The Bees of the Wild Lupins - Part 3

One of the things I love about my macro lens is that it shows me things that I would not usually see. I knew bees landed on flowers, and collected pollen, and I never thought twice how it would do that on a Lupin Flower until I saw it through my Macro Lens. Let me show you want I learnt!

Firstly, The Lupin flower head is made up of lots of pods.  These pods are actually closed - imagine a petal in a shape of an oblong bubble. The stamen is inside each pod. The bee flies to the pod..

And then proceeds to start opening the pod

This could take a bit of time depending if its been opened or not before..

 He opens the pod quite wide...

I thought he'd get into the pod, but no, he then...

pulls the stamen out and collects the honey.  Note that this particularly bee is so laden down with pollen, that when he tries to fly he simply drops in a crash...

And leaves pollen dripping off the pod! 

I did catch him again doing another pod - never gave up and those pollen sacs must be heavy.

Here's another one that isn't laden down with pollen... He alights on the pod which is closed...

Opens it up to expose the stamen.

Exposes everything so he can access it... 

then pulls himself up to collect the pollen...

Pretty amazing isn't it? It's also nice to know that honey bees are still out in force in the wild. We don't want anything happening to our bees as they do one of natures most important jobs, pollinating plants to ensure we can eat.

The Wild Lupins of Lindis Pass - Part 2

In the previous blog, I lamented how I could not find any information about the Historic Red Bridge.  Fortunately a friend of mine, Dave Gibb, has far superior googling skills than I, and managed to find a snippet of information about the bridge...

The Luggate 'Grandview Bridge' is a local icon listed highly in the Queenstown Lakes District Council's Historic Register. It was opened on October 28, 1915, and has been described as "one of the most attractively proportioned steel truss road bridges in the country." It is 103.7 metres long, and features a 61 metre Baltimore through truss, another 30.5m truss and a 12.2m rolled steel joist end span.

I bow to Dave's Superior Googling!  It might be that he's a South Islander and knew more than to just google 'Red Bridge near Hawea'.  I believe he actually put in the word Luggate, which I would never have known. I guess I'm  not a true mainlander yet, but I do believe I'm getting there!

Anyway, our next stop was the Lupin field at Bridge 2360 on the Lindis Pass.  We had seen it on our way down, and we memorised the bridge, with the intention to spend an hour photographing in this field.  We arrived about ten, knowing that this was about the right time or else everything would have been in shade.  This is view that you can see from the road - you can see in the distance the amount of Lupins growing there...  Like a river of them..

We would have loved to contact the farmer, but there was no farmhouse anywhere to be seen and it's very remote, so without further ado, we climbed the gate.  No easy task with a broken ankle, believe me!  But the Lupins beckoned and how could I resist?  That corally lump of stone on the other side of the gate is a lump of salt for the cattle. I made up that word 'corally' but it seems to fit well! They should let me write the next dictionary!  I'm always making words up!

But I digress. A short walk down that lane, past the gate, and this is what greeted us.  Looking south...

And looking north...

Just a mass of colour everywhere in various shades of blues, purples, pinks and whites. It was heaen. Lupins must be pretty hardy as they had even taken hold in the middle of the river. The river was elevated though because of the rain.

Love those Willow trees, even if they are a noxious weed here in New Zealand, they still are very attractive. The Lupins quite tall as well, which made it fun to photograph.

The sun came out briefly with a touch of mottled blue sky, which was nice after all the rain.

Of course we had to do the posing shots as well. Here's Emily smelling the Lupins. Not sure if there's a scent or not, I wasn't overwhelmed by scent while we were there, so perhaps not. I was too busy using the camera anyway.

 Liz amongst the flowers with her Tripod.

And Liz found a hill to get some elevated shots. I wasn't able to get up there because of.... you guess it - the damn foot!

 Emily and I hiding in the flowers..

After taking photos for a couple of hours, it was getting hot, so I headed to the last willow tree and found this. I managed to climb up onto that stump, no mean feat with one ankle broken! Tripods come in very handy - walking sticks, climbing sticks, poking sticks!

I took nearly 1000 images in this area. A lot in a period of the two hours we were there, but most of them were macro shots on continual burst mode, of all the bees collecting pollen from the Lupins. These shots are incredible and I'm amazed at what I saw through the macro lens. But I'll save that to Part 3.

I recently downloaded Topaz Labs and am enjoying playing with the images in that program. This is one shot I love, which I then overlaid it with the original to get the slight difference.  Which one do you like best?  I prefer the top, but that's just me!

This is a tiny tiny aphid on one of the Lupins, I was actually photographing a small droplet of water, bigger than this insect, and saw this pale yellow thing, put my glasses on and then I could just see him. I took a couple of photos not expecting them to turn out, so was pleasantly surprised to get such detail on such a small insect.

Keep a lookout for the Lupin Bees blogpost, coming soon!

The Wild Lupins of Lindis Pass - Part 1

Day Five of our South Island trip dawned a bit brighter, albeit a bit cold.  The evening before, it had cleared up a bit and we had headed to Lake Hawea to take some photos of the sunset, which never appeared! My good foot rolled on a stone and I promptly collapsed in a heap on the ground. I landed in a funny way and hurt my bad foot again. It wasn't until we got back to the lake house that I realised I had hurt it pretty badly.  It was very very painful and if anyone touched it you just about had to peel me off the ceiling.

So on the morning of Day 5, I thought perhaps I should stay at the lake house and rest up rather than be on it. Liz and Emily wouldn't hear of it and they set me up in the back of a van with an elevated foot rest. I swore I would only get out of the van if there was something super interesting to photograph.

Our first stop of the day was the Old Red Bridge on Kane Road.  I have been told this is a very historic bridge, but I can find absolutely NOTHING about it, anywhere!  So.  All I can tell you is - it's red.  It spans a river.  It's old, and it's historic.  You don't want to know anything else do you?

I played around with the tobacco filter to get a couple of surreal apocalyspe shots...

Liz and Emily were able to walk down the hill to get the underneath shots, but I had to stay up on top as there was no way my foot would let me negotiate the gravel road. Emily kindly drove me down in the van a few minutes later.

After a few shots of the bridge, I started taking a look at the surroundings.  A beautiful glade of poplar trees all in their spring growth...

And over the river, the poplars lined that bank as well.  They're my favourite trees.  Would love to come back in Autumn to get the beautiful golden yellow colours.

I then found a puddle from the rain the day before. And caught the reflection in the bridge.

I love reflections in puddles - could photograph them all day!

We then headed towards the Lindis Pass, our destination was Bridge 2360 where we had seen the most amazing 'river of lupins' on the way down.  I will do that in a new blogpost though, because otherwise this one will be too long and I would hate to bore you all.

Footnote: When I got home to Blenheim, I had my foot x-rayed and it was found to be broken. The foot has been so painful in the last 3 years, that I really didn't notice too much of an increase of pain, so I walked around on it for 10 days without knowing.  Great footnote isn't it?

Blipfoto - Blipping Mad!

I've been really busy lately - summer is here so I'm outdoors more, my foot is finally without pain - the first time in three years, so I'm making up for lost time and not sitting in front of the computer as much as I have in the past. I've also been catching up with friends, and doing some daily photography, so this blog has been neglected. Sorry about that - I'll try and make it up to you in the next few days. 

One of the things I have been doing is Blipfoto. While  was in Wanaka, we met up with a fellow photographer who couldn't speak highly enough about the site. He was that excited about it that I took a look at it when I got home and I could see the benefits in it immediately.

So, tentatively I joined, and within a week I hooked. And I'm now blipping mad!

Blipfoto is a 365 project. You upload one photo a day, like a diary. Once uploaded, you give your photo a title, a bit of a blurb (a journal), and some tags, then publish it.You can even give it a location so people can see where you have taken the photo - but this is optional.

You have to take the image on the day you upload it - the site looks at the EXIF data and takes the date from there. You can backblip, but I have decided just to blip from the day I started.

I've now blipped for 40 days. I started on the 13th December. When my mother came to visit, I told her I had to do a photo a day, and she was very patient while I found something to photograph and get it onto my computer, and upload it. Even though as a non-photographer she must be wondering why.

Non photographers always find me amusing. While away on the boat after Christmas, I took a photo of a fly. The non-photographer said 'Why are you taking a photo of a fly?' I thought about it. Do I explain the hidden world of macro, the amazing eyes, the hair on his body, the intricate wings, the fact they they can be rather beautiful? No, all that would be wasted. My answer was simply - 'Because I can!!"

But I digress. In the 40 days I've been blipping, my photography has been extended. I can honestly say, I'm a better photographer than I was 40 days ago. I've learnt new techniques, patience, and different things in photoshop. I believe it can only improve.

The reason is that I'm taking more time when it comes to the photo. I am thinking and planning in advance, where I'm going, what I'm going to shoot and the way I will shoot it. Prior to blipping it would be random and just in the moment, which is good too, but often you don't take things on board as well, than if it is planned in advance.

The other good thing about Blipfoto, is that there is a huge community of other 'Blippers', and a whole new volcabulary to learn. When you publish your first photo, people welcome you to blip. Such a friendly group. Then they subscribe to your blip journal and make comments every day. Then you find out that they don't live too far away and there's talk of Blipmeets. Then there's the blip birthdays.  After 10 blips you have a blipbirthday and you're no longer a novice. Then there's 50, 70, 100, 200, 365, 500, 1000 and so on. Then you get conblipulation comments

So you meet people, you laugh, and you're having fun, AND your photography improves daily.

What can be better than that?

The other great thing about Blipfoto, is that you don't need to have a fancy pants camera. Androids and iPhones have blipfoto apps, and you can take the images and upload direct from your phone.You blip your day, what you're doing. It may be boring, or it may be interesting but that's just life in general

If you do read this and decide to join and start blipping. You can find me here. Made you you let me know you've joined and that  you read about it in my blog, and I'll add  you to my subsciptions and follow your journey.

I hope you get as much enjoyment out of it as I do.  Any questions? Just ask!

My fellow nerd very good friend Bron loved the Travel WordArt I did for my daughter, so I suggested she give me a list of places she has been to and I'd make some up for her too. She asked me if I could do favourite composers instead, so I told her to list out her favourite composers then rank them out of 7, where 7 she loves the to bits, and 1, she still loves them but not as much as the sevens, and anything in between. 

Giving the words a rank, allows them to be bigger words, the higher they're ranked, the bigger the words, and it is what makes the WordArt work.

So the following images are Bron's favourite composers.  When she picks out a favourite, I'll be uploading it to redbubble as a Tshirt, Hoodie and/or Poster for her.  

I know Bron likes Black and white so the first one reflects that...

But I threw in a couple of coloured ones just in case she wants to move away from White on Black.

But then I felt guilty for doing so so did another one...

I used one of my photographs of a sunset and overlaid it on the image to get the variations of colour on this one.  I can change the hue to any colour one would like..

If you have a list of words that mean something to you, favourite music, favourite equipment, bands, cameras, travel, books, Authors, people - anything at all, list them down, rank them as above, and email it to me, and I'll do some WordArt for you.

Travel Word Art

My daughter and I spent most of this morning planning my upcoming trip to Europe and looking at places we might want to see in the weekends.  Its going to be an interesting trip as I get to see three or four friends that I've met over the years and get to stay with them in their own country.  Anyway, this blog post is not about my trip, but rather the travelling my daughter has done since she left New Zealand in 2008. Travelling in Europe is easy and cheap if you're based there, it just seems expensive and hard to get to when you live in a place like New Zealand!

Towards the end of our planning, Anne pasted a list of countries she has visited in the last few years, so I found a Word Art page and created a number of Word Art creations.  When she's picked one or two that she likes, I'll make up a tshirt for her, or a poster, or both.

If anyone else would like one made up of your trips/travel, and if you send me the list, I can easily create some for you as well.

The particular wordart programme i use allows for a mixture of fonts and colours and a mixture of horizontal and vertical placement.

 I used a tool called Randomise to find these. Just hit the Random button until I found one I liked.

The only problem is that once you move on to the next random one, unless you save it right there and then, it's lost forever.

The other problem is that it changes so much, you can't ever seem to find the one you like again, not even if you try to do it manually.

You can play forever with this programme, it's so much fun, so if Anne doesn't like any of these ones, I can see I'll be playing a lot more :)

I'm planning to do one for me as well, but it will probably be just the travel I've done over my lifetime.  It still wouldn't be as many words as Anne's though!

Which means that people won't have to get in so close to read it!!

Love the concept of this and I think it looks great!