Tiny Goliaths

This past weekend, Jackie, myself, and a few other tribe members gathered at the cottage in Rindge. We welcomed a new tribe cat to the cotage. It was one of the first weekends in a looooong time that was sunny and warm(for the most part. As per our usual, she and I dragged the mattress out to the upstairs screen porch to sleep "outside". The rain came the first night were there. Alternating between soft rains pattering against the roof, and angry wind driven drops that almost thudded on the very same roof, it was amazing sleeping conditions. In the morning, after we had risen and had our breakfast, something made me pull out my new camera. it's quite tiny, about the size of a credit card, and maybe 5x as thick. Despite it's small stature though, I discovered that it packs a rather large punch. Upon examining the front porch, I discovered a number of insects that had run afoul of the rains, and were now the perfect subjects for my photography.

The very first thing I found was the best find of the weekend, in my opinion. Scanning the railing inside the screen, I found this girl. She was barely alive, just a twitch every so often, thus she was an excellent subject. I even posed her with a pencil tip(colorful in the animal world often means poisonous. Better safe than sorry, even though she was mostly dead.

What a beautiful animal, though. I spent a good two hours taking pictures of this one, fiddling madly with the camera settings to find the best effect. Being that I know a bit more about cameras than the target audience, I turned off everything automatic and adjusted settings as I went. I think it came out good. I'd have liked to have sharper focus, but with a point and shoot and a subject about the size of a tic-tac, it came out ok. I eventually went in search of other tiny goliaths, but I came back to this spider a few more times.



I'll have to be on the prowl for shit like this more often, now that I know what I can do with this particular tool. I can't tell you how many spiders I find, even in the city. Now I'm gonna actively look for them. I wanna find a black widow and get some really great macros. Those big ass garden spiders would likely be nice subjects too.




I really like the fact that even though she was dead, her body still had the elasticity to pose. I had trouble getting her to "face" me, since there was no force holding her body up besides the natural tension of the legs.






I found a few other interesting bugs. This guy was hanging onto a green tarp out back by the entrance to the woods

I believe it's called a capricorn beetle, but I seem to remember them being much more colorful. He sat still for me while I snapped a bunch of shots, then I think he got bored with me. Once he flew away, I only had to search for a minute before I came across another creature I'd been hunting.





I'd found a few daddy long legs along the trek, but they are quite difficult to capture on photo. If you get too close, they bolt. I'd attempted to shoot three at this point, all unsuccessfully. They saw my eye in their sky and scuttled to safety into places where I could not follow. This one seemed unafraid at first, allowing me to snap a few shots before she bolted under a shingle.

This poor fellow was the last really cool shot I found. I'd quit my hunt for subjects and gone in search of food for lunch. While putting away my camera, I spied this ant mashed into the rug by one of our gigantic feet. He learned a valuable lesson, though a bit too late. Humans are fickle creatures, especially when you trespass in their peaceful cottage and eat the walls. We killed a bunch of his kind over the weekend, and they still kept coming. I guess there's something to be said for tenacity.


Another great time at the cottage finished, some great shots taken, we packed up and went home to our dull lives, looking forward to the next gathering...