Almost in time

I had a brief opportunity to record the milky way this weekend.  I set the alarm and arrived at Namekagon Barrens just as nautical twilight was starting, hence the blue sky. The beauty of Namekagon is the ground fog that obscures light pollution for cities along the 35W corridor. I was a little late, as the sky brightened the milky way faded with a few minutes. Always a next time...
 

Struggling Pair

I spent a long time with just a couple wood lilies trying to capture the various emotions I was seeing. I fell back on my 10-22 wide angle zoom for most of the images, changing focal length and camera position. I see the pair winning the struggle, stretching above the background competition in this composition.

Technical: red slightly desaturated 

A morning with the cranes

I recorded this one morning a couple weeks ago. I like to watch the cranes wake up routine and listen to their raucous calling as they leave the roost each morning. As the season progresses they spend more time warming up making for even more interesting dancing and stretching routines.

Blue

The last of this week's series on color and the last shot of cranes flying for awhile. I'm working on a video of crane activity in the morning, however it's currently twice the length of my usual minute movies so there is some serious editing to do before it is published.

Orange

Recorded at Crex Meadows where the sky can have incredibly intense color. Depending on the weather it can also be very, very flat. We were driving into Grantsburg at the end of the day and the sky became this phenomenal color, needless to say supper was postponed.

Technical: WB 6k, Saturation +2. The color almost exactly as seen.

Clouds over Crex Meadows

Earlier this week I spent an afternoon and morning  at Crex with Gary L. While waiting for cranes to come in at sunset these clouds caught my attention. 

Fish Lake Sunset

This was shot near the cabin after I raced out for sunset but in trying to find a good foreground missed the hot orange clouds that I originally saw. In rapidly fading light I managed to get a few images using a ND filter.

Who me?

This meadow hawk seems guilty of something. My dream shot is a shot like this with a fly being eaten. Lots of macro shooting recently now that the flies and mosquitoes are past peak.

Hanging On

A spring peeper on a milkweed leaf which gives some sense of its size. This was cropped to vertical to accentuate the feeling of instability. There were several color variations among the frogs, perhaps a reaction to the light. Another fascinating observation to Google check.

Peeper on fern

I've been out the last couple mornings concentrating on a short section of roadside. Black and White does not work very often in macro, usually only when I have overstayed the light.

Gotcha!

Insect drama is not as exciting as the drama that unfolds for photographers when they see the charismatic megafauna of Africa or Yellowstone but it is much more common and cheaper to record. A slow walk in the woods or on the prairie will give more than enough opportunities to photograph drama in the natural world. I noticed an upside down flying butterfly and followed it until it landed. Then saw it was in the clutches of a big fly. 

Head to Head

As you can imagine this does not have a happy ending for the grasshopper. Crab spiders can adapt their color somewhat to blend into the flowers as they lay in wait for prey. Web spinning spiders are hard to see during the day making this spider one of my favorite spiders to photograph when looking for butterflies.

Badger at Den

I watched this badger for about an hour a few weeks ago. Most of the time we were both motionless watching each other. I was behind the Tacoma blind to break up my silhouette and standing absolutely still. She noticed the sound of me shifting my feet in the sand! It was a little unnerving when the badger left the viewfinder as it was heading toward me.