South Pond - 8.30.10 - Post 2 (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

Americans (at least) of a Certain Age were raised on children's books by Eric Carle.  One of my favorites was always The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which was written in 1969 (so it's just a bit older than I am. ;) and while on this walk, I finally got to meet The Very Hungry Caterpillar. :)

I had been thinking just before went out that day that I'd seen so many varieties of butterflies this summer, but I hadn't seen even one caterpillar. I was sure part of it was that butterflies *grab* your attention.  When something flies across your field of vision, you follow it. Caterpillars inch along slowly and hope to not be seen, since they can't exactly bolt if they're detected by someone who wants to eat them.  So I made a mental note to look harder.  And sure enough... big, beautiful monarch caterpillar on my very next walk.  Even more fortunate, he was busily munching away on a milkweed plant that had sprung up between the boardwalk and the fence, so I was able to sit (and when necessary, lay) on the boardwalk and shoot from any angle I wanted to without anything between us blocking my view.

Monarch Caterpillar Munches Milkweed

Here he is, looking right at me.  Well, I think he is.  His eyes aren't exactly well-defined.  His antennae were amazing to watch as they wiggled and probed and twisted.  You can see here that he's munching away on the milkweed flowers.

One Petal at a Time

You can sort of see it at this size, but if you enlarge this one it's a lot easier to see; he's holding the flower petal with his front feet as he eats it.

"Bite Size" is Subjective

So much of the detail in these shots is lost when I scale them down.  In this one, you can see where he's taken a bite out of the flower petal right in front of his 'nose'.

Redefining 'Plant Food'

Here he's holding himself up with his front feet as he continues to work on the flower.  He's actually caught the flower and pulled it down to him to make eating easier.

All You Can Eat Milkweed Buffet

Here he is in context.  I love how you can see the difference between the slim front feet he'll keep as a butterfly and the stocky, blocky back feet that he needs to move his little caterpillar butt along with his front.  Again, great views of his antennae.

Petal Power

Here's a closer version from that same sequence of shots.  (You can tell it isn't the exact same shot with a different crop by his antennae positions.)

No, You Can't Have Any

Here he's coming straight at me with his antennae out like the ears of a dog.

So Many Flowers, So Little Time...

I pulled back and shot with my kit lens for a few minutes to give a greater depth of focus.  I can just hear him thinking, "So many flowers, so little time..."

Flower Powered

Here he is coming at me again, still working on that flower he'd pulled down.

*burp*  All gone.

But this is my all time favorite of him alone.  He's eaten the whole flower.  You can see the stem still on the plant.  And in his four front feet he's holding the very last bit of the flower as he chows down.  This shot, more than any other I took, makes me think of the caterpillar from "Alice in Wonderland".  I think it's the pose.




Now I need to keep an eye out for a chrysalis.  I know it's getting to the end of the season, but hey, they still seem to be procreating, as this guy proves.

Up next, my little buddy here gets a friend.

South Pond - 8.30.10 - Post 1

I feel the need to preface this post with the surrounding details.  I went to run a few errands in Lincoln Park, and it ended up being a bust - the things I needed to pick up weren't done.  So I walked the South Pond since I was there anyway.  When I got home I found that my little ferret, Magick, was in the process of passing away.  She was almost 8 years old - which is quite old for a ferret - and she'd had cancer for a year, so this wasn't unexpected.  However, even when expected, losing a beloved pet sucks rocks.  And while I am absolutely certain that me not taking this walk wouldn't have changed things for her, there's still a little bit of me that says, "Damn, I should have gone straight home."  You know?

So, I'll miss the little muppet.

Magick - January 1, 2003 - August 30, 2010

Anyway... this is what I saw while I was out.

Great Black Wasp on Bubbles

This is a Great Black Wasp.  Buried in the algae he's walking on just above his head is a skipper butterfly who apparently got sucked in.  What I was really interested in here was the bubbled surface of the pond algae that the bug is walking on.

Fiery Skipper on Marsh Thistle

 Fiery Skippers are having a great year at the South Pond.  There are hundreds of them.  Here's one on a Marsh Thistle.  At least I'm pretty sure it's Marsh Thistle.  It's next to the pond, but the maps I find usually say that the southern edge of the plant's range is southern Wisconsin.  Though, you know, Chicago isn't a ridiculous distance from southern Wisconsin, so it's not unreasonable that the park folks would choose to install it here.  ANYWAY... if you click on the picture to make it bigger, you can see the butterfly's proboscis as he feeds from the flower.

Argiope on Railing

I wish this guy had sat still just a little bit longer.  He's roughly half a cm from front foot to back end.  Really, really tiny.  And pretty hyper.  If you can't tell what he's on, it's the railing to the pond boardwalk.  I almost discovered him the hard way as I trailed my hand along the metal.  I think it's an Argiope - also called a Yellow Garden Spider.  I'll need to keep an eye out to see if I can get a better shot of one next time I'm out there.

I'm Ready for My Close Up

There was a gigantic flock of sparrows hanging out between the zoo gate and the part of the pond closest to the zoo.  If you got too close they came up off the ground and into a tree, but if you waited a minute, they'd all head back for the ground under the boardwalk.  I think it's a song sparrow (seriously, until I started looking, I had no idea how many kinds of sparrows there are out there.).  Anyway, I loved the way he turned his head up to look at me as if trying to decide if I was enough of a threat to bother him into moving.

Pondhawk on Broadleaf

An Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly on a leaf over that same patch of bubbly algae.  I was playing with the bokeh a little.  I wanted an angle where I wouldn't get that dead leaf under the dragonfly's leaf, but my mobility was kind of limited on the boardwalk.  Still, I think the dragonfly pops out.

Upside-Down Tachnid

 I was ridiculously pleased with these shots of a Tachnid Fly on a Rattlesnake Master.  I mean, sure, it's a fly, but as pictures of flies go, I like these. :)

Rightside-Up Tachinid

Look how prominent his antennae look against the plant.  You can also see how he's holding on with all of his feet.

Fl-eye

His eyes are so pronounced in this shot.  He's not looking at me head-on, but your eyes still go straight to his red ones.

Cuckoo in the Rattlesnake Master

Same kind of plant, different kind of bug.  Google tells me this is a Cuckoo Bumblebee.  And if you read up on these things, they're nasty!  They infiltrate hives of other bees and take over.

Fire Colored Beetle on Rattlesnake Master

Obviously the Rattlesnake Master was the plant of the day.  Here's a Fire Colored Beetle (something new :).  I was captivated by his antennae which never stopped moving.

Eye Catching Monarch

Monarchs, Monarchs everywhere.  I'm starting to see more Monarchs in Chicago.  I don't think I've taken a walk all summer where I haven't found at least one.  This shot is fun because it has this great 3D effect where the butterfly and the branch it's perched on seem to stick out from the leaves in the background.

Milkweed Unmunched

 
This is Butterfly Milkweed.  Not only are they a beautiful, bright flower, they attract the Brushfoot Butterflies and their larva.  This will be key in the next post. ;)






Up next... the amazing shots of the first caterpillar I found all year.  Go figure it was almost September before I could find one!

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 7 (North Pier Fireworks)

Last post for the Chicago Tall Ships event!  These are the fireworks from the north side of the Pier. 

Many cameras have built in fireworks settings.  Mine doesn't, but it's a quick Google or trip through your owner's manual to figure out the best settings.

For my camera, the best images come from an ISO of 800  the Tv setting running about a 2.5 - 3.2 second shutter. When I'm on Tv the camera sets the aperture setting, which usually runs somewhere around f4 or f5 for something like this.

A tripod is a must.  When you have a 3 second shutter on something moving, you can't breathe, blink, or sneeze or you will have a lot of wiggle.  I forgot the foot to my quick release tripod on the 4th of July and got a whole lot of garbage trying to balance the camera on the tripod.  It just won't work.

Second Set

 These fireworks went off in the last trails of one of those huge 'weeping willow' looking fireworks.  There's just a little wiggle at the end of this one, which makes me think I may have bumped the tripod while getting ready to hit the shutter again.

Purple Over Yellow

 I love the colors on this one.  But then again, anything purple gets my attention. :)    I also like how very straight the purple light trails are.

Traffic Light Go Boom

They had a bit of a red/yellow/green thing going on.  There was on in the post about the Red Witch, where I captured how that looks on the water.

Color, Color Everywhere

A bit of the finale.  I wish I could have gotten a good shot of just the one on the far left.  I love the pink inside, purple middle and green outside edge.

Perforated Fireworks

I didn't do anything but crop this.  It looks like I somehow managed to stop and start the shutter, but it's actually the effect of the firework. 

Pink Over Yellow

 Pinks and yellows. 

Sun and Four Moons

There's some fantastic timing here.  Five fireworks that essentially went off at the same time and at fairly close velocities.  The red one is a little more intense, but the four purple ones are pretty close to identical.

White at Night

At one point they filled my entire lens with white light.  I love how the two on the sides clearly went off a few seconds after the one the middle, so I caught the explosion in the centers of them both.




Okay, I've finally finished Tall Ships.  Now I need to start sorting and cropping the last three hikes I've been on. *checks harddrive*  Wow, that's a lot of photos I need to sort.

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 6 (Shipboard Life)

Okay, last post about the ships.

Boom Today, Boom Tomorrow

This is a 32-pound cannon.  Which means that it can fire a 32-pound cannonball.  The cannon itself weighs, literally, tons more.  While I was on the next ship over they fired a 'blank' from this cannon.  The charge they set off was 2 pounds of gunpowder.  I was a whole ship (roughly 100 yards) away from this and the sound was deafening.  I cannot imagine how anyone who actually served during wartime on a vessel like this had *any* useful hearing left after a couple of battles.

Guiding the Ship

This is the figurehead of the Bounty. There was a sign out in front of the ship that explained that the figureheads looked good and brought good luck and all that, but they had another more important purpose.  Illiterate sailors would identify their ships by the figurehead since they couldn't actually read the names on the sides of the hull.  It gave me flashbacks to when I was a kid and our school buses had Disney figures on the side of the bus.  That way little kids who didn't know their numbers yet would get on the right bus.  Most of my life I was on bus 54 - Cinderella.  But occasionally I was on 36 - Dumbo.  I'm going to be 38 years old at the end of this month, so I guess the fact that I can remember that more than 25 years later is proof that it works. :)

Lighting the Way

Three lanterns.  I was always a little freaked out by the idea of lighting a fire on a wooden ship.  These are in glass cases, but still...

Mind the Gap

A shot down the very deep stairs.  Some ships had the below decks open, others didn't.

Very, Very Low Clearance

This one did, obviously.  This is the crew's sleeping quarters.  Those bags are their personal belongings.  That's all they get to bring for the duration of the trip.  This is a rare self-portrait (done with a tripod and timer), as I'd much rather be behind the camera than in front of it.  But I did it this time to illustrate a point.  I'm 4 foot 10 and I couldn't stand up straight.  I'm guessing the headroom was about 4 feet.  It wasn't too bad for me, but can you imagine being, say, a six-foot tall guy?  If you look to the right of my head, there are two little white marks on the rail at the ceiling.  One is the place for one crew member to hang the foot end of his cot (hammock) and the other is where the next person over puts the head end of his.  Sometimes people could be so crammed in they only had fifteen inches across to sleep.  I'm 4 foot 10 and my shoulders are about 15 or 16 inches across when I lay on my back.  Talk about living in a sardine can.

That's a LONG Way Up

One last shot of the ropes, sails and rigging.  That's a LONG way up.  These days people climbing up to fix things wear a harness, but back in the day they didn't.  Think about climbing up to fix that top sail while that boat is out at sea.  I'm not usually someone who's afraid of heights, but I'm not sure I'd be so quick to volunteer for that duty!

Growing Up Pierside

And for something totally random... a juvenile male red-winged blackbird who's starting to go from brown to black and get his red shoulder patches in.  He was eating popcorn tossed to him by a couple of kids and he's got crumbs on his beak.  :)







Okay!  That's it for the ships.  Next?  Fireworks. :)

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 5 (Showing You the Ropes)

Okay, so I have this post and one more about the ships themselves and then one or two posts of the fireworks I took on the north side of the Pier. Overall, I took roughly 15 gigs of pictures.  Which, according to some quick math, turned out to be about 1200 pictures.  Now, this isn't *wholly* accurate because when I'm shooting in Av or Tv I'm getting both RAW and .JPG files, so when I add the number of files in the folders, I get 1200 but some of them are duplicates.  But lets say that even half are original images.  That's 600 pictures.  For those of us who are old enough to remember when film was our only option, can you imagine the cost of shooting and developing 600 shots for one day?  I really do believe that digital photography is the best invention of the last 100 years (regular photography being invented in the 100 years before that).  Not to mention the control you get from one shot to the next. When I was above decks I could shoot in ISOs of 100 and 200.  When I went below and it got quite dark, I pushed a button and was in 800.  Not an option when you're shooting with film.

So anyway... on with the show.  I was struck by the ubiquitousness of rope on a ship.  It's *everywhere*, and there's tons and tons of it and there are so many different kinds.  I think that anyone who doesn't work a Tall Ship for a living thinks of rope as a general 'one size fits all' thing. 

Not so much with that...

Lake Michigan through the Ropes

Thick black ropes hold up the ladder, thinner black ropes are the rungs.  Gray ropes cross and hang from the ladder.

All the Rope in the World

This was downstairs on the Bounty - yes the one used to film "Mutiny on the Bounty" back in the sixties.  Again, I was struck by all the different kinds and colors of ropes.

So Where Does This Rope Go?

I am honestly amazed that any one person can learn what all these different halyards do.  That they can unknot the one right rope to whatever job it is they need to do and fasten it off again when they've got where they want it, seems a little superhuman to me.

View Through the Ship

There's even rope on the outside.  I was shooting through an oar port (Can you imagine rowing a ship with a mast like the one in the shot above?) and there was a rope going across it. 

Ropes: Coiled and Bundled

Thick and thin ropes coiled and ready for use. 

Bounty's Bell

Even when there weren't ropes right in the shot, there were rope shadows, like these on both the bell and the housing.  (And technically there's ropes in the shot too... holding up the bell.)









Okay, I have one more post about things I found pretty interesting about the ships and shipboard life, then the fireworks and I'll finally have gotten done with this one outing. (Aren't you glad I didn't subject you to even half of those 600 images? :)

Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 4 (The Red Witch)

So this was kind of ridiculous and I knew that going in.  Let's think about this:  it's *night* and the ship is *moving* and I want to take pictures.  But I gave it a shot, mostly to see how ridiculous it would end up being.

The Red Witch at Sunset

This is the Red Witch.  I took this shot from the Windy, and it's pretty much the only good shot of or from the ship, since there was still, you know, light.

This ship was much smaller than the Windy and I spent most of my time up on the top of the cabin, under the boom.  (I kept ending up under the boom... I think because a.) I'm short and I could and b.) it was the highest place to sit.

But like I said, it was night and I tried to shoot anyway.

Abstract Chicago

This is what happens when I tried to shoot Chicago.  A fast shutter got me absolutely nothing.  A slow shutter (in this case slow = .8 seconds) got this.  It's interesting in a very Picasso sort of way.

Waiting for the Nightboat

I got a few shots with the flash.  Most of them.. not so great because even with the flash (I only have my built-in) my camera still ran a long
 shutter.  So here's a kind of creepy shot of the sail.






Before I left on the Witch, I shot the fireworks on the north side of the pier.  And when you're on the ground, you can do it properly (I'll have those shots later).  On a tripod, 3-second shutter, 800 ISO, the whole nine yards.  You have no idea how much NONE of that works on a boat.  But I tried a few things and played anyway...

Heart in Motion

 This was a .5 second exposure with an f-stop of 3.5.  I seriously had no idea I could go down to a 3.5 with my kit.  Anyway, in just the half second, you can see how the boat jerked down and then back up.  But the heart shape is still cute.

Fireworks: Sun and Star

This isn't bad for a .8 second exposure on a moving ship.  What I find really cool about this one is that the yellow disk at the top was clearly moving slower than the bright blue in the middle.  You can see the ship's movement in the yellow one but the trails of the blue one went fast enough to be straight.

Shake, Rattle and Boom

Another .8 second exposure.  Look how different this came out.  It's almost like light painting with a long exposure.

Directing Traffic on Lake Michigan

This was done faster - a 1/8 exposure as you can tell by the little dots at the top.  The best thing about this shot, IMHO, is the 'traffic light' in the water.

Red Sky at Night, Sailor's Delight

Same exposure, similar effect on the water, different colors.

Eye Heart Chicago

Okay, I admit, I like this one because of the shapes in the sky.  The heart is obvious, but the left hand one seems to be a giant eye in the sky looking down on the shells being launched.

Once we got out there, I noticed I could see something I hadn't seen from Chicago... I don't think ever.  Stars.  Chicago is just too bright, even on the clearest nights.  I asked how far out we were and the crewman said about two miles.

The moon was gorgeous and there was this intensely bright light next to it.  We happened to have astronomer on board who told us it was Jupiter.

Not Your Typical Journey  Across the Night Sky

Couldn't shoot them though.  Obviously the bright scribble is the moon.  The lighter scribble, right of the moon, is Jupiter.  Again with the Picasso-esque art. :)  This bizarreness brought to you by a ten second exposure on a ship (obviously) moving from right to left..








Okay, on to the ships that were there for boarding (but didn't sail) in the next set of posts.