Unfortunately, I was home sick today with some “issues”, but this has given me some time to whip together some photos for another blog entry.

Okay, so here’s the deal.  I added another lens to the arsenal, and because I now have a car payment, splurging on the $1200 dollar canon 180mm macro was not an option.   So I ended up getting a Sigma 105mm together with a Canon Mr14-ex flash in order to get me started in the macro photography world.   I liked the ability to do macro so much, that I ended out buying some Kenko extension tubes  in order to get me even closer to the action.

So without further ado, here are some recent shots from the macro as well as some other shots along the way.

My first spider with the new lens.  Not much to begin with, but it’s a start.

Sometimes, you take a good picture, but you tend to miss it’s potential.  And therefore not do anything with it.  I had passed this one up because I shot it at an 800 iso.  It wasn’t until I was going back through the libraries and had some free time to spend that I was able to make this one really shine.

My second spider shot, which was a good candidate for the extension tubes.   For those who think this type of stuff is easy for me, here’s the deal with this one.  I was laying on my back, with other insects crawling on me, shooting at the underside of a leaf on my patio, in the dark, trying to get this spider about the size of ball end of a sowing pin.  Regular macro wasn’t enough to get this guy big enough.  This took all three extension tubes (12mm, 20mm, and 36mm), cabled remote, tripod almost down to the ground, and 15-20 minutes to get this guy with a suitable shot.  Yeesh!

Aight, so on from bug shots with the closeup lens.  Here’s some of the other activities from the past weekend.

First of all, I had to visit my sister to see her new dog.  Plus, I hadn’t been around in a while so I needed to be over there anyway to check things out since I’ve been a bit alienated from close friends and family lately.

Unfortunately, her previous dog Baxter had passed away from being hit a car, but she was able to find ANOTHER dog with similar traits by the same name.   Strange how things work out.  So I had to go over there and get some cool shots of him and Brody.

Sorry about the lack of action shots Pam.  Just wasn’t enough sunlight for me to really freeze that shutter.   So I left those out.

And as soon as we started talking about skunks, guess what we saw

  Two baby skunks, which to be honest, this was the first time that I had ever seen a live skunk in my life.  So of course I had to go check them out, despite their less than flattering reputation.    By the time I got through shooting, I turned around to see my sister already back up the hill and almost back in her driveway.   I guess she wanted no part of those skunks, especially since the dogs have been skunked before haha

And finally, hung out with Theresa, her boyfriend, Candice, and various others over at Theresa’s place.