From Smoke to Mist — Jon's Photoblog

Greetings! Last time I wrote we were in the middle of the longest dry spell in ages, the forests were on fire, and smoke filled the air. Then it all changed with 90mm of rain, the ground soaked it up like a sponge, leaves unfurled, wings spread, and everything tried to make up for lost time.

It’s a bit of a mixed bag as usual, a smidgen of this and a pinch o’ that. So let’s start with sex! 😀

These white moths (apparently, cabbage worms) were fluttering around a puddle as they often do at this time of year, when one of them really went nuts, flapping on the ground and arching its abdomen up. I thought it was injured. Then three others started dancing around it, trying to dive in and grapple. I caught this little action scene as one danced closer, and if you look closely, the moth on the ground has some kind of opening in its abdomen:

Afterwards they headed for a nearby goldenrod, no doubt to refresh themselves with some nectar:

There were still a few smokey days after the rain, as the fires began to subside, which made for some great subtle morning light on these refreshed young oaks showing the greenest green the summer had seen:

When I first saw the scene above, I was sure I wanted it in black and white, because what drew me to the scene was the feathery nature of the light, and the challenge of isolating the three young oaks. It’s a very chaotic scene, and the goal is to remove what is distracting, and (hopefully) make it clear to the viewer what the subject is. Colour-wise the green looks pretty nice, but I’m curious what you might think of this:

The challenge is similar with the next one:

This one was especially difficult, because the balance of the elements in it are crucial, but the wind kept gusting, moving everything around. The hope is that the top blossom is the clear subject, and the cattails provide a suitable “anchor”, and a counterbalance of weight and tone.

The next three were a bit simpler to frame:

The rock brings me out to the lakes, where some friends and their kids and I did a short canoe camping trip. The first day was hot, the second rainy, and the third quite cool. I hoped that the long and intense summer heat in the lakes would create a lot of mist when it finally cooled off, and I was grateful to find out I was not wrong. This scene greeted me as I crawled out of my tent before dawn:

It’s a scene I have shot many times before, and hoping for something new I went for a misty morning walk. I found a much higher vantage point, when the lake was still in shadow, while the sun was painting the tops of the clouds:

Finally the sun crept over the trees and began to burn the mist away:

I was taking the above picture while crouching on a bed of moss under some small jack pines, when I saw movement. A chipmunk let his curiosity get the better of him, and he actually sat still for long enough to get this shot:

I didn’t have time to change lenses or do much special, and the light was still pale, so I had to shoot at 1/15th of a second. That’s an eternity to a chipmunk, and most of the shots are a bit blurry, but thankfully the best looking shot was also the cleanest, so I really lucked out.

Then it was time to head back to camp and one last shot before the mist burned away completely: