Ske

Just wanted to share a recent photo of mine. I took this with my little point-n-shoot digital camera. It’s a macro-shot, even though my camera doesn’t have a macro setting. How did I do this, you ask? I only learned of this technique recently, and the photo is hardly a masterpiece, but I thought it was cool enough and figured I’d post a quick how-to.

All you need is camera and a stand-alone camera lens. The one I used was an old 55mm Canon lens from a manual camera. You simply turn the lens around, butting the front of the lens up to the front of your camera’s lens, holding it there while getting in real tight to your subject matter. You will need lots of light on the subject, which can be difficult since you need to get inches away from the subject matter. That’s it, really.

Post a comment and let me know if I need to clarify anything. Also, ten points to the first to guess the subject matter. That is all

The Reckless Bumblebee

This bumblebee stung me, and now it’s dead. I did not kill it on purpose – nor would I have, because me and the bumble-e-bees normally get along swell – but the fact that it stung me on the ball of my foot; (a.k.a., the underside of my foot) as I was taking a step, unfortunately sealed this bee’s fate and gave me quite the sharp pain in the foot.

But, hey, it’s the circle of life – right, yo? I mean, most bumblebees avoid the dirty-side of my foot, even when I’m wearing flip-flops, as I was today. Is it an instinct they are born with? – I don’t know: if so, this one picked up a recessive gene somewhere along the way or was just plain reckless in life. Anyway, the circle of life rolls on: within thirty minutes of falling to the concrete slab in our backyard, the bee was already discovered by a pack of rabid fireants (you can just see the head of one of them peeking out from behind the bee on the lower right side). When I returned to the scene with my camera, the ants had already formed a tidy bucket-brigade off toward the edge of the concrete. Industrious. And, inspiring.

What can we learn from this? Don’t be a reckless bumblebee. I suppose that sums it up.