Last night was a beautiful golden summer evening, and when Kris suggested I take some photos of our hummingbird, I was happy to oblige. A hummingbird — or maybe more than one — has been visiting us for the past month. He chit chits to announce his presence, and I run to fetch my camera. The cats are quite fond of the little guy; they think he'd make a tasty snack. (This hummer photo is grainy because it's a detail of a larger image.)

Lane stopped by on Sunday, and we spent a couple hours geeking out over photography. We showed each other our best work. We talked about technique. He loaned me a 300mm lens so that I could try for better shots of birds. This lens is 50% longer than my longest lens, and it really makes a difference.

The adolescent jays that live on our property have begun to molt. They're shedding their grey head feathers for blue. They're still rather scrawny, though, and not as wary of humans and cats as they should be. With the 300mm lens, it's easier to stand at the kitchen sink and snap photos of them. When I shoot through the window screen, the light does strange things, producing a soft focus effect. Points of light "star". Parts of the image are ghosted.

After making photos of the birds, I explored the garden. Kris used to grow cleome (or "spider-plant") in Canby, but it never took. It's doing well here. It's strange stuff, and hard to photograph. The blossoms have long, spidery tendrils.

At some point, I set the camera on 1600 ISO. This is the equivalent of loading it with fast, grainy film. I should have changed back to 200 ISO when I was finished. I didn't. I forgot, and then took a couple hundred very grainy photos. For example, I was enamored of Kris' burgundy sunflowers. I took many closeup shots, but they're all rather poor, and not just because of my weak compositional skills. The grain makes the images rough rather than silky smooth.

A common photography saying is "it's better to be lucky than to be good". Maybe that's true, but it also helps to be good. If I were good, I would have been able to capture a good image of this bee. It landed on a burgundy sunflower while I was making macro images of it. Perfect! But the combination the 1600 ISO, the low light, the gusty wind, and my own ineptness prevented me from producing a single good image. This was the best I got.

Maybe the high speed photos were for the best. I was working in light that was quickly fading. My shutter speeds were slow. Without the 1600 ISO, I wouldn't have been able to make a single clear photo.

Ah well. This is the sort of mistake I make only once. It's a learning experience, right? And I still got to have an hour of fun making photos in the garden.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2003 — Spellbound   In which we watch birds fly. In which we eat raw fish. In which we enjoy the travails of young spellers.