Wild Narcissus

I've never seen so many wild Narcissus all together in one place. It was one of those magic days. So beautiful. The wind was strong and chilly and there was still some snow from last night. Not usual in our March.

Praying Cistus

The first flowers of Cistus albidus from this spring.

Last year that slug called bufaforat took this image from a bee approaching a pink cistus flower. Well... I've found the location of a wonderful spot full of this plants... and they are ready to bloom...

I'm going to pray to the Indian god of photography for a dreaming day full of flowers and insects, magic light and inspiration.

Another bumblebee, this time in background

Crab spider on first term while a bumblebee stays in backfocus

Don't think that I was capturing the crab spider when a bumblebee decided gracefully to collect some nectar just in the next floor. What really happened is that I found a poor bee restless on the floor. I placed the weak bee over a nice flower and started taking some pictures. Then I realized about the spider and got this nice composition.

Bumblebee II

This is the same bumblebee over the same Viburnum Tinus flowers from previous post. Which picture do you like more, this or the previous one?

This morning I've been shooting for half an hour to all insects around a beautifully pink tree. I've been all day excited at the office dreaming about the pictures I may get from that session. Well... My excitement came to zero in front of my PC this night. All useless. All pathetic. It's hard and disappointing.

Bumblebee

The Bombus terrestris queen is the only one from her colony allowed to survive the crude winter. When she wakes up from hibernation her first task is to raise a first generation of workers to asist her. I believe the bumblebee from my image is one of the firs workers from this spring.

Treehugger through Sauron's Eye

MP-E-65 macro lens extended at 5x and f=8

Another challenge from Frikosal: take a macro picture from a ball point pen. Precisely a 'BIC' one with red ink. I increased the challenge by wondering if I could portrait myself mirrored on something as small as a pen's ball. After many tries, here it is. I believe I can do better, but I don't have what I most need, time.

Sunset in the forest

Today back from work I took this image. Look at all the branches laying in the ground, they had been there since last autumn. I hope they will clean it all before summer.

White flower in the forest

I've recently bought a 10-22mm zoom. I was eager to take a picture were I could get a flower on fist plane while the extension of the tree can be seen on a out of focus background. After three days of fight the best image I got is this one taken with my beloved 100mm macro lens. I love this lens. It will take me more time than expected to squeeze the new zoom.

Fork

EOS350D with 100mm f2.8 macro

Following this post I'm adding this image to a chain. I'm not proud of it. I would like to have more time to improve it, but as my mother in law use to say: 'la vergonya és un luxe que no ens podem permetre'*

*unacuratelly I translated as: 'embarrassment is a luxury we can't afford'

Sporophyte from a fern

For me, as well as for Frikosal, plants are a difficult subject to cover. When we capture animals, experience tells us that the eyes need to be in perfect focus, and this rule works as well for humans as for ants. With this in mind you only need to concentrate to get a good frame.

Plants and flowers are totally different beasts. This fern was easy because it was clear that the sporophyte was the topic that matter, but most plants require art, a magic intuition with no written rules that genious like nomesploraria have learned from masters like Nino di Salvatore. For the rest of us, poor mortals, it's a hard stressing job.

Jumping in motion

Photo taken at 1/60 f5.6 I followed the subject with the camera so the background got moved while the subject ended relatively in focus.

Introducing Channing Johnson

Let me introduce Channing Johnson from Boston, Massachussets. Channing is a young photojournalist that has a photoblog that I like to visit from time to time. I can't say why I like his pictures, they don't brake nothing. He even has no insect on it. But when I watch it I see harmony, I see a style, a way to look into photography and the most important, it inspires me to keep taking pictures.

My picture above was inspired by some of his 'low light' 'difficult to meter' photos.