So this feels very much like my NOT favorite lifer, found just now in the laundry casita, post-hurricane
My favorite observations of this week as been ladybug larvas!!!
They are pretty cool, right? There is one fellow on here who has developed the skill to often differentiate them into species, which I find extremely remarkable. (But maybe you already know what they are.)
Yeah I saw a whole bunch of them on a rose bush on my college campus yesterday and was super cool especially when it was my first time ever to see one!
This is my favourite because it brings up a question that I never thought about observations before.
Four days ago as I was brushing my teeth just before bed, I spied a tiny wasp on our medicine cabinet door. (Don’t you just love it when a lifer comes to you?)
For this shot I used my thrift store Coolpix P90/Raynox-250.
Unverified, but most likely Habrobracon hebetor, which would be a Canadian first. BUT!
And here’s the question – if a local agriculture place is using non-native biological control species and you see them outside of that operation, is the observation considered cultivated, casual or…?
I love those too. Not only are they very winter weather hardy, they are such patient models for practicing macro skills. And they offer a carnival of textures, patterns, shapes and colours to play with and study.
Love your creative use of the window screen grid lines!
They help me find depth of field. It’s handheld iPhoneography, ageing eyesight, clip on lens, and cropping…
Thank you!!
Also, a pretty accurate measurement scale!
It’s been a while so I have a lot of new lifers, but these are my favorite/rarest ones:
Acaricorus floridus (One of the only records ever):
Strumigenys louisianae (iNat county record):
And Strumigenys eggersi:
And another cool harvestman, Stygnomma spiniferum:
I’m liking that Florida rufous woodlouse. I still have yet to find my first non-introduced woodlouse.
Love your finds. Man, I gotta visit the tropics.
Say, have you ever looked into learning to do photo editing a little better?
Your pics are great and well shot and composed, but I have to tell you that I kept thinking to myself, ‘Man, if he only did this, or that’.
Most of the ‘this or that’ you could even do with phone software. Heres a 1-minute tweak of one of your shots to demo what I mean. Just hope you don’t think I’m being too forward here.
You’re not being too forward at all! I completely agree, and I should probably do a lot more editing. For some reason, though, I’ve strayed away from it unless a photo needs editing for ID or I just randomly decide to. I even have free access to the Adobe suite through my school! I generally just can’t find the time to edit so many photos, and I’m not the best at it so there are a few times I’m afraid of ruining a photo. I also have some strange objection to nearly any cropping, just because I might reveal some sort of tiny imperfection (something intrinsic in basically every photo ever). Even when I do edit, I usually don’t change too much, even if more could be done:
The nice thing about RAW is that the editing options keep getting better. Second step for me after importing my RAWs into Lightroom is to run them through DxO PureRaw. I shoot almost constantly at ISO 2000 and above, and in dark places, 5000 or higher. With my little flash on low. Why? PureRaw allows me to trust that the noise will flush out and I can balance that little bit of atmospheric natural light with the flash a lot better.
Just be sure to hang on to those RAW files and when you get the time to get more into RAW editing, you’ll be amazed at what can be achieved. This, BTW, very often includes shots that you might consider a complete write-off because of extreme over or under-exposure or extreme noise.
My lens is all manual (Laowa 100mm) and as I’m roaming between sunlit flowers and dark insides of rotting logs on any given day, I have made so many ‘oopsies’ in my manual settings and resettings, that RAW has saved the day more times than I count. PLUS, if you have the good luck of having saved old RAW files, you often can push the quality up leaps and bounds with modern RAW editing-ware.
To be fair, a good part of my career for the 30+ years I was in it before retirement involved photo salvaging, so I’ve had lots and lots of practice. But the tools today have made things so much easier (off to the great skill-landfill with those old tricks) and like I said, even mobile apps are capable of creating great results. Good luck!
And remember, when it comes to image files, it really pays to be a RAW hoarder.
Last night’s moth-walk brought me about 50 individuals of more than 20 species. I’ve never had so many before and editing and uploading took me until 3:15 in the morning. When I woke up though, some of them had already been IDed/ confirmed. Two beautiful noctuids are new:
I really got into plant galls this year and I’ve been looking for this particular one everywhere because it looks so cool. There are no records on iNat from my country and NBN atlas only shows a couple of unconfirmed records anywhere near this area. There was enough evidence to show that they could be here anyway. I finally found one rose bush with quite a few galls last night so my persistence paid off.
My new fave https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/246532915 Serianthes melanesica because it is letting me join the “First photo of a living specimen” club.
We were wading on the calmer side of the island at low tide and I’m taking random shots of sea creatures but also plants because the distortion from the waves can be a bit frustrating. I think this is the tree my partner suggested getting a photo of as it was a bit different and I knocked off some photos thinking it looked a bit like a flame tree. There are herbarium specimum photos online but I can’t find anything else.
My absolute favourite lifer is a species I have wanted to see for a long time (after seeing its sister species, Polyporivora ornata), and today it finally happened. It is, IMO, one of the most beautiful flies out there: Polyporivora picta
