Category: Natural World

being… with bees… and flies…

Raghu Rai suggested, “A photograph has picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever.” I’m not sure about the forever part. Yet an un-retouched photograph does seem to make a note of tiny factual fragments clipped out of the time and space continuum. But what do these facts mean? What was this large bee doing to or with the little bee? This was the third day that I witnessed this behavior. I’m not sure if they were the same two bees. Are they couple? Just friends? Mortal enemies? Working together on the job? I have no idea – all I have is these few “facts.”
Well what do you know? Or more correctly what do I know? Not much apparently. This large fellow is not a “Bumble Bee” but ’tis a “Robber Fly.” Live and learn on the “internet.” Oh – and only the poor little one is actually a “bee.”

(click photograph for larger view)


Leica R8/DMR, 100 mm Apo Macro Elmarit with 2 X Apo Extender

Games…

(click photograph for larger view)

Let the game (no rules) begin…

Last week Sophia and I went shopping for her 8th birthday gifts.
We stopped for lunch and played a few rounds of the newly acquired Pass the Pigs game.
Here we see Sophia checking the rules as to how to score her recent roll of the pigs.

Turns out that the roll scored as a “lose your points and lose your turn.”

Leica M8, 28 mm Summicron Asph

Goodwill Samurai

The three youngsters radiated excitement when I pulled into the parking lot of the Goodwill store in Grafton, Wisconsin. As I walked towards them each was expressing their palpable pleasure and disbelief to one another – over the acquisition of a samurai sword. I asked them the price. “$40.” The owner, the fellow with both hands on his new sword replied. All three wanted their hands on it. Boys and their swords.

(click photograph for larger view)

Leica M8, 28 mm Summicron Asph