p a t c h r i s

I have a neighbour who loves gardening. She's got pots and pots of all sorts of plants and she spends time at least twice a day trimming, pruning, watering, fertilizing and caring for her plants in the early morning and evening. For me, I have a patch of grass with some leafy greens near a wall plus a tiny pot of mint plant that's neither growing or dying. It's odd that the grass is a bit spongy, but that seems to be the way it grows. After some time taking pictures in RAW, I think I'll switch to Fine and Small for now, unless it's a special occasion or shot. Even loading the RAW images are taking too long. So, it's iPhoto for now for easy viewing and management of images. It's been said (and I agree) that perhaps blogspot is not the best place to post your pictures as you can't really see close-up details unless you click on the images for the actual size. That's just one click too many.

Days after I used a grass shear to trim this nest off, the stinging bugs (no, they haven't stung me yet) are back at it again at the same site. This time there were four of them and they didn't seem as docile as the other two I shot earlier. Oddly I had been having less and less space available on my 2Gb card although I deleted all the images. I figure it's got something to do with the Apple/Microsoft Fat16 file formatting and I used Disk Utility to wipe the card clean. That was After. However, before that, all I could muster was a Large image setting for Jpeg on the camera in Program mode with ISO800 instead of RAW. I was a little apprehensive about going near the insects as they might have gotten agitated and give me a sting or two. The nest is stuck on a sort of old phone cable and the breeze gives it a little sway from time to time, so that doesn't really help. Makes me hanker for a SAL75300, so I've got to restrain myself. Maybe if there's a good sale going...

If you're not into insects, then the sight of bees, wasps or hornets building a nest in the vicinity of your home might send a chill down your spine. I had to go close in order to take this shot, with the sting of the lower wasp rather visible. I particularly like the detail on the yellow band on the bug. Could have done better with a RAW shot and perhaps a SAL75300, but the latter translates into more investments to this very new Sony A330 dSLR which has been fantastic so far. Needless to say our two friends here were evicted shortly thereafter.