A new lens inspires some entomological dabbling
This past Sunday, September 6th, was my thirty-ninth birthday, and I got an Olympus 25mm f/2.8 "pancake" lens for my camera, which turns out to be very good for taking close-up pictures (it was quite willing to focus on a subject only six inches away). On Labor Day, I went to Reynolda Gardens again to try the new lens out. I had intended to just take pictures of the flowers, but the gardens were positively alive with bees, wasps, and other flower-seeking insects, so I ended up taking pictures of them, instead. Here are thumbnails of most, but not all, of the pictures that I took.
All of these pictures were, to varying degrees, cropped down, but only the two small pictures of the large bumblebees in flight where otherwise altered with Photoshop (I brightened those two up a little, to compensate for mild underexposure).
Here is the first of the two "bonus pictures." There were at least three different species of wasps around the grape vines, and the picture on the left shows a reddish-brown paper wasp (perhaps Polistes metricus, but I'm not an entomologist, and am thus by no means certain about that) having a confrontation with an ordinary yellowjacket (some member of genus Vespula, anyway). A few seconds after I took that picture, the two wasps were struggling with one another in mid-air -- the picture on the right is my attempt to capture that (sadly, the exposure time was far too long to get more than a suggestive blur). By the way, the wasp with the bright yellow antennae in some of the pictures above is probably another variety of paper wasp (perhaps Polistes dominula, but once again, I'm not absolutely sure about that).
And here is the second "bonus picture." I think these are some sort of soldier beetle (a member of genus Chauliognathus -- perhaps C. pennsylvanicus).
All of these pictures were, to varying degrees, cropped down, but only the two small pictures of the large bumblebees in flight where otherwise altered with Photoshop (I brightened those two up a little, to compensate for mild underexposure).
Here is the first of the two "bonus pictures." There were at least three different species of wasps around the grape vines, and the picture on the left shows a reddish-brown paper wasp (perhaps Polistes metricus, but I'm not an entomologist, and am thus by no means certain about that) having a confrontation with an ordinary yellowjacket (some member of genus Vespula, anyway). A few seconds after I took that picture, the two wasps were struggling with one another in mid-air -- the picture on the right is my attempt to capture that (sadly, the exposure time was far too long to get more than a suggestive blur). By the way, the wasp with the bright yellow antennae in some of the pictures above is probably another variety of paper wasp (perhaps Polistes dominula, but once again, I'm not absolutely sure about that).
And here is the second "bonus picture." I think these are some sort of soldier beetle (a member of genus Chauliognathus -- perhaps C. pennsylvanicus).