Trip to the Hickok Brook Multiple Use Area

Canon EOS 6D Mark II & Tamron 90 mm Macro Lens, ISO 400, f/2.8 @ 1/250s Manual exposure

Since my last post the Arrow-shaped Micrathena Spider's have disappeared.  I am not sure if they just moved or if they are no longer alive.  It has been getting quite cold here at night and I am not sure what they do for the winter.  The trees are starting to change color already here and it just seems very early to me.
Yesterday I took a trip with my brother to Hickok Brook Multiple Use Area to see if we could catch any bass.  I brought my camera along in case I had any opportunities.  I have seen a lot of bear's there and I never have my camera.  The fishing was extremely disappointing.  We did not even have a bite.  Over the past few years it seems like this once great fishing hole has been completely over fished.  It is saddening to me.  I have very fond memories of fishing off the spill way, catching small catfish and bass.  I have not seen a catfish in there in several years, and the bass fishing has steadily declined also.

Canon EOS 6D Mark II & Tamron 90 mm Macro Lens, ISO 400, f/2.8 @ 1/250s Manual exposure

It was around 60 degrees or so when we got to the lake and there were a large number of bull frogs along the water.  I must have seen about 10 or so without really looking for them.  They just seemed to be every couple of feet.  Just sitting and waiting for it to warm up.  I did manage to take some photographs of them and I will post the one that I liked the most.  The photograph turned out to be a very high contrast image and I liked the way it turned out.  I also turned it into a black and white image and I actually like it better than the colored version.  Please let me know what you think in the comments below.

Canon EOS 6D Mark II & Tamron 90 mm Macro Lens, ISO 1600, f/16 @ 1/400s Manual exposure

Also while fishing I came across a branch full of caterpillars.  I am not sure what species they were. They may have been an invasive species,  but I really had no clue what species they were.  What I found really interesting was when you tapped the branch that they were on they would go from docile into a weird defensive stance all at once.  It was like they were one being.  They curled up into S shapes and stuck there legs out.  I figure they were doing it to ward off predators, but I had never seen anything like it before.  I did take a short video of it but I have not taken the time to look at it yet. I had a pesky yellow jacket who would not leave me alone while I was trying to photograph them, so I only took about 20 or so images.  All the photographs were taken with the Tamron 90 mm macro.

Canon EOS 6D Mark II & Tamron 90 mm Macro Lens, ISO 100, f/2.8 @ 1/400s Manual exposure

We did not see any bears this time around but we did see about a 200 pound Black Bear on the way home.  It was attempting to cross the road but it decided to turn around and run back into the woods.  I did not manage a photograph of it, and it vanished back into the brush.  Hopefully soon I will get a chance to photograph a bear.  I really had high hopes of photographing Brown Bears in Alaska and I think missing out on that opportunity has me really hoping to at least photograph Black Bears at home.

I have been very busy lately.  Last week I started to teach a college class in C++ programming, in addition to my full time job at the college.  So I have been spending a lot of hours at the college.  But labor day weekend finally gave me an opportunity to spend some time out enjoying the wilderness.  I am hoping I will get to spend some more time out soon, and winter will probably be here before I know it.  I cannot wait to really test my sigma 150-600 mm lens on bald eagles.  It should be a lot of fun this year.  Until Next Time.

Micrathena Sagitatta: Arrow-shaped Micrathena Spider

Canon EOS 6D Mark II & Tamron 90 mm Macro Lens, ISO 400, f/2.8 @ 1/400s Manual exposure

In my last post, I talked about how I really wanted to get a chance to photograph some spiders.  I could not believe it but today I got my chance.  I went out in my backyard today, to start cleaning out a garden that we had just let get away from us over the last few years.  But as I started to trim back some of the branches off the bush in front of me, I saw two different Arrow-shaped Micrathena Spiders.  After some research I found out they were both females.  I managed a few good photographs, and I hope over the next few days I get a few more.  One of the spiders was rebuilding its web so I focused a lot of my time on that spider.  I just could not believe that these spiders have probably been in my backyard all summer.  To me they are some of the craziest looking spiders around here.  Ever since I photographed and wrote a post about them back in 2012, I had not really seen any.  (Link to 2012 Post)  Maybe I just was not looking hard enough.  Since then I have done some research a few times but I never posted anything about these spiders.  So I figured I would put a little information about them here.

Canon EOS 6D Mark II & Tamron 90 mm Macro Lens, ISO 400, f/2.8 @ 1/400s Manual exposure

What do they look like?

Arrow-shaped Micrathena Spiders are one of the smaller species of orb-weaving spider.  They are sexually dimorphic.  The males are smaller averaging around 0.5cm and females about 1.0 cm. (without including the legs)  The females have the more striking features and beautiful colors.  Both have the distinctive arrow shape, but the females are more pronounced.  The females also have additional small spikes on the abdomen near the thorax.

Web Structure:

The most interesting thing I did not know about them is that the web consists of two portions the frame and the orb.  The frame is a relatively permanent structure and some spiders will leave them up for days and weeks.  The orb however is built each day at dawn before being taken down in the evening.  When they take it down they consume it.  They also typically stay in the hole at the center of the orb where it hangs upside down waiting for its prey to wander into the web.  In my case because they were upside down the good side was facing into the bush.  So I had to climb in behind the bush and the brush to be able to get the shots.

Where are they located?

Micrathena Sagitatta is one of only three Micrathena spiders found in North America.  It is most common to the eastern half of the country.  Nationally it is found in nearly every state east of Kansas, and as far north as Maine.

Are they dangerous?

Most people who look these spiders up are rightly concerned as to whether these spiders are dangerous?  For the most part, they aren't dangerous to people.  They have venom that they use to paralyze and kill bugs, but their venom isn't strong enough to do the same to larger creatures.  The venom may be a concern for those who are allergic to it, but this is rare.  That said, the bite can be painful, so you should try and avoid accidentally sticking your hand into their web.

Even though these spiders are not really dangerous they do look quite scary.  Once you get past the fear of them they can be very interesting just to watch.  I hope over the next week I get some more opportunities to photograph them, and as I clean out the garden maybe I will find more interesting bugs.  Until next time.

Macro Photography: Historic Goshen Farm Maryland

In my last post, I talked about how I had just gotten back from a trip to Maryland to visit my sister.  If you have not had a chance to see it yet, click here.  The one evening, my family and I went to Historic Goshen Farm and Educational Center for an evening of music.  I am not much of a live music fan, but I was very interested in visiting their garden.  They had several gardens and an apiary.  The one garden was called the pollinator garden and it was full of all kinds of beautiful flowers.

Naturally this attracted a wide arraignment of insects.  There were a ton of bees.  Not just honey bees from the apiary, but also wasps, hornets, bumble bees, you name it and it was there.  I am always very unnerved by bees but I think if I hadn't gotten used to them buzzing around me I would not have gotten any photographs, because they were everywhere.  I did have this one blue colored wasp that was giving me a hard time.  Thankfully he moved on without stinging me.

In the pollinator garden and on the grounds, there were also a lot of different species of butterflies and moths.  Most prominent were the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and Eastern Black Swallowtail.  Almost all my photographs of the Eastern Black Swallowtails came out to dark.  But I did capture some beautiful Eastern Tiger Swallowtails.  I just love the colors that they exhibit.

In the pollinator garden I also captured a couple photographs of a Bumble Bee on a Purple / Pink Coneflower.  I could be wrong but I believe that is what it was.  If you know what kind of flower it is you can comment the name down in the comments section.  The colors were just amazing in these photographs.  The other flowers in the background I think just make the bright red and pinks pop with the Bumble Bee as an added focus.  I think these are the best Bee photographs that I have ever taken.

Also, I was able to spot some Monarch Caterpillars, chomping away on Milkweed.  It had been a few years since I had seen one.  So it was quite remarkable to see so many in one garden.  I did not see any chrysalis yet, but it must be getting close to that time of year.

Overall the trip was a lot of fun and I think that I managed some great macro photographs from the trip.  I am looking forward to taking more Macro Photographs of insects while the summer lasts.  I would love to get some photographs of Jumping Spiders or just Spiders in general.  But I have a big fear of spiders and I normally try and keep my distance from them which typically results in less than stellar shots.  Furthermore I would like to try and photograph some more Dragonflies and Damselflies before the summer is over.  Fall is quickly approaching and then winter will be here soon.  Then I should get a good chance to test out my Sigma 150-600 mm lens on some flying eagles for the first time.  I can't wait.  Until Next Time.               

Alaska Time-lapse Video

During my last post I had mentioned that I had been working on putting together a video of some time-lapse that I had taken on my trip in Alaska.  I finally put them together and got them uploaded.  It took much longer than anticipated, but I am very happy with the result.

Ultimately, I decided that I should not be posting videos on my person account.  So I created a YouTube brand account where I could post everything related to my wildlife photography blog.  I decided to keep the name the same as my blog: Aaron Smith Wildlife Photography.  I had to re-upload my previous video to the new account and upload the new one as well.  From now on I will post all my videos on the new channel.

The new video is a compilation of time-lapses that I took on the cruise ship in Alaska.  I had taken a few time-lapse sequences in the evenings when we were leaving port cities.  Because it was a moving ship, they seem much faster than the previous video I had taken.  You can also see when the ship speed was changing and also some movement up and down due wave action.  So, the time-lapse's were very different than my previous time-lapse when the camera was completely still.

I had planned on doing some wildlife photography during last weekend but I did not really get many photographs.  Then this week came and went like a whirlwind, and I took a trip to Maryland to see my sister.  So I have not had to much time to photograph anything.  But while I was in Maryland I did visit a historic gardens area and there were more butterflies their than I have ever seen in one place.  I did not have a lot of time once we arrived but I am hopeful that I captured a few good shots.  There were also a lot of beautiful flowers and plenty of bees.  I am hoping to post more about those photographs once I get a chance to look them over on my computer.

I hope everyone enjoys the time-lapse sequences from my trip.  Until Next Time.             

Local Wildlife and Alaska Trip Continued

Over the last week or so, I have not taken too many new photographs. I have spent a lot of my free time fishing with my brother, and I have also been working on going through more photographs and videos from my Alaska trip. I’m hoping that I will be able to put out the time lapse videos in the next post. I am trying something new with them and I have never edited videos before. I have two time lapse videos that I took on the cruise. They are different then the first one I did because I was on a moving boat during these. So there was a lot more motion because of the movement of the boat. But I’m hoping they will be interesting enough.

On several occasions I took my camera with me when I was fishing, but I only managed to take about 100 photographs during those trips. I did manage to photograph a rabbit the one night, but it was getting quite dark. The photograph has a lot of noise in it, but I still wanted to post it. I also spent some time trying my luck at macro photography. I was using my Canon 6d mark ii with my fathers Tamron 90mm macro lens. I did struggle some to get parts of the tiny critters in focus. The auto focus on the lens can be a bit weird, and it does not always want to work the way you would hope. So I used a lot of manual focus towards the end of my macro session. I did manage a couple of photographs. I did like the photograph I managed of a bumble bee, and I also had some luck with dragonflies.

My plan is to spend some time this weekend out and trying to get some wildlife photographs. I will most likely head out to the Bashakill Wildlife Management Area or some other local areas. Hopefully I will be able to get there around the time when the sun is coming up. I would love to photograph wildlife in some great lighting. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

During the last week I started to go through the pictures I captured on my cell phone during my Alaska trip. I took a lot of photographs on my iPhone, and I figured some would be good. I know the mega pixel count is lower but it was really the only chance I had to capture some of the areas. Because almost all the photographs were taken on the buses, trains, planes, and boats through the windows. So I had to shoot through glass and I figured my cell phone would be easier to press up against the glass to try and minimize glare. I did manage to catch some amazing scenery, so I wanted to share them. So all the pictures below were taken with my iPhone.

I hope everyone enjoys the photographs. Until next time.