Ants

This photo was taken during a MeetUp hike along Lost Creek Lake in May, 2011.

Photographed on the Rogue Gorge Trail, near Union Creek, Southern Oregon

Photographed on the Rogue Gorge Trail, near Union Creek, Southern Oregon

This image was taken on the Rogue Valley Photography Group hike to Mt. Ashland on August 3, 2011

[best appreciated at full size against black] How many times have you leaned up against a pine tree, only to find out later that you got sap all over your clothes?! It's especially nice to get it in your hair, yay!! However, as a photographic subject, resin is endlessly fascinating to me. On this day, I got my first chance to take a macro shot of resin with my new Mark II and 100mm lens! When I got back to the house to look at this image, I was amazed to see something I hadn't noticed when I took the picture. If you look carefully, you'll notice an ant, forever entombed within the resin! This image was taken in February , 2012.

When Steve and I went to the Palmerton Arboretum a week ago, I got to spend quite a while taking pictures. These flowers are from the Madrone tree and I absolutely love how sunshine makes them glow! Especially fun is the challenge of getting an image that shows the inside of these lovely little bell-shaped flowers! And finally, it was a wonderful bonus to find an ant on my favorite aperture choice! :)

1 note above (top right) This collage shows "near misses" of some ants that I captured running up and down a Chicory stem. They were getting ready to cut down the flower stamens and then haul them away to thier ant hill. They were running around so fast that I didn't think I'd have a single picture that would work. As it was you can see that my depth of field is too shallow on all of these pictures. I only got a fine sliver of each ant, not good enough. In order to compensate for their fast movement, I made sure to take pictures in the bright light and with a higher ISO. It worked quite well, except that I should have upped my aperture to include more of the ant in focus.