Obviously a picture of my daughter in a local parade. This is another picture I would have never been able to take before I got my new lens. 300 mm, ISO 200, F/13, 1/25 sec exposure.

I originally got my telephoto lens to take close up pictures of wildlife without scaring my subjects off. However, I've noticed that it also allows me to take pictures of my family without them knowing I'm taking a picture of them. I have been pleased with the results. I took this picture of my kids at the bus stop on the same foggy morning as the previous post. 210 mm, ISO 200, F/13, 1/50 sec exposure.

Fall is a great time for taking morning pictures. The increasing hours of darkness allow the air to cool to it's dewpoint and creats some great morning fog. 145 mm, 200 ISO, F/13, 1/80 sec exposure.

Last picture of a monarch caterpiller, this time a small one. If I was a good photographer, I would have photoshopped out all the dead flies and milkweed "milk", but that would take too long. 300 mm, ISO 200, F/13, 1/3 sec. exposure.

Captured the end of the monarch butterfly life-cycle in this shot as it's being consumed by a common garden spider. 180 mm, ISO 200, F/13, 1/6 sec exposure.

This is a different monarch butterfly caterpillar. I used the diagonal line created by the leaf as a guide while cropping. 300 mm, ISO 200, F/13, 1/3 sec exposure.

I saw one of these monarch butterfly caterpillars the other day by our ponds and finally got down there with my camera recently. I often times have trouble producing a really sharp image of small objects and this one was not different. However, I did reduce the aperature to increase the depth of field and it seem to make things slightly sharper. 300 mm, ISO 200, F/13, 1/15 sec exposure.

Looked, but couldn't figure out what kind of flowers these were. I found them near a pond. 300 mm, ISO 200, F/13, 1/5 sec exposure.

Same location, different storm. This one occurred a little earlier in the day so a higher aperature setting and less exposure. 18 mm, ISO 200, F/5.6, 20 second exposure.

This is the last photo I got of this storm. I decided not to crop this one so that the whole storm can be seen. 26 mm, ISO 200, F/4, 16.6 sec exposure.

More lightning from the storm. 28 mm, ISO 200, F/4, 24.6 sec exposure.

Sometimes I get lucky and the storms come to me. This storm developed 10 - 20 miles southeast of our house and gave quite a show. All I had to do was go outside. Plus I had the added benefit of being too far away to get killed by my subject. 26 mm, ISO 200, F/4, 25.3 sec exposure.

This is the last picture in this storm series. I've cropped in a bit tighter on this picture than the others, because the lightning is more hidden behind the clouds. I thought it was this detail that shows up better when it's cropped in, is what makes this picture interesting. 18 mm, 200 ISO, F/8, 19.6 sec exposure.

Rain started during this shot and a couple drops got on the lens, had to do a little touch-up work with the clone stamp to hide them. 18 mm, 200 ISO, F/8, 8.5 sec exposure.

This was the sweet spot where the storm was far enough away to get some cool shots, but not close enough to drench me with rain. 18 mm, 200 ISO, F/8, 13.4 sec exposure time.

Same storm, as it drew closer. 18 mm, 200 ISO, F/8, 7 sec exposure.

I've been out trying to get some new thunderstorm pictures many times this year without much luck. Finally a couple of weeks ago I went out and was just about to give up when a very electrically active storm moved in from the North. This picture shows this storm when it was still off in the distance. Also starting with this image I've decided to start posting the camera settings for the picture in hopes that I'll start paying more attention to what settings are required for certain picture environments. 18 mm, 200 ISO, F/8, 67.8 s exposure.

I think these are young tree swallows. I took this one with my new lens, which allowed me to be far enough away to allow them to act normally, though the mom dive-bombed me occationally.

This is a leopard moth that was perched on our front porch.

My last cicada picture, demonstraiting how numerous they were.

This is probably the best picture I took of a cicada.

This year was the hatch of a 13 year cicada (batch 19) around here. I've been around for a few hatches, but never lived out in the country. The experiance is quite different, with the sound truely defining for a solid week and a half. The hatch itself was amazingly syncrinous which allowed me to take this series of pictures documenting an emergence.

This shot is from roughly the same position as the last, but later on, allowing the already setted sun to light up the clouds a nice golden and red color.

I really like the lighting and composition of this picture, except for the fact that the light in the sky is too bright. I'll have to try this shot another time and see if there's a way to stop the sky from getting washed out.

Move forward a couple of months now, and this is one of my first pictures with my new toy, a 70 - 300 mm lens. Of course I was out looking for something to take a picture of with my new lens and this goose was quick to volunteer.

Ice on the picnic table.

I really liked this picture from the icestorm in February. I'm no expert on photography, but I think it works because a lot of the branches from the tree are making diagonal lines across the frame and some interesting lighting. I also decreased the contrast to soften the image slightly.

This is from an ice storm this past February that I finally got around to downloading off my camera. Though I don't remember planning for it, I really like the light streaks coming off the sun.

Been a while since I've posted, kinda got burned out posting all the vacation pictures. Anyway, this was a picture I took back in September, trying to experiment with long exposures at dusk. Really cool glassy effect on the water in the lake. I also like the ways the cool colors are brought out in the fading sky.