Ok - so admittedly, I intentionally have not posted in a while, but that was so that I could post my 600th post on the six year anniversary of starting my blog. A lot has happened over six years, and I've taken a ton of photographs (I honestly don't even know how many!). I have done some bigger posts for other anniversaries, so I wanted to do something similar again... but how to do it.

Then it hit me, why not take a look back at my top six favorite styles of photography. Some have been a strong interest since the start (like macro photography of spiders and bugs), while some are pretty new (videography - ok, I know it isn't technically photography, but it still requires a camera!), and some I only enjoy sometimes (landscape), though others I'd do every day if I could (underwater), and some I work hard to get (wildlife), and others that I don't work for but allow it to come to me as the subject warrants (black & white). Of course sometime I am doing multiple styles of photography all at once. But let's take a quick stroll through some examples of each style with some photos that may have gotten over-shadowed or missed for whatever reason throughout the years...

MACRO Definitely my favorite form of photography, macro gives me the chance to show things that most people overlook or never even see. Of course, a lot of the time, those things are the "creepy crawlies" and spiders that most people don't want to see anyway... but I find those things fascinating. Particularly jumping spiders - my absolute favorite macro subject. But macro can be very versatile - spiders, bugs, flowers, abstracts, underwater, fungi, just about anything. And when other forms of photography just aren't feasible because of bad light conditions or such, there are always macro subjects to be found.

BLACK & WHITE This is a style of photography that I have to admit I don't work at at all. I let this one come to me. If the scene or subject screams to me to be shot in black & white, I might see it while I'm taking the photo or sometimes not until I'm home and processing the photos on the computer and sometimes still not until months or years later looking back at the photo. The great thing about B&W photography is it can be merged with any type of photography, and as you'll see, I've tried it on just about every style of photography I do. Actually, that makes me realize that I have yet to ever convert a macro spider photo to black & white... I guess that will be an upcoming project! While I was tempted to process some new photos for this little set, I decided to just dig through the archives to find ones I'd processed previously and get them some due screen time...

WILDLIFE Wildlife photography spans a number of areas for me... birds, reptiles and amphibians, mammals, truly wild, and zoo kept animals. All of it is a huge draw to me. Luckily, Anya and I have moved to a place where we get exposed to so much more wildlife than we did before. As such, I was able to pick this entire assortment from photos I've taken right here on our property or close by (technically the owl and the snake were from the local park where we go to walk the dogs). This is definitely what I probably consider one of my most difficult forms of photography. The amount of patience and luck required are simply staggering at times, and the time investment is one I wish I could devote more effort to. But as I said, luckily all of this is right outside our door, so the convenience factor certainly is helping me to improve and get better shots all the time!

UNDERWATER Well - what can I say about underwater photography other than I wish I could get to do it more often! It is a very challenging form of photography, and quite often by the time I'm getting into a groove and starting to feel like I'm able to get more creative with my shots, that's exactly when the trip is over and it will be another year before I get to try again. Honestly, if I could go diving every day, or even every weekend to hone my underwater photography skills, I would. For now though, I'll just have to be happy with the once a year that I do get to go experience and record such amazing things!

So there you have it... six styles of photography, six years worth of trips, experiences, passion, sights... all recorded and shared here in 600 posts. Amusingly enough, at three years, I made the claim that I looked forward to three more years but figured a site redesign was in order before then and I'm still using the exact same site. I do think that needs to change, but part of my reluctance is the fantastic compendium that this site has become for me. I quite often refer back to old posts to share things again or even just a reference for myself. So hopefully I can figure out the challenge of upgrading this site while maintaining the integrity of all of the history that I've built here. For now though, I'll focus on continuing to capture and share photos like these!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

PS: If you are interested in exploring further into some of these examples, the section headers and the "button" below are links to the history of posts that have been tagged with that label, so if you want to see more of any specific style of photography, just click and explorer!

Ok - so the camera has a stack of photos that I need to process (frogs, bugs, car show, etc), but here's another one from a couple weeks ago to tide you over. This is a small moth called a Plume Moth. When not flying, these moths roll their wings up instead of folding them together over their backs - this results in this distinctive T-shape in their resting position. Their name comes from the fact that when opened, their wings appear to have multiple individual feathers or plumes, below you can see some of the trailers still extended from one of this moth's plumes...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Hopefully I can get motivated to start getting all those photos off the camera soon and get them posted up here. There are some definitely cool things in there.

- Bill

I recently took the sweep net out to see what I could find in the various tallish plants growing along our driveway. One thing I found was a nice little boll weevil. I took it inside and put it on the white background so I could really focus on its features.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

Ok - I've been really remiss in getting stuff posted, but I'm going to try and get things up more regularly (in fact, I'm going to try and write several posts tonight so I can just activate them later)... so what that means will be less words, more photos.

Enjoy.

This fort was near the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain (there's probably history behind it, but you'll have to look it up for yourself).

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm, 1/200th second at f/11.0. ISO 400. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Also at the summit I found this rather formidable looking beetle...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, Various exposures. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in eTTL mode. Image Stabilization on. Various ISOs. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw

Stay tuned - hopefully there will be more to come over the next few days.

- Bill

Here's some more angles of that saddleback caterpillar from yesterday - it really makes me think about nudibranchs... Hopefully I'll have some new nudibranch photos to share soon!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

So I just wanted to stop by real quick to share one photo of this crazy caterpillar I found recently. I was playing a round of disc golf at Moraine State Park when I spotted this guy on the chains on the disc golf basket. I tried futilely to take a photo with my crappy cell phone, and when that failed I resorted the only option I had available to me... I put it in am empty gummi fruit snack pouch that I happened to have in my disc golf bag (don't worry - I've since put a plastic container that I use as a specimen container in my bag for future occurrences since this wasn't the first time I'd wished I had something).

Anyway, after I got it home and did some research into what it was, I am glad that I didn't actually touch this thing. I know caterpillars with hairs like this can cause skin irritation, but this guy is apparently one of the highest ranked caterpillars in terms of medical significance. Here's an excerpt from the University of Florida's Entomology Department's webpage on this species...

Acharia stimulea is best known as a medically significant species. The large spines and potent hemolytic venom rank it as one of the most important North American species of urticating caterpillars, with larvae from the moth family Megalopygidae being the only lepidopterans considered more dangerous (Scott 1963, 1964; Durden and Mullen 2009; Hossler 2010). The spines of A. stimulea are strong, acutely pointed, and hollow. They embed deeply into tissue and break off, and can interrupt healing as the protoplasm from the venom glands dries into the tissue area (Gilmer 1925). The venom itself can cause a systemic condition called erucism or acute urticaria, for which severe symptoms may include migraines, gastrointestinal symptoms, asthma complications, anaphylactic shock, rupturing of erythrocytes, and hemorrhaging (USAF 1982, Hossler 2009). Saddleback Caterpillar (Acharia stimulea)

So yeah - short story... Don't touch!!!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

I'll share a few more here soon, but I wanted to get this one posted because this thing is just so crazy I couldn't wait to share...

- Bill

Well, if you've been playing along at home, you should recall that we've had pseudoscorpion here previously... so now we have a scorpionfly as well.

Unfortunately this isn't the best image (especially since the depth of field starts to blur out on its namesake scorpion looking tail), but it was the best one I came back with. I'll have to keep an eye out and see if I can locate another one of these and get a better photo next time.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/120 sec at f/8. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Doing some quick research revealed that the tail is not a stinger like that of an actual scorpion, but rather the male genitals. Additionally, scorpion flies appear to be predatory, and this one looks like he is in the middle of a meal - let's hope it is a mosquito!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

I don't seem to have much motivation to process photos these days, but I finally plowed my way through a huge stack of photos that have been sitting on memory cards waiting to be processed and uploaded. So since it has been almost a month since I've posted anything, I'll just share a big assortment today to get caught up. Perhaps I'll get out and collect some more photos here soon.

Just mouseover the thumbnails for the larger version to be displayed...

And now for some vertical oriented photos:

Thanks for viewing and hopefully I can get back to a more regular posting schedule here soon.

- Bill

Ok - quick post tonight to share one of the more intimidating insect faces I've seen in a while... I present to you, the Six Spotted Tiger Beetle (Cicindela sexguttata).

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

Ok - a couple more angles of that pseudoscorpion...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill