Good Morning!

This morning, hoping to beat the heat, I headed out early to Hughes Hollow.  My start was delayed a bit when I received a call from #4 son with some extraordinary career news and so I pulled over to the side of the road for a fairly long chat.  Once I finally got there, it was hot, hazy and humid and just teeming with dragonflies and fully blooming wildflowers surrounding the ponds. 

Dragonfly eyes are often difficult to capture completely because if they are out in the sun, which is where you will find them most frequently, some segment of the eyes will usually be blown out.  This morning I was fortunate to have some intermittent clouds which allowed me to get this shot with full detail of the eyes.  Although I was close, this is also cropped to showcase the eyes. (have a look in LARGE) 

Some of you have been kind of enough to admire my macro shots over the past couple of years.  At the suggestion of Hobbs, I am going to share with you some of the things I have learned about shooting insects. My plan is to do this next week when I begin my stint as host of Tiny Tuesday for the month of August.  While I don’t claim to be an expert and I am sure many of you could teach me a few things, too, I have definitely done this a lot and have learned what works best for me for handheld insect macro shots and I am happy to share it. This will include camera settings and processing techniques…. So stay tuned.