Heat, Spiders, & Lenbabies

I just heard a weather forecast that the heat will be with us for the month of August. The weeds in the back yard love it and the flowers are struggling along (there are even a few grape tomato plants – volunteers -- from where I throw out the old tomatoes for the chipmunk). There is a "volunteer" morning glory spreading over a chair, wind chime, and post. It is a beautiful blue and seems completely unaffected by the heat and lack of rain. The hummingbirds are draining the feeder in record time this week. This morning I made a new batch of nectar – I even cooled it slightly with a few ice cubes before filling the feeder. As soon as I hung it up – it was surrounded! You can make your own hummingbird nectar: use a ratio of 4 parts water to 1 part sugar. I heat my water in the microwave and then stir in the sugar. I make sure I don't heat so much water that the feeder would be filled – I like to add some cooler water to it and ice cubes to cool it down prior to filling the feeder. Some people add red food coloring – I don't. My feeder has a lot of red on it so there is no need to color the nectar.

My photo project this week will be weeds, spiders, and the morning glory. I love the way it made its way around the legs of a chair and through the wrought iron design of the chair back. The leaves are an interesting shape and, as I said, the blue color is beautiful. The best part of the morning glory – it is in bloom early in the day – the cooler time! When I was out watering this morning I noticed quite a few spiders among the weeds. It can be challenging to get a good shot of a spider with a good background. Many times insect shots are not what they could be because of the background. Remember a shallow depth of field will blur the background to make it less distracting.

Speaking of blurring the photo and keeping your subject sharp – there is a cool product out there for the SLR user called Lensbabies. The Lensbaby is what is called a selective focus lens – the sweet spot (sharp focus) can be moved around by bending the lens around. You can check them out at www.lensbabies.com.