Apparently this is what a storm drain looks like before it’s installed beneath a street. I prefer to think of it as an alien space pod that crash-landed near the parking lot.
Like moths to a flower
This is one of two photos of this moth that I was able to capture (click the picture to see the other one in my Flickr gallery) and I had a difficult time deciding which one to post. I eventually settled on this one because even though there is more going on in the frame, I like the colors and somewhat larger depth of field. And that drop of water on its hindquarters is kind of cool too.
Midwest Thunderstorm
I got this shot last week in northern Iowa along I-35, and was originally a little bummed that I couldn’t find a way to shoot the storm cloud without getting the chicken houses and windmills in the frame. But the more I thought about the photo afterwards, the more I realized these elements capture a bit more about what midwestern life really is all about.
Boring a Cottonwood?
While we were driving home the other day my son kept pointing to the rear window of the car and saying “Beetle.” I couldn’t see what he was pointing at, but when we arrived and got out of the car we went around and found this giant yellow Cottonwood Borer who had apparently hitched a ride with us. He flew into a nearby pine tree and I ran inside to get my camera so I could take a few pics while holding my son with my other arm. Together we watched the beetle, which we later discovered was a Cottonwood Borer, wind his way around a few branches before taking off for other destinations.
Golden Rain Drops
Stairwell Paperclip
Originally I was just going to do one of those stairwell shots that people take all the time, and shot from the bottom up. Then I realized it might be interesting to try the concept from the top down, and noticed that the resulting image looked kind of like a big ol’ paperclip. Like most stairwells this one was rather dimly lit, so I had to do quite a bit of tweaking afterwards (including upping the exposure by more than +2). I figured this might happen when I took the picture, which is why I used such a low ISO in order to limit the post-processing artifacts that can show up when tweaking pictures in the computer. It was also a bit difficult to get everything in the shot because I had to stand on my tiptoes and try to hold the camera steady, and even with all that the left-hand side still got cropped a bit. Overall I am very pleased with how this turned out though.
Caution
Bug on a Leaf
Welcome
Another photo opportunity that popped up while I was out walking in our neighborhood with my son. This was outside a house that is for sale, and has been for quite some time. The framing of this sign was a bit tricky because I had to step around some inconveniently-placed bushes, and also keep an eye on my son who was playing behind me. One of the neat things about being constrained to a 50mm lens is that it forces me to find different vantage points from which to shoot, and I don’t think I would have ended up with quite this same perspective if I were using a zooming lens.