Diversity

It's been a little bit longer than I intended since I posted my last update, which is either because I've had too much to do lately, or because I'm a lazy bastard. Take your pick. However, I haven't been ignoring photography, and I've been doing a little more exploration around the county and trying to get a little outside my comfort zone. Still not as much photography as I'd like to be doing, but it's good to be out every once in a while anyway. 


On a happy note, I just found out that I've been invited to go back to San Miguel de Allende, the city in Mexico where I volunteered for a week in February. When I asked the organization what they had in mind in terms of internship projects, their first idea was something along the lines of "go to Mexico for four weeks and take pictures". My reaction was "okay... I think I can handle that." I'll probably try to do something more than photography, but it's still a really exciting prospect. 

Where I'll be spending the month of January

Anyway, here in this post I have a miscellany of pictures I've taken over the past couple of weeks, in more or less chronological order. No particular rhyme or reason, just some fun I've been having.

Late Afternoon in the cherry orchards

A really beautiful pond somewhere in the middle of nowhere

Taken in the same place as above picture

One interesting thing I discovered was the method for reversing lenses on the camera, which allows for extremely close up macro features. There's a very technical explanation for it, but basically what it is is putting the lens on backwards, which is something that really shouldn't work, but does. I guess it's the same principle as looking through the opposite end of binoculars, just completely insane. I have no idea how it works. Many people have some very complex setups for this sort of thing (as I recently found out), involving specially made lens mounts, and several lenses put together, such as in this tutorial, but mine is slightly more simple; I basically just hold the lens onto the camera with my hand. It's not exactly graceful, and it's rather difficult and unpredictable to use, but hey, it works. 

Like I said, you can get really close up.

Really close up. I didn't even notice that this spider was inside the flower until I took the picture. For scale's sake, the whole flower is about the size of my pinky fingernail.

Leafhoppers don't look quite as cute up close.

Pastoral afternoon

Before the harvest

Living in an agricultural region, it's not always easy to find nature-y stuff to take pictures of. But sometimes this sort of thing can look pretty, too.

I missed the sunset on Peterson Park by about 2 minutes.

That's all for now. I'll be trying to do more dedicated photo expeditions this week, now that I'm settling into my work schedule. It will be even harder to find deserted spots though, as tourist season is quickly heating up. Hope everyone enjoyed!


-Forest