Camouflage Moth

Today’s P-O-D (project-of-the-day) was waiting for me when I got home from running some errands. This moth was apparently spending the day flattened against the bricks inside my carport. It’s not exactly camouflaged against the bricks but maybe it’s pretending to be a bit of cement – I cropped the photo so the cement between the bricks shows.

I’ve seen these moths here before, so they must like it. I’m not sure I would have even noticed if it weren’t right next to the door. It’s probably a safe bet that not many birds come into the carport searching for lunch.

On second thought, I just went outside to see if it had gone off into the night but it’s still there! Maybe it’s hibernating. Or, maybe it’s dead and it’s the same one I saw last year and I just haven’t noticed … I couldn’t resist – I just went out and tried to pick it up with some tweezers and it flew away, so it was definitely alive! Maybe it just wasn’t hungry tonight.

Boxmaking

Today’s project was a real project. A little while ago I threw out the container I used on my workbench to hold my small bookbinding tools. So, this morning, when I went to start making a cover for a book, I found all my tools laying on the workbench. After a short search for a replacement I had the bright idea of making a new one. So, using some scrap book board and decorated paper, I made one:

But I still did a photo-of-the-day---a shot of the Pieris japonica:

Photo of the Day

Well, I am weaving but I’m not sure about blogging. I’ve been thinking about doing a project-a-day. Not anything big, but just something to foster one of my many hobbies. So, I just got back from a few days in Death Valley and took a lot of pictures, so a photo is today’s project. I have a 90mm macro lens that I haven’t used very much but decided to take it out into the back yard to take some close-ups of flowers that are blooming in our very early spring. We have a beautiful Pieris japonica (Japanese andromeda) in the yard. Luckily, there were a lot of bees on the flowers, so I decided to try my luck with them. It’s been a long time since I’ve done serious macro photography and I’d forgotten how narrow the depth of field can be so a lot of my photos were rejects because not enough of the bee was in focus. With things that are moving, you can’t easily use a tripod so it’s a tradeoff between shutter speed for hand-holding the camera and small apertures for the required depth of field. I may try a few with flash later in the week. I also should take a photo of the whole shrub in bloom – it’s quite nice.

Anyway, here is the picture of the day. There are actually two versions – one with the bee at the end of the raceme of flowers, which resemble lily-of-the-valley. The other is just a blow-up of the bee – I had to prove it was mostly in focus! Fuzzy little critters. So, today’s lesson in macro photography. (As usual, you can click on the photos to see a larger version).