Macros, Deer, & Carnivals
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It must be something about Saturdays lately. I got bored sitting around and thought it might be nice to go out and make a few pictures of the deer near me. The other day I wrote about looking around when you are out making pictures and that couldn’t have been more true on this walk.
I hadn’t even taken my camera out of my backpack yet and I noticed something crawling on a milkweed leaf. A pretty big caterpillar! I quickly pulled out my camera and put my trusty Sigma 50mm macro on. Then I thought to myself, “Why not use a little flash?”. I busted out an sb600 and set it to a low power via CLS and started experimenting. Once I thought I had the picture I wanted, I shot a few more frames just in case and picked up my stuff and moved on.
I hadn’t seen any deer and was starting to think it might be a short walk when I saw a thistle with a few bees on it. I pulled out my sb600 again and thought it might be fun to see if I could make a picture of them flying around. It worked out better than I thought! Next time I might bring a small umbrella though to diffuse the light a little. Again, I picked up my stuff and moved on.
I was clearly in bug mode now and was looking for more flowers. A little farther up the trail I spied some ears sticking up from the tall grass. Finally, a deer! I moved up the trail a little more figuring she wasn’t going to move much and put on my 70-200 and put it on my mono pod. I walked back and got a few pictures of her when she stood up and just looked at me. A few frames later another set of ears popped up! I wasn’t sure who was more interested, me or the fawns. They kept moving closer but stopped about 25 feet away. I ripped a lot of frames of these two. I was glad I did. There were a lot of branches and grass cluttering up the frame and I managed to get a few relatively clean frames. They apparently got bored with me and suddenly turned and took off into the woods. I picked up my stuff and moved on.
After making a few more macros, I headed home. There was a carnival nearby and I thought it might be fun to try my hand at carnival pictures while Kieran was running around with his friends. We headed up there right around sunset, got something to eat and after making a few pictures Kieran baled on me to wander around. I headed over to listen to the band for awhile and ran into a few friends. I really wasn’t in the mood to drink much so I headed out to let Kieran know I was heading home. On my way out, I ran into my sister and brother in law! Didn’t see that one coming! A few beers later, we both headed home. What started out as a boring day ended pretty well I’m thinking.