Michael Hampson Photography

Not a lot going on

Michael — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:14:22 +0000

I haven’t done much photo work lately; no bugs and a new day job haven’t left much opportunity. However, I did a little write-up of a new watch I bought myself as a birthday present, which you can find on my side-blog Flying Seamonsters. Things I learned shooting for that post: it is not easier to just keep trying to photograph your own wrist than it is to just rig up the tethered shooting setup.

Carolyn Wright DMCA’d

Michael — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:53:38 +0000

I’m very pro-creator’s rights, but copyright law in the US is amazingly broken. Case in point: due to a single DMCA takedown notice, photographer Carolyn Wright’s entire website vividwildlife.com was just shut down by Go Daddy.

You might recognize Carolyn Wright’s name from her other website: photoattorney.com, i.e., the best resource on the internet for photographers looking to understand copyright law. She’s not only a professional photographer, but a practicing lawyer who specializes in the legal needs of photographers. I’m gonna go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt here. Details on the takedown are on the site.

Yes, absolutely content creators need legal tools to defend their content. And of course there have been cases of wanna-be photographers who steal the work of others to pad out their website and stock agency portfolios — we need a sane copyright enforcement policy in the US, that’s not in question. But imagine being able to send a single letter to a property owner claiming that you believe one of the businesses they lease space to is infringing on your copyright and expecting them to shut down every one of that business’s storefronts until they’ve proved you wrong, in court if necessary. The DMCA absolutely requires an ISP, who is in effect a digital landlord, to do exactly that. There are smart, sane ways to manage copyright and fair use on the internet: the DMCA’s takedown provisions do not provide them.

Anyway, best of luck to whoever’s behind that DMCA request. I suspect it’s not going to get very far.

Spur-throated grasshopper

Michael — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:33:17 +0000

A spur-throated grasshopper clings to a flower stem.

Lens Chess

Michael — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:00:30 +0000

This is rather awesome:

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/07/shall-we-play-a-game

New bee photographs

Michael — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:26:50 +0000

Here are a few new photos from the last week or two — got a handful of interesting bees.

A green metallic bee (Agapostemon virescens) arcs her back to get at a cornflower’s pollen.

Nomada I think, a cuckoo bee. The name comes from their habit of laying their eggs in other bees’ nests. These are always really striking bees to look at: this one is blood red, with gargoyle-like sculpturing along the thorax. Very neat.

Very similar composition and posture as the Agapostemon above — but I both images. This is Halictus, another of the halictid sweat bees, and it’s the first time I got a clear-enough shot of one to be confident of the ID.

Cerceris, a parasitic wasp that generally preys on beetles. One of the other species in this genus is used as biocontrol, to help keep down the population of the a very destructive invasive beetle called the emerald ash borer.

Megachile, a leaf-cutter bee. They use leaf clippings to build their nests. I’ve never found leaf-cutters before this summer, but I’m suddenly seeing more of them than any other bee. Most likely this is because I’m shooting in some new locations lately. Same flower as the cuckoo bee above; ugly yellow for a photo, but the bees love them.

Oriental beetle

Michael — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:07:12 +0000

Anomala orientalis, the oriental beetle, is an invasive, destructive pest species in the US; but it’s handsome at least. Interestingly, Anomala is apparently one of the largest genera of animals — but the name means “anomalous”. Makes you wonder how anomalous they can really be.

Bee-like robber fly

Michael — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:41:39 +0000

I couldn’t find my macro diffuser when I went out to shoot this morning, and since I was trying to get out the door before some rain moved in, I just configured my bracket so the bare flash head was as close to the focal point as possible. This put it a few inches in front of the lens, so it probably had an apparent size about half again as large as in the position I normally use it. I was actually pretty impressed with the results. It could be that it’s just close enough to work well when it’s configured like this, though I was also shooting bugs in flowers for the most part, which might well have been acting as little miniature reflectors. We’ll see; it was definitely convenient to shoot this way, with no diffuser to keep from slipping after every shot.

This is one of the images I got, of a bee-like robber fly (Laphria, maybe thoracica?) who kept turning to watch me intently as I was shooting. It’s a perfect example of a bee-mimic, like so many flies: I thought I was shooting a bumblebee until I got a closer look at the head. The mimicry is defensive for many of them, especially the ones that look like yellowjackets. The robber flies are predators though, and I’d bet that their appearance lets them get close enough to their prey to catch and kill them. Notice the tubular mouth, underneath the moustache-like bristles? They stab with that. And though it’s not apparent in this image, their legs are covered with spines that keep their prey from escaping. Some of the larger robber flies can have a painful bite, and have been known to eat hummingbirds. Fun little flies.

Toxomerus marginatus

Michael — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:12:26 +0000

A female hoverfly (Toxomerus marginatus) pauses on the tip of a blade of grass.

Other Bees

Michael — Sun, 08 May 2011 03:56:19 +0000

A male carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica) is dusted with pollen as he probes a flower for nectar. Unlike the females, he’s not collecting any pollen for food, but the dusting you see across the head and legs will pollinate other flowers he visits. You can tell it’s a male by the large eyes and the yellow color to the face.

You see these guys guarding their own little plot of air space from other bees, and they’ll commonly come buzzing over to check you out if you come too close, but they’re totally harmless as long as you’re not another carpenter bee. It can be intimidating if you don’t know this, of course, because these are big, heavy bees around an inch long.

Dolerus sawflies

Michael — Sun, 01 May 2011 02:24:42 +0000

A sawfly (Dolerus) on a forsythia branch. Both appear very early each spring.