When God sent bread from heaven to the Israelites, they called it “Manna” which means “What is it?” If I stick to the literal interpretation of manna, I guess I could apply it to this:
There are a couple dozen of these at the edge my yard, and I have no idea what they are. Are they purely plant matter, or were those nodules made by insects? I opened one up to see:
The white fibers make me think these are purely plant matter, but I am not confident enough in that to make the call. I assume they fell from the canopy above, but I didn’t see any of them in the woods. There is a young (but tall) oak right on the edge of my woods, and its canopy does cover this edge of my yard, so that could be the source. But it’s nothing I recognize.
I did take some photos yesterday of some things I do recognize though. My pink lady slippers have finally opened.
This blossom is a bit on the pale end of the spectrum. I have a bunch of these along my trail, but many of them have been injured before they could bloom – the flower stems have been decapitated or bent over. I have no idea what did that, but kids and a dog are prime suspects. Not much I can do about that though, so there’s really no point in fretting over it.
The wait for blooms is also over for the star flower (Trientalis borealis).
I expect to see many more of these in the coming days, and hopefully I can get a better shot than this.
I’ve been fighting with my camera of late. Last year I stripped out the tripod mount. I can still get the camera on my tiny tripod, but it’s pretty wobbly. It takes a lot of effort to get it pointed at the objective, because when I let go, it flops around a little. Then I set the camera to delay for two seconds before making the shot, so it can settle down after I touch the shutter button. What I’ve found myself doing instead is bumping up the ISO a couple notches so I can use a quicker shutter speed (1/25 sec or so). I can sometimes manage a halfway decent hand held shot at that speed, and it is quite a bit easier than arguing with the tripod mount. But the results are most definitely inferior.
I am planning to attempt a repair on the mount, so hopefully things will improve again after that. We’ll see!
May 17, 2011 at 8:36 pm
The lady slipper is gorgeous, though as you alluded, a slower shutter would even more successfully blur the background, highlighting the subject.
Thanks for sharing the pics.
May 17, 2011 at 9:08 pm
A blurred background is achieved by lowering the f-stop rather than adjusting the shutter speed. I like a higher f-stop for macro shots because when I take close-up shots like this, I like for the entire subject to be in focus.
I confess that I do that to a fault sometimes, and this may well be one of those times. Perhaps a bit lower f-stop would have made a better photo.
I think my penchant for maxing out the f-stop most likely stems from the fair number of insect photos I’ve taken. It drives me crazy when their eyes are in focus, but their antennae, being a couple millimeters closer to the lens, are not. I really prefer lots of depth!
A slower shutter speed allows me to leave the f-stop maxed out and the ISO set to its lowest value. My camera gets really noisy when the ISO is above 200, so I generally try to keep it at its lowest value (which is 80). The bad thing about the slow shutter speed is that I have use a tripod, because I find it close to impossible to hold the camera perfectly steady for 1/20 of a second without one.
I will sometimes press a stick into service as a monopod which does improve the results, but that’s not nearly as good as a tripod.
Another area of photography that eludes me still is the use of flash. First, flash should not be used in macro shots at all, and the great majority of my shots are macro. Second, my camera really doesn’t give me any indication what the photo will be like with flash enabled. I have no idea how to set the exposure time, ISO, of f-stop with flash enabled. It’s a trial and error process for me. And, since this camera runs on nothing more than a pair of AA batteries, it takes ten seconds or so just to recharge the flash circuit, making trial and error plenty of trials and lots of errors. It also drains the batteries after only a few shots.
Some day, I might buy a DSLR and move into the next price bracket, but that day is firmly in the future right now.
May 20, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Your mystery botanical bits appear to be female aments from something in the willow family (willow, aspen, etc.). The fuzz you pulled out is what will ultimately carry away the seeds when the flowers are fertilized and the little fruits burst open. The one still attached to the twig looks like it may have been nipped off by a tree squirrel. In the spring, squirrels often bite off branch tips when feeding. They will eat the bud or flowers or developing seeds (depending on the tree species), but then drop the rest. Usually they don’t carry them very far, though. If I’m right about all of this, you should have a willow or aspen close by where you found these things.
Regards,
Carl
May 20, 2011 at 12:16 pm
You are correct! I have seen aspen leaves on the ground right around there in the past, but I can’t remember if it was from a bigtooth (Populus grandidentata) or a quaking (P. tremuloides). I have both species on my property – I just don’t recall which was near that spot. I’ll have to check when I get a chance.
Thanks for the educated guess!