Fresh off the presses, a tiny white moth fluttering on a grass stem in my garden this morning.
Alight
6
A detailed city
Vancouver waterfront
As a respite from the bug macros, I thought I’d pay a visit to one of my favourite North American cities, Vancouver.
Striking shapes mingle with softer planting
I thoroughly enjoyed prowling round the most modern parts of this city, playing with angles and snapping details that caught my eye.
The same place looking the other way
I often convert my shots of architecture to black and white to bring out the interesting shapes and patterns.
Diagonals meet verticals, and some palm trees
It can be fun to zoom in tight.
Loads of contrast here
Or pull back for a wider view.
Contrasting new and old
Sorting out converging lines can be tricky with tall buildings but sometimes it’s fun not to bother…
Well, this building does actually lean anyway.
…or to go mad:
One way to cope with those converging lines
Reflections are always a lot of fun.
Fairmont hotel reflected in office block.
I did allow some colour, sometimes a lot of colour:
If a triptych is three panels, what do you call five panels?
I hope you enjoyed my architectural safari. Vancouver really is a super city and there is, of course, much more to it than its modern architecture. More another time. I will leave you now with this thought: what’s not to like about a city that has a giant lego orca?
You have to love Canadians.
More tiny secrets
I thought I’d follow up yesterday’s post, The secret world of the smallest things, with more of the most miniscule critters in my garden. They are little more than moving dots to the naked eye but the macro lens and cropping reveals another world.
Possibly a very small sort of wasp.
I am not going to be able to identify some of these tiny creatures. I know when I am out of my depth! I am content just to enjoy them, and their colourful landscape.
Definitely a midge.
Some are not so welcome, or pretty. Don’t bite me! But isn’t the sumach leaf lovely?
Uphill is hard work!
I promise no insects tomorrow.
The secret world of the smallest things
Misty morning
As Autumn sets in and the larger, more showy insects start to disappear, my macro lens turns to the smallest creatures, so small that I can only see the details by photographing them and cropping. Each of these critters is much smaller than they appear here, hardly noticeable as they go about their secret lives.
Tightrope
Carrying your prey across a tightrope of the thinnest grass stem is just showing off.
Golden grasses hide a wealth of miniature life
I like to show these critters with plenty of space around them, to show how very small they are. And their landscape can sometimes be as intriguing as the insects themselves.
Small but deadly
Beware the silken hammock
A beautifully woven hammock of silk catches the light. Inside, a tiny green spider awaits its next meal.
When I first posted this I identified it, rather hesitatingly, as araniella cucurbitina, the cucumber green orb spider. I suspected a female given the size of that shadow. The males are more streamlined:
However, I now think the spiders in this post may be nigma walckenaeri. Any experts around? There are several rather pretty spiders lurking among the turning leaves of my sumach tree. I can’t positively identify the next one through all the silk but it may well be another araniella cucurbitina. Or maybe not…
It is definitely spider season here. I wish all the huge ones presently invading my home looked like these instead.
Lighthouse to nowhere
A shot from our trip to Nantucket in August 2011. The guidebook advertised this lighthouse as perched precariously on the cliff edge. ‘Photo op!’, thought I and dragged the family out there only to find that it had been moved! It is now situated in some fairly uninspiring and very safe scrub. At least the sky was interesting enough to make it worth converting this shot to black and white, pushing the blues towards black and the vegetation towards white to create a pseudo-infrared effect.
Mystery river fly
I found this beautiful creature sheltering from the rain under one of the curlicues of our wrought-iron gate. It is some sort of river fly but I haven’t conclusively identified it more specifically. Any river fly experts out there? It has two long tails, unlike the common mayfly which has three, and apparently only one pair of wings. I found it nowhere near a river so I an guessing it is one of the river flies that will inhabit standing water. Anyway, whatever it is, it’s a beauty! Here’s a close-up:
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns
… For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things…
William Wordsworth, ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798), ll.88-102
Basking wasp
A wasp, glimpsed through the Autumn foliage of a sumach tree, basks in the last rays of the setting sun.
Incredible flying bees
Despite the drop in temperatures over the last couple of days, the hardy carder bees have still been out and about, seemingly tougher than the honey bees who have almost disappeared. Believe it or not, this geranium is called ‘Jolly Bee’!
They are still happily visiting carder bee heaven. I can now be more specific than my earlier identification of it as a member of the mint family; it is Agastache ‘Blackadder’.
This one isn’t flying, but I liked the light so included it anyway.
There were a few bumble bees about this morning. This is the first time I have seen them feeding on the solanum jasminoides flowers. Perhaps they are less fussy at this time of year when other flowers are fading. Look at that pollen sac! Amazing that it can fly at all.
Focused Moments 