This fella put in an appearance in our house yesterday, a little bit early in the season. I found him expired this evening, presenting himself as a handsome candidate for some quick macro shots. I say handsome, but he has the mandible equivalent of overbite – or possibly the wasp equivalent of an “I’m bloody freezing” grimace.

Anyway here he is, 50% of full size: he was upside down [easier than trying to mount on a needle]. Exposure details: F8, ISO 100, 1/40th second, flash on camera, diffuser plus some feathering. Finally I’ve added a few tweaks in Aperture: a little bit of additional saturation and some vibrancy [something I’ve just started to play with]:

Wasp

It was a rainy day in England, so time for another post. Here are a couple of shots of a slinky, which I tied into a loop to create what I think are reasonably interesting patterns. I’ve used my macro lens at some way off the minimum focal length in order to get all or most of the subject in, but still taking advantage of the shorter depth of field. I’ve done a little bit of adjustment after the fact in Aperture.

This will probably be the last photo stack that I do for quite a while. I’ve struggled to find a Mac-capable stand alone solution, and I can’t justify buying the full version of Photoshop to do it [or for any other reason, for that matter]. I’ve been running a trial version of CS5, which is just about to expire.

This is a stack of 24 images, all taken on full manual [F4.5, 1/40 second, ISO 100] with off camera flash. The subject is a ‘leaf skeleton’ from a holly bush.

This is obviously a better candidate for a portrait composition. However, my cheap and cheerful focus rail shows its deficiencies if I try to go off horizontal. The detail is pretty interesting, so I’ve included a crop at about 50%.