The Cormorant, the Dragonfly, and the Bee: August 2015

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Dragonfly Festival

I had the privilege of photographing the 2nd annual Ashland Dragonfly Festival. This is a free fair put on by the Ashland Arts Alliance. The August 15 event began at 4 in the afternoon and continued 'till dusk. Included were several music performances, dancing, vendors selling their crafts, floating torches and luminary lights on Mill Pond, plenty of food to eat, face painting, and many more fun activities. I took over 600 pictures with my Olympus gear, and 12-40mm lens. I've chosen to share with you the following images. Enjoy!

Happy Dancing

Indian Pose

Mid-Dance Pose

Another Mid-Dance Pose

The Official Lighting of the Floating Fire

Pond and Sky Perspective

Colorful Sari

Torch Between the Shores

All Smiles

Clapping to the Beat

Evening Sky

Drum Circle Participants

Drum Connection Leaders

Late Afternoon Sun

Check Out the Fire!

Communicating

Mother and Daughter Drumming; Father Looks On

Drum City

Relaxing by the Pond

Long Tresses

Contagious Laughter

Floating Lights

Floating in the Sky

Just Out of Reach

The Festival Winds Down

Quiet Returns

Saturday, August 8, 2015

A Horse is a Horse, of Course, of Course

For those of you that remember the Mr. Ed TV show theme song, you'll know where I got today's post title. Today I'm sharing a few horse photos. I'm not really all that familiar with horses, except to plainly see that they are beautiful powerful animals. It was a complete and unexpected surprise when two horses decided to show up for a visit during one of my regular walks around the reservoir. One of the horses loved to play in the water. It turns out they are stabled nearby and visit this beach spot often, just not always when I'm there. In any case, I'm glad our visits coincided on this particular day. All photos below taken with my 75-300mm lens.

You gotta love the hair. His eyelid has a greenish hue; I don't know if that's normal or not. I haven't modified the color.

Less than Half a Horse Head

Do you think this horse's mane is short? Or just all on the other side?

Horse Enjoying the Sunny Day

This horse is not running through the water. He is quite stationary, and raising and lowering his leg to intentionally splash the water. His trainer / owner (the woman in black) informed us this horse loves to splash in the water.

Splashing Away

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Clouds

We had an amazingly powerful thunderstorm this evening. The wind gusts were supposedly in the 80+ miles per hour range. We heard that some neighboring towns received 1 1/2 to 2 inch size hail. The rain fell in buckets and the trees swayed heavily. Fortunately, it all passed rather quickly, lasting less than a half hour or so. We did lose power for a brief moment.

A few hours later blue sky showed up, just during sunset. I thought I'd run outside and grab a few pictures. These photos were all taken with my 60mm (120mm equivalent) lens just a short time ago. These therefore rate as the "freshest" pictures I've ever blogged to date.

Cloud and Tree Silhouettes

A Bit of Sun

Cloud Layers

Framed by Trees

Blue Sky Background

Monday, August 3, 2015

Audubon Residents

The Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary in Natick, MA is a MA Audubon Society location with many pleasant nature trails and local wildlife. I recently visited this excellent site with my camera and even my tripod(!) I almost never photograph with a tripod; virtually all pictures on this blog are handheld; the OM-D E-M5 MkII's built-in 5-stop equivalent image stabilization works spectacularly well. However, there's no question that using a long lens - all the shots below are with my 75-300mm lens - can often lead to better results with a tripod. At 600mm equivalent focal length, camera shake is a fact of life. Many photographers wouldn't consider shooting at 600mm without a tripod.

This was one of my first views of this fine swan family. For those with a thirst for knowledge, according to the site Animal Babies baby swans are called cygnets or flappers.

Family Outing

You will notice there is a lot of algae. So much, in fact, that in some of the photos the water surface itself is barely visible. It appears that adult swans, and young swans, love to eat this stuff. You can see it on their beaks in virtually every photo.

Up Close and Personal

This heavily cropped ISO 1600 photo of a handsome turtle was taken from about 30 feet away. I love how his (or her) eyes have the same yellow striped coloring as his/her entire head. And the claws/feet have red, not yellow stripes.