Adventures in Nature Photography

As readers of these reports are aware, we started photographing spiders some time ago. (See Jim Goes Nuts over Spiders and a complete gallery of spider photos.) Armed with digital cameras and Adobe Photoshop Elements, we began to explore more subjects. We tried taking a course in nature photography. That had lots of good tips, but we were disappointed to find the course concentrating on photographing with film. That is so twentieth century. We are quite up front about these images. No image makes it onto this web site without being tweaked to get the best picture.

Jim lobbied hard for better equipment than Linda's point-and-shoot Canon Powershot, arguing that manual focus was too difficult, especially for spiders. We acquired a Canon Digital Rebel and a close up macro adapter. That let us capture some great images, such as this picture of a Common House Spider. (Click on any of these small pictures to see a bigger version and a description.) The spider is about the size in the thumbnail picture, and looks like a brown blob to the naked eye.

Then, we took Marion and her friend Nita Weaver to High Island and Anahuac NWR for some birding. While at Anahuac, we managed to take a nice picture, but missed an opportunity to get a decent shot of an American Bittern eating a crawfish in full view. The birders will tell you just how rare that sighting is. After that, Linda agreed that we needed a longer lens, which we bought as soon as possible. The first thing we tried was photographing damselflies from the balcony outside our bedroom. That is harder than it looks, even with a 100-300mm zoom lens with an image stabilizer. Still, we thought this picture worth the effort, though we had difficulty identifying the damselfly. The next weekend was beautiful and sunny. Linda suggested we walk down Barton Creek behind our house. "There were lots of dragonflies and such there."

That's when the adventure really began. That first day, we got this photo. I have to admit that the original image wasn't as good as this finally came out. I had carefully centered the dragonfly, a Male Swift Setwing, in the frame. Linda suggested we crop the image to put the dragonfly more toward the edge, a change that turned this into one of our favorite images. Shortly after taking that photo, we also captured a picture of a Female Swift Setwing in the act of obelisking, another striking image that reminds us of a Cirque du Soleil performer.

We began to explore Barton Creek regularly, photographing both dragonflies and spiders without once slipping and dropping the camera. (Whew!) However, that's not the end of the tale. There is still a place for the small, convenient pocket camera. Sometimes, you find a great subject, such as this bandito, who seems to have no common name. It's called Metacyrba taenio,and can be identified by a combination of features. The spider was sitting on Linda's car when she spotted it. We snapped a picture using her camera, which leaves her purse only when she takes it out to use it. Sometimes a really great picture depends not on the equipment, but on the subject and the observer.

Check out the Photo Gallery for more pictures, or Best Nature Photos of 2005.