Ladybug Shadow on Rust
The Red Barn Market is a grocery store on West Saanich Road just north of Victoria. As shown on the satellite images in the summer it sits between the road and a nice green agricultural field. However, at this time of the year it is on the shore of a small shallow lake with many waterfowl and numerous small birds in the bushes around the edges.
I had a bit more than an hour to kill in this area so thought to see if the Trumpeter swans were around and close enough to photograph. They were around, though not in ready reach for my longest lens (200mm). Eventually I turned my lenses on the vegetation around a rusty steel tank sitting next to the lake behind the market. It forms a terrific backdrop, and is also a pretty good hide in certain directions, not to mention cutting the cool breeze. That is what I will show today – things in the immediate vicinity of this tank. Sometime I will post some of my swan pictures, but I am no bird photographer, nor am I equipped for it, so don’t hold your breath for anything special.
There was some brighter overcast light for a few minutes and the shadow of a small tree was perfectly placed on the tank, though very faint. In that tree was a lady bug, tucked in behind a twig and looking either dead or dormant. So the first photo contains the a shadow of a lady bug, somewhere. Around the tank is a tangle of blackberry, grasses, Queen Ann Lace, alder and other shrubs. Some have seed heads slowly decaying on their stalks, others have buds ready for spring. The blackberry against the shelter of the tank still has green leaves.
I thought I would try out a gallery format in this post for a change, especially as there are lots of images and I am ready for bed and not wanting to whittle the list down to just the ones I like the very best. I hope this format works for you, though I don’t think I will make a habit of it. Click on any of the images to launch the viewer for them all. If you want to see an image larger and with the (not very informative) caption and a comment box, then click on the “permalink” text under the images, visible once you have launched the viewer
Photos taken at ISO 640 with SMC Takumar m42 200m/f4 various shutter speeds with f-stops ranging from f8 to f4 – these are most of the first half of the gallery.
Photos taken at ISO 400 with SMC Takumar m42 100mm/f4 macro various shutter speeds with f-stops ranging from f8 to f4 – these are most of the second half fo the gallery.
For me the best news from this outing was that I discovered how to set up my camera so that I get much more satisfactory results with the 200mm lens. I had begun to think it was an optical or mechanical fault in the lens (in fact I had thought that ever since I bought the lens 30+ years ago), but as usual, it turned out to be my own error.
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burnt embers 
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I feel so peaceful after going through these images. A beautiful series.
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Wow Karen, that is quite the compliment. Thank you.
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This is a very nice series. Looks like you had a prolific day of shooting. I like the gallery format as well. It presents a nice “slide show”.
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Hi Ken. The gallery format works well and looks good. One thing which is different – it means that people click on the photos a lot more and my viewing rate is nearly triple the norm! But, the good thing about that is not the numbers since they don’t mean too much anyway, but being able to gauge which shots people are most interested in seeing in a larger format. Kind of like having involuntary voting buttons. Something to be learned from which photos people like more than others (the top 4 are the opening picture which might only reflect the logical starting place, two lady bug pictures and the store sign).
As to prolific – I took quite a few shots, but if it were not for the gallery I would not have thrown such a high proportion into the arena for all to see – some of them a bit marginal quality.
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Nice shots. And I got a kick out of the fact that my post today involves a ladybug, too!
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Hi Danita – I see those coincidences from time to time. I wonder what it suggests about shared cultural values, shared ways of viewing, similar environments, and so on. It happens often enough with different people to make me wonder whether we are all sharing a few ideas and circulating them in a large pool of photos. On the other hand, there is nothing usual about your ladybug shot which worked out very well, even if not totally intended.
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Beautiful images. I especially like the deep color of the rust.
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Hi Ryan – it was quite thoroughly distracted me from my original intent to take pictures of swans. Shows where my natural inclinations lie I think.
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Wow….spectacular photos! I am a huge fan of that shade of red/rust….and to have that as a background is phenomenal. It shows off everything else perfectly. I also love the red buds. You have quite a talent with the camera. I’m glad you came to my blog, so I was able to meet you. I will be back!
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Hi Judy – welcome to my blog, its a pleasure to have you visiting. And thanks for your great comments 🙂
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This is a very nice photographic essay showing beginnings of spring, but I’m still looking for the shadow of the bug. 😉
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Joseph, surely you can see it? Its there on the left. 🙂 It is like the beginnings of spring. Its been warm enough to fool some of the plants into getting ready. I hope they won’t be too badly surprised before spring does come along.
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The weathered red color in these images is really superb and ties together most of these images. It’s a very nice series.
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Hi Doug – thank you. I did contemplate using only the ones with that red colour but wanted a few context shots to go with the text.
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