Moose Hill - Part 2

These are all from the Forest Trail, which I'd never walked before. Yes I've been going to Moose Hill for 3 years now and had never walked this trail. I found it quite nice. I also found plenty of things to add to my list of finally seeing them.

Two interesting mushrooms.

The ferns are giving up... I love the ferns when they start coming up in the Spring. they've been beat all year and now it's time for them to sleep. I still think hibernating for humans is a sound concept. Just hide inside until Winter ends. I got a pic of the tops, but it wasn't even half as interesting as the bottoms. To be added to my list of new things seen. I'm not quite sure what it is yet, but I'll find out. This is just one part. There was a stem crawling along the ground with a bunch of these all sticking up from it. My first surprise spider of the trip. I almost walked face first into this one, who is much smaller than it appears. At first I though it was a spider dragging a leaf or something, but that is all body. I looked it up and came up with this, a female Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilius). Also a first. An American Pelecinid Wasp (Pelecinus polyturator), also a female. Why in the bug world does it seem only the females are noticeable. Either a Comma or a Question Mark butterfly. I couldn't get good pics of this one, as by the time I saw it and focused it would move again. Playing with swirling the camera while focusing on leaves above. I liked the effect on this one, but the others didn't come out as well. This is probably Clavulinopsis fusiformis, or Spindle-Shaped Coral Fungus. I find it to be a little less common, or maybe it's just coming up where I don't see it. I love this type of fungus. It doesn't seem to matter how many pics I take of it, anytime I see a new color, or new growth I end up with a picture. It's some type of bracket fungi. Black Racer. At first I thought this was a Black Rat Snake. Thankfully I stayed fairly far away, as Black Racers can be very nasty if they feel threatened. The snake was huge, or at least I thought it was huge. It was around 4 feet long and rather thick which is why I first thought rat snake. It looked a lot like a fat black corn snake. Also a first sighting for me, as I normally only see garters or ribbon snakes. Another face dropper. This one dropped down as I stopped to look back at the pics I took of the snake. It was easily the size of my thumb. A marbled Orbweaver (Araneus marmoreus), also a female. I got lazy, okay I stayed up until midnight, and didn't go out this morning, even though the pouring rain might have stirred up some interesting stuff. Maybe I'll go to Broadmoor on the way home.

Water Experiments

So yesterday I took my camera out for a workout. I took my obscenely cheap circular polarizer, and tried some water shots, using techniques posted here: Discussing Water Blur. I was trying to decide if the polarizer was good enough for my uses, or if I needed to find a better one. It worked out better than I thought it would. I still need some Neutral Density Filters though to get a much slower shutter speed (or to play with water in sunlight, all these were in shadow.) Most of these were 5 second exposures.

Shaped Bokeh

I should not browse blogs. Photography blogs especially. On this one http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/ I scrolled through ten pages of posts and came across how to make shapes out of the out of unfocused lights in the background of pictures. Quick explanation is you cut a shape out of paper or card stock, set the focus on something close to the camera, and zoom in until the shape disappears on the viewer, with my camera that was about 72 mm with a 1 cm across star. You also want the largest Aperture you can get, i.e. the lowest number.

I haven't quite figured out how to focus on something closeup, but I did manage to make shapes out of some Christmas lights. I suspect it would have worked a little better if I could find lights in my house that didn't blink.

This is the first shape I cut out, notice the fuzzy bits of paper on the edges.

Made for fuzzy stars. The sharper the edges the sharper the images.

More in depth instructions than mine can be found here: http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_create_your_own_bokeh and here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/shaped_bokeh/discuss/72157610869813179/