Pentax K10D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI Macro
1/125 sec. f8
ISO 400
This familiar house plant, a member of the acanthus family, comes from Brazil and requires high humidity to thrive and bloom. I captured it in the Botanic Garden's tropical greenhouse.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Zebra plant
Pentax K10D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI Macro
1/125 sec. f8
ISO 400
This familiar house plant, a member of the acanthus family, comes from Brazil and requires high humidity to thrive and bloom. I captured it in the Botanic Garden's tropical greenhouse.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Carolus Linnaeus
Pentax K10D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI Macro
1/750 sec. f8
ISO 400
Robert Berks's huge bronze sculpture of the Swedish botanist Linnaeus (1707-1778), done in 1982, famously anchors the northeast corner of the Heritage Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden. It's always photographable, and in early afternoon a high sun vividly set off the rough planes of the bronze against the sky.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Lantana confetti
Pentax K10D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI Macro
1/350 sec. f8
ISO 400
They look like blooms from three different plants, but this is a single tricolor flower cluster of Lantana confetti, a shrub spotted yesterday in the Botanic Garden's tropical greenhouse. I really should have used a tripod rather than hand-holding the camera at f8 so that the lens could have been stopped down to f16, yielding a greater depth of field.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Red-tailed Hawk
Pentax K20D
SMC Pentax-DA 55-300 at 300mm
1/125 sec. f8
ISO 400
Going through the year's earlier avian photographs yielded this "formal portrait" of a young red-tailed hawk -- a species I first thought was a juvenile bald eagle -- spotted on two occasions at the Botanic Gardens in the spring. Two other photographs from the encounters can be found here.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Cormorant colony
Pentax K10D
SMC Pentax-DA 55-300 at 300mm
1/2000 sec. f9.5
ISO 400
Often called the "crow duck," the homely and ungainly double-crested cormorant is a diving waterbird once almost exterminated on the Great Lakes by DDT runoff. It has made a roaring comeback in the last couple of decades and now fishers complain that it harms the stock of edible fish on the lakes. Scientists, however, say it dines mostly on trash-fish minnows, not trout or other game fish. This colony shared a navigation islet with a few gulls in the middle of the Apostles off Bayfield, Wisconsin.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
First squirrel of the season
Pentax K20D
SMC Pentax-F* 300mm f4.5 ED (IF)
1/125 sec. f4.5
ISO 1600
This first example of Sciurus carolensis, my favorite backyard animal subject (all right, the only backyard animal subject I can easily find down here in Evanston) was taken in low light, lens wide open, at ISO 1600. The original frame is quite noisy, thanks to the high ISO, but the superb de-noise capability of Lightroom 3 smoothed everything out.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Rainbow at the Garden
Pentax K20D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI Macro
1/1500 sec. f9.5
ISO 400
I had been taking close-up shots of flowers when passersby suddenly congregated and pointed to the fountains out on the Chicago Botanic Garden pond. A lovely rainbow had formed at just the right spot against the sun rising to the east. The Tamron macro lens did a pretty fair job capturing the sight.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Grandiflora Rose 'Love'
Pentax K10D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI Macro
1/180 sec. f9.5
ISO 400
One of the largest and most spectacular red blooms in the Chicago Botanic Garden's Rose Garden, this hybrid boasts 40 or more petals to each blossom, some of which are lined with white when the rose is mature. Coming up with a good shot of a rose like this takes some time in post processing because the intense, saturated red tends to overwhelm detail.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Dahlia 'Bishop of York'
Pentax K10D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI Macro
1/180 sec. f9.5
ISO 400
Despite its British-sounding name and its place in the Botanic Garden's English Walled Garden, this variety of dahlia is a native of the high plains of Mexico and Central America. The Spanish brought it to Europe in 1784 and cultivated it in the Royal Gardens of Madrid. I photographed it in the early-morning sun, whose low light sculpted the petals against deep shadows.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Sheep's head
Pentax K10D
Tamron SP AF 90mm DI macro
1/60 sec. f9.5
ISO 400
On my first foray to the Botanic Garden since spring, I spotted a sparkling drop of water on the chin of this terra cotta sheep's head and just had to capture the sight. The low morning sun molded the contours and shadows of the sculpture just right.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Nonesuch
Pentax K20D
Sigma 17-70 at 31mm
1/350 sec. f11
ISO 400
This store in the town where we spend our summers is a photogenic relic of the early 1900s that has become Ontonagon's best-patronized gift shop. I've long wanted to photograph it, but since there's a popular cafe just across the street, parked cars always block a clear shot. One morning an antique automobile added to, not detracted from, the ambience. If anyone knows what that car is, let me know. (It looks like a 1947 Chevrolet Fleetline Aerosedan, but I'm not sure.)
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
New Eddystone Rock
Pentax K20D
SMC Pentax-DA 55-300 at 55mm
1/750 sec. f8
ISO 400
This 237-foot-tall basalt pillar is the remnant of a volcanic plug created by lava 5 million years ago. It was named by Captain George Vancouver when he was blundering about the Alaskan coast near what is now Ketchikan in 1793 while looking for the Northwest Passage. The view was captured during a trip to Alaska earlier this year. Click for larger version.
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