Dragonfly Eyes

It was really strange, and kind of sad. In fact I'm still thinking about it days later.

We recently vacationed at Peninsula Lake, in the Muskoka region of Ontario. The vacation was not sad at all, it was relaxing and beautiful. I'll post more nature pictures from there in the coming days.

But the experience we had with this dragonfly was just bizarre. My daughter and niece found this kind-of-busted dragonfly on the dock, and were able to pick him up easily. So I decided to shoot him for this site. He would try to fly now and then but was unable to coordinate his wings well enough to even get of the ground. his head lolled about like a senior with Parkinsons disease. He would sit still with us touching and moving him to a better position. He never cleaned the sand off his eyes, as you can see above.

I think this little guy must have been snatched by a bird earlier in the day or within the last several days, and that perhaps damaged his neck/spine. Something had happened to him, and he'd lived life through to adulthood, so it must have been a recent trauma. But now, he was powerless to fly, defend, and I'm sure, hunt. So we were shooting his portrait in perhaps his last evening of life.

Perhaps I'm overthinking it... I don't expect dragonflies have feelings or that this one can recognize the futility of his situation. I don't even know if he could feel pain. And there's no dragonfly hospital to accept this victim. I don't know why, but the helplessness of this dragonfly's situation has stuck with me, and I feel sad because my own projected feelings for him are those of cold, fear, and loneliness.

So, enjoy these closeups of our dragonfly friend. His eyes are ridiculous/amazing, actually. So many hexagons. And his little whiskery face almost looks like that of a small dog or cat. Below, you can see his stained-glass wings, their cellophane-like layers creating a slight rainbow effect.

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Creepy Doll Eye

You know those dolls with the eyes that open and close? They're creepy right?

Here's a closeup of the eye of one. You can look deep into the empty cold soul of this doll if you stare long enough. But you must be brave. For she is also looking deeply into yours... Creeeeepy.

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Christmas Fish Eyes

A quick closeup of one of our Christmas ornaments. I took this while packing them away earlier this month. At normal size, it's a seafoam green sparkly christmas ball. I wanted to see what the sparkle was made of, and as you can see here, millions of tiny clear balls are adhered to the ornament. They look like bubbles or fish eyes, at this level of magnification.

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Hoboken Studio Tour/Tiny Lab: Money, Money, Money, Mo-ney

Above, you're being watched by Lincoln' eye, from a $5 bill. You can see the cotton fibers of the paper, and even a little shine off the ink where it's adhered to the fibers. Being a bit of a printing geek, I am intrigued by the amount of detail in the line art on this bill. It was shot on request at my exhibit during the Hoboken Studio Tour.

Below are two gold coins with ridged edges that look cool close up. One coin was from South Africa, and one was from the US, and they live together in the wallet of one of my visitors from the Studio Tour.

In case you missed it, here are some photos from my Tiny Lab exhibit the day of the Studio Tour. And if you are curious, here is a slideshow the photos I ultimately hung for that exhibition.

Thanks again for all your encouragement and support!

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Fly Me to the Moon, or Right Into a Lightbulb, if You're a Moth

And here come the creepier crawlers!

Above is the face of a moth. This was a rather small moth, actually. A larger moth would have had a larger head with more "feathers" and bigger eyes. However, I am happy with this shot anyway, because it's pretty much in sharp focus. Which is hard for such a tiny thing.

In other tiny-things-in-sharp-focus news, below is some sort of fly on a leaf. Maybe I'll find it's actually a bee and have to correct it like my last post.

One interesting detail I noticed is the little fly feet. I guess I've never seen or noticed what fly feet look like. Take a look at them, they're two little claw things, and two sticky pads. This particular fly appears to be missing the claw/pads on its left middle leg.

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Artsy Insects

I like the shot above because it kind of looks like a cool book cover or a poster for a sci-fi movie about flies taking over the world.

I have several pics of some bugs we saw in Muskoka (Peninsula Lake, to be specific), and decided to start you all off lightly with a couple more artistic, soft photos. We will get to the creepier, crawlier ones, to be sure.

Below is a bee who hung out on a leaf long enough for me to snap a frame or two. I like the soft focus and prismatic colors on the wings.

{CORRECTION: The insect below actually appears to be a type of hoverfly, likely a female Sphaerophoria scripta}

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Kitschy Sunday

These are some facial features of the girls' Polly Pocket, Arial. She's a small and attractive mermaid/human. I like the kitschiness of these photos.

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I Eye Captain.

So this one is kinda creepy, I know. Yes, it's my eye.

This is actually the third macro shoot I've done to try and get a good photo of an iris. There are all sorts of neat little folds and details in that muscle that makes up the iris, I wanted to capture it. This picture turned out to be more about the reflections and the overall eye instead.

I've shot my own eye twice, and once Sarah volunteered. But she didn't care much for the claustrophobia-inducing closeness of the lens, and it was a quick shoot. I will try to bribe her to do it again, because I saw something really interesting in the differences between our irises.

Besides the basic color differences (me brown, her green), my irises as you can see above, sort of look like thick dough. Alternately, Sarah's green irises looked like thousands of wavy green threads arranged radially. The difference is very interesting. I'll post a comparison in the future.

In other eye trivia, the eye's lens is the only place on our bodies which is not oxygenated by blood, rather, it gets oxygen directly from the air. Contact lenses have micro perforations in them that allow the air to still contact enough of the eye to keep it healthy. This is one reason why cleaning your contacts is important, to keep those tiny holes from clogging up.

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