BUGS, BUGS, BUGS!!!

So it is summer and what does that mean? It means its time for bug photography again. Here are some of the images I have been working on over the last few days. All images were taken with a Canon 20D and a 100mm macro lens. The first is of a juvenile praying mantis. This creature hatched from one of two egg sacs that were on a patch of prairie grass in front of my house. These the images were taking utilizing natural lighting.




This image is of a monstrous wolf spider my friend caught the other day. This thing was HUGE! When we were taking pictures of this guy he jumped of the drop cloth and me and my friend jumped and screamed like little girls. My wife couldn't stop laughing at us. Finally the spider (and us) chilled out long enough to pull off some images. Image was taken using 2 studio strobe lights.





There are some small creatures that look rather cute close up (like the above wolf spider). On the other hand there are some freaky creatures that look outright evil. Check out the below spider from my garden. This guy looks like he would be straight from a horror movie.

Last night we had a few storms in Papillion. After the first storm everything turned orange and we had this full rainbow behind my house. I started noticing that the storm was still going behind the rainbow. I grabbed my camera and started shooting away. I was able to pull the image below off holding the camera and eye balling when the lighting was hitting.

After I took that shot I went to the front of my house to see an amazing sunset. There was two problems. The first was that there was not a good vantage point for a landscape at my current position. The second was that we had lost the power in the neighborhood and I could not get my car out of the garage. Looking down the street I noticed my buddy had his sons car out in the road. So me, him and another friend grabbed our cameras and took of to Walnut Creek Recreational area where I had just enough time to nab the middle shot.

After the sun went down we stuck around taking lighting shots in the dark, see the last photo. It was pretty impresive. The bummer was when we got home we still had no power so we were unable to work on our photos until the next day. Hope you enjoy the shots as much as I did taken them.

Over the last weekend my dad and I decided to skip town and photograph the burrowing owls of western Kansas. After a 6 hour car ride we discovered that the owls were not where they were the previous year. So we hopped back into the car for another hour to another location we have been researching. Well regretfully the owls were not there either. Instead of searching another day for the illusive owls we decided it would be best if we switched our focus to landscapes. About an hour away from our current location was the Chalk Pyramids. This is a rock formation that was left over from a vast inland sea. The first two images below are from there. We waited at this location for about 5 hours until we had the perfect light for the pictures below. I have also included several other images from my trip as well.