Instantaneous Instances » Flowers

The bee’s knees

Ryan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:39:17 +0000

I like wandering around the yard after work, listening to all the activity that often goes unnoticed. Bees buzzing around collecting pollen, birds calling to one another overhead, odd crunching coming from the thick undergrowth in the forest that surrounds the cabin. It’s extremely relaxing to let go of all the constant thoughts that act like a shell against distraction and intrusion, and just let the sensations of the world flow in.

The fireweed is blooming in full force now.

It takes several weeks for the stalk to fully bloom, starting at the base and finishing with the flowers at the top. When the top of the stalk has bloomed, fall and winter follow shortly.

(This is plant genitalia, you know)

The rest of the photos catalog some of the work that gets done while we do important things like make fliers and complain about the weather.

Lupin

Ryan — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:56:21 +0000

For the past month, the roadsides here have been bursting with color. Large stalks filled with purple flowers line the Sterling Highway from Homer all the way to Anchor Point and beyond. It’s a kind of lupin, and I’m not sure if they were planted there, or if they just grow naturally along the roadways.

It also seems to grow on the edges of the muskeg fields (sort of a spongy, moist bog) we have all over the place. I found this patch near our house yesterday.

Later today, once I get everything configured, I’ll kick off my re-purposed photography site with more photos from this series.

Moonlips

Ryan — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:29:49 +0000

It’s another full moon, which sets just before the sun rises. I looked at it with the telescope last night. This morning, I managed to bracket manual focus with the 500mm and get the setting moon mostly in focus.

You can sort of see how weird the bokeh is on this lens, by the craptacular blur on the foreground tree branches.

Skippy brought home some tulips the other day, and they’re starting to open up. The sun, filtering through our foggy window, provided some nice highlighting, so I broke out the macro lens and got up close and personal with them.

For closeup shots like these, I like a wide open aperture, so the depth of field is shallow. That lets me select specific areas of the image to highlight by putting them in focus, while the rest of the subject is blurred.

Tonight, we’re going to see the local production of “The Nutcracker.” It’s apparently 2.5 hours long, so…yeah. That’s a lot of sitting.

Wild flower

Ryan — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:00:02 +0000

Not sure what this is, my cursory search on the Internet was unfruitful. I need a book to take with me!