Powershot SX70 HX high key shots (almost white background) and

Some warm glow shots of a group.

Of course, there other plants active in the yard. Hostas are growing well – both the original clumps and the ones I started this year by dividing some older clumps.

There are lots of dandelions in various stages of development. I tend to let them alone since the bees like the flowers and the roots are deeper than the grass root which helps hold the soil – particularly on slopes.

There are more violets that ever spilling out of flower beds and into the yard. There are some places that I have stopped mowing because the violets are so thick!

The irises I transplanted into the area where the pine tree was cut down last summer are growing vigorously. Maybe one or two will bloom this year although it won’t be great until next year. The lambs ear is growing well and should fill in more around the irises over time. The beautyberry does not have leaves yet but we’re still having some cool days/nights; hopefully it will leaf out in May.

I took some ‘art’ pictures of an iris bud and new rose leaves early in the month.

A lot is growing in the wildflower garden from last year. Some might be weeds…hard to tell until the plants start blooming.

Pokeweed is coming up everywhere. I am going to cut down plants that get above a certain size. I also plan to rake pine cones that are around one of pines toward the fence so that I won’t mow over them (they are a little tough for the lawn mower to cut!).

Overall – a great month in our yard. The rhododendron is full of buds…but not blooming yet…a lot more beauty coming in May.

Road Trip to Dallas – April 2024

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Last week I made a 2-day road trip down to Dallas to visit with my dad. It’s about 7 hours of driving in each direction. When I left my house in Missouri on the first day it was dark. Just as the horizon was beginning to brighten behind me, I saw a large bird fly over the interstate – higher than my car but not that far in front of me. I wondered if it was a barn owl although I didn’t get a good enoug look other than to realize the bird had a lot of white.

After my first rest stop the sun was up and more birds were moving about. I saw a large one fly across the highway…a little lower than was safe and then just above my car there was another of the same kind. It was a turkey! I was close enough to see the eye glinting.

I saw a great blue heron flying along or over the road twice…and a murmuration of smaller birds that spilt in two over the highway.

The highlight of the drive down was the rest stop on US 75 just after crossing from Oklahoma to Texas. The berm between the highway and the rest stop parking was full of wildflowers!

Closer to the building there were beds of wildflowers…including the Texas state flower: bluebonnets.

I enjoyed trying my new iPhone 15 Pro Max phone to take some macro pictures of some of the flowers.

Heading home the next day, I left the hotel about 6 AM and got to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge about 20 minutes after sunrise. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy and sprinkling so there was not a lot of bird activity, and the light was not great for photography.

The surprise of the morning came when I saw something on the road in my left peripheral vision as I moved slowly along Hagerman’s wildlife road…..as I turned to see it better I realized it was a hub cap. I got out of the car to see if it belonged to my car…and it did! It was the first time anything like that has happened to me in 55 years of driving! I put the hub cap in the car opting to not try to put it back on until I got home.

I saw two flocks of cattle egrets as I was driving back toward the highway from Hagerman.

As I drove through Oklahoma, I was driving thorough moving cloud shadows. They were moving in the same direction as I was, and I was moving faster than they were!

The drive was very routine until my route direction shifted from north to east. The wind buffeted the car and the big trucks on the interstate were even more impacted. The last 3 hours were exhausting – requiring both hands on the steering wheel and hyper awareness of the vehicles (particularly trucks) around me.

I made it home in a reasonable time but was very tired.