12-16-05 Part II

There are several reasons why I really don't care for winter any more. First off, I don't like the cold.

It's getting to the point where I am miserable while outside, if the temperatures drop down below 40 or so.

Plus, I don't like getting all bundled up. Then, there's the whole Christmas shopping thing that I have railed about for way too long.

Another reason I don't care for the cold weather is because it's hard to find the bugs and flowers that I enjoy taking pictures of so much.

I have some new extension tubes to get better macro pictures, but have barely got to use them. This weekend, I went hunting for things to photograph and the best I could do was this dog tick I plucked off my dog, Gabby.

I know, you always wanted to get an up close and personal picture of a dog tick. I sure did. But I was experimenting and this was about all I could come up with after the snow from last week. This picture was taken right before I tested the tick's swimming abilities in the pond. Sadly, it failed badly and sunk like a rock.

That'll teach it to stick its suckers in my dog, by gosh!

Here's another picture I took with the lens. Hopefully, you will like this one better.

This is the insides of the yellow dandelions that grow in the yard that are such a booger to get rid of. I stacked two different extension tubes together to get this image, and had to get about a half inch away.

I really like the detail in it, something that fascinates me with macro photography. I know, this is much better than the dog tick.

Currently, I have a macro lens (50 mm) and then have a 25 x Extension tube and a set of three Kenko tubes. When I stack them all together, this is what I get.

Sometime, I am going to have to spring for a different flash to take better macro pictures. They are around $400 and right now, that is on my dream list, along with a lot of other camera goodies.

Here is another macro I took the same day I took the picture of the inside of the dandelion. These flowers are smaller than a coin and the yellow deals in them are not much bigger than needles.

I liked this one also. Really liked the detail, just wished the white in the background wasn't so bright but that was where the sun was shining. I dulled it a little, but this was as much as I could dampen it.

My wife came in a few minutes ago and saw the picture of the dogtick. She didn't think that was a very good use of my camera or time. The nerve!

She's watching Christmas With The Kranks in the other room. We saw that movie at the theater last year. It was bad then and just as bad when I tried to watch it earlier. Lasted long enough to plow down some popcorn, then snuck off.

I read the book Skipping Christmas by John Grisham, which the movie is based on. The book was excellent. The movie reeked of badness.

Looks like I'm going to have to break down tomorrow and shop. I need some ideas! Please forward them my way.