My friend Antonio and his dog Henry during a recent walk.
Taken with a Fuji X-E3 and Fuji XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OSS II
A friend and his dog
A Spider
Anyone who reads this blog will know about my fascination with bugs, particularly spiders, and especially jumping spiders. However, I’ve had difficulties both finding jumping spiders and taking pictures of them (they tend to…well…jump away before I can catch them).
So I was elated when I saw this tiny (no more than 1/8inch long) spider in my kitchen. Although I wasn’t entirely sure I suspected it was a jumping spider and prepared to take a picture (luckily I’d left a camera with a macro lens in the kitchen). I’ve taken close up pictures of spiders from above, usually as they’re moving quickly away from me. So I haven’t managed to get a picture of them head on. This time I determined to do just that.
Strangely the spider didn’t seem inclined to run/jump away. It just stood there looking at me. Jumping spider have incredible eyesight and if you move say to the left they will reorient their body to follow you. The only other bug I’ve come across that does that is the Praying Mantis. The mantis doesn’t even move it’s body. It just turns it’s articulated head towards you – quite spooky. Anyway spiders don’t have articulated heads, so just turn their entire body. Still rather unnerving though.
It’s not the best picture I’ve ever taken, but I’m pleased that I finally managed to get a picture of a jumping spider, my all time favorite bug.
Taken with a Sony A77II and Minolta 50mm f2.8 Macro lens
Before there was photography there was music
I didn’t get interested in photography until around 1978 when my wife gave me a camera. I’m not sure why. I don’t recall every saying that I wanted one. But that was what started my passion for all things photographic: taking pictures; collecting photobooks; collecting vintage cameras etc.
However, long before that I had another passion…music. From about age 14-18 I loved to listen to music, but mostly I liked to play. I never thought of myself as particularly good, but I was good enough that I refer to myself as “semi professional”. What I mean by that is that I got paid, but not very much.
Around age 18 I went off to University and almost immediately afterwards to the US, got married and somehow even though I continue to listen to music my interest in playing receded.
A few months ago I sold one of my two houses and moved much of the contents down to the other house. It’s taken me ages to empty all of the moving boxes (I still haven’t emptied all of them). Recently I was emptying one of the boxes and I came across the instrument above. I haven’t touched it for over 40 years and I think starting to play again would be an insurmountable obstacle.
But who knows?
Taken with an Apple Iphone SE model 2.
Update on Stone Tablets
Back in May 2022 I posted some pictures of stone tablets on a nearby church (See: Stone Tablets). I also posted them to Facebook and it’s that post that prompted this one. The thing is that I found them interesting, but apparently nobody else did. No likes, no comments no nothing. Now I don’t have that many Facebook friends so I don’t expect much in the way of likes and comments but I’ve been on Facebook for many years and this is the first time that a post has produced no reaction at all.
I wonder why.
Some new frames
In the preceding post mentioned some problems I had with framed pictures at the Museum of Modern Art.
I recently went with some friends to Ikea and came across some useful and inexpensive frames. So I bought two in different styles to see how they would look with my pictures in them.
I’ll probably print some more and change the cactus picture. I’ll keep the other one because 1) it’s one of very few pictures I have of my father (seen here in front of our house with our dog, Peg) and 2) It may well be the first picture I ever took – with an old Kodak Brownie Vecta box camera. I was about 11 at the time. If it’s not the very first it’s certainly from the first roll.
The picture of the cactus was taken April 16, 2016 at the New York Botanical Garden with a Sony A500. I don’t remember the lens and Lightroom saw fit not to record the lens data.
