Photos from the Garden

Hummingbirds are active, and a few blossoms still popping in mid July

I used to have a long telephoto lens that allowed me to zoom way in for bird photographs. I sold that because I didn’t feel it was quite the best option (sharpness was only so-so; low light capability was quite poor). I use my older lenses now for birds, and some of them are very capable. The hummer above was photographed with the Canon 200mm f/2 lens, which has autofocus. Hummingbirds move around a lot, so autofocus is very welcome. I managed to get a very sharp photo of a hummer feeding on the Crocosmia.

This is our third year in this house, and the Lilac plants are going nuts this year. They're bigger, thick with blossoms (although some are starting to fade as you can see above). I’ve been trying to get some good close-up shots of the flowers, but they don’t look all that artistic. So I took the opposite approach: I stepped back and took this shot with that same Canon 200mm f/2 lens. The Lilac has seriously invaded the space of our cherry tree, we’re going to have to do some pruning…

Butterflies mating

I had been trying to photograph the butterflies that are all over our yard this summer, but without a long telephoto with autofocus, it’s been extremely challenging. I finally got lucky—I had the 300mm manual focus lens on a gimbal mount (easy to swing around and aim) on my tripod. I was able to focus on these butterflies before they moved along.

I wasn’t able to get any before or since, so I was lucky, but I’ll take luck if I get the photo.

It’s hot, so I don’t spend that much time outside photographing, but I can usually go out in the yard for 20-30 minutes and see what I can find. More to come.