My best gear was still in the shop, but I'd discovered that my backup camera teamed with my macro lens produced some pretty good macro shots. So I got in the routine of leaving the macro lens on the camera, and picking it up whenever I found something interesting and small. Most often that meant bugs I would find while looking around the outside of my building.

On the 26th, though, my first subject came inside to see me. Around 6:30 in the evening, I was in my home office, and a plume moth flew by me and landed on some books. Plume moths fold their wings, but hold them outstretched rather than over the body, so they look vaguely like the letter 'T' when they're perched.

Anyhow, I felt an instant affinity for this fellow, as he seemed to like a good book, and he had, moreover, settled on a group of nature and photography books. Clearly he was a moth of good taste.

Appropriately enough, the green book he was on was "Close-up on Insects: A photographers' guide". So I figured I'd best do my best to get good close-ups. This shot, which is about a 50% crop, captured some nice detail of the scales around the base of his wings.

Both moths and butterflies have their wings covered in these scales, and the scientific name for them (Lepidoptera) means "scaled-wings". The scales pretty much fall off on contact with anything, which is thought to be a protective mechanism, as it allows the moths and butterflies to slip away when they're being grabbed.

Anyhow, I think it's neat to get close enough in to get this much detail on the scales.

And if you must know, the blue book was "Return of Royalty: Wild Sheep of North America". It figures I would find a moth who likes sheep. Maybe it's a wool thing.

A little later, I headed over to my neighbors Jodi and David's place for dinner. For fun, I took my camera with me. I was soon ensconced on their patio looking for subjects. On their patio wall I found a Zebra Spider (Salticus scenicus). Zebras are pretty cute, and I was able to get a decent angle on this one's face.

Jumping spiders (the Zebra is a jumping spider) don't seem to like my looks, so often they'll turn around and run the other way when they see me. And when you've got eight eyes placed around your head, a bearded guy who's 350 times your height is pretty hard to miss—even if he's hiding behind a camera. So I was duly impressed that this guy obliged me with a good view of his face.

Jodi had gotten some nice fabric on the cushions for her patio furniture, and I decided to get close-ups of that fabric. I was quite surprised when a little beetle entered my viewfinder as I was doing so. This fellow was maybe 2mm long.

Because of the really high magnification, the fabric in that shot looks a lot rougher and scratchier than it feels; it's actually quite soft and comfortable.

David and Jodi mentioned a really big moth they had seen earlier on the patio, but he wasn't in the spot where they had seen him. In due course, though, they looked around and found him on a blanket by their wall. I went to work on him.

No more bugs presented themselves as I waited for dinner. I did find another subject, though, which was attached to me way out at the end of my arm.

Around this point, dinner became imminent. And as the last two shots show, washing my hands was in order. So I was off to find a sink, and then a lovely dinner was had. I didn't pick up the camera again that day.

Your small-scale photographer,
Tom