No new photos for today, but I cannot let the day pass without comment.
I made my first-ever post here, eight years ago today… here it is, so you don’t have to search for it!
Four hundred seventy four posts later, I am still at it. Who woulda thunk?
As the last photo in my most recent post says… Life is Good.
After finishing my errands this morning, I took a stroll (with camera in hand) around downtown Peterborough in a light rain.
The light was dull and flat, it was not a day for black and white photos, but the rain did make the colors really pop!
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The ode season progresses.
The hudsonian whitefaces are maturing. Both males and females emerge with yellow and black markings. As the males mature the yellow spots turn red. Yesterday, about one in ten of the hudsonian whitefaces I saw were red or reddish.
Hudsonian whitefaces were still, by far, the most common ode around. However, small numbers of chalk-fronted corporals and brownish-grey damselflies (most probably a bluet of some sort) have appeared in the past few days.
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While prowling the “neighborhood” with a camera set up to make close up photos of smallish insects, I often find other things to point my lens at… other insects (especially butterflies) and flowers (of both wild and garden ilk) are most common.
Yesterday, while I was kneeling near a stone wall stalking a chalk-fronted corporal, a chipmunk poked its head out from between two stones. He was a very curious “fellow”*. Every time I moved he would duck back into the crevice, but after a few seconds he would reappear. I was close enough to photograph him without taking the extension tube from between my camera and lens.
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* I say “fellow”, but I did not see enough of this individual to actually determine its sex.
Over the past few days, I have been watching the appearance of increasing numbers of Hudsonian whitefaces in the yard and on the road. There were a scattered few last Monday. Today, there were dozens. (Today, I also observed, but did not identify or photograph, a single damselfly.)
Hooray… Ode season is upon us!!!
This afternoon, I dusted off the ode rig and spent a bit of time brushing up on my ode photography skills. Those skills were rusty, but the kinks worked themselves out quickly.
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Early last week I noticed that all of the remaining beech leaves which hung to the trees all winter long were suddenly on the ground. A couple of days later, this years crop of beech leaves exploded into view. The maple trees began producing leaves in concert with the beeches and a day or two later the first ferns of the season poked up out of the leaf litter.
Spring has really sprung!
The first photo of this group (‘Raindrops’) was made during a one minute (literally) spring shower that occurred just as I passed by the stream which crossed the the road near brimstone corner. The rain lasted just long enough that I could make three exposures.
The last photo, that I have titled ‘Happy Accident’, is exactly that. As I lowered my camera back to my side after making an exposure, I accidentally tripped the shutter. I discovered this frame (which is reminiscent of those in my series titled “Autumnal Abstracts”) on my memory card when I moved the days photos to the computer.
These two photos are evidence that serendipity plays a larger role in making photographs than we might like to admit. Although, I also think that Pasteur’s famous statement “Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.*” is also worth remembering in this context.
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* In english: “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.”
Despite today’s cool wet weather (45 degrees and showers), spring has finally sprung here in NH. I saw my first odes of the season the middle of last week (no photos though), the early green of spring has exploded in the last week or so and the early spring ephemerals are in bloom.
I photographed a few of these flowers on my walk yesterday.
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