This time, Anne challenges us to go local. Everyone takes photos while traveling or on special occasions like parties, graduation for school or university, weddings, birthdays, and so on. But, have you ever tried taking photos where you live? You know, I’m primarily in nature photography. But I live in a quiet urban region. Although, I living at the edge of the Ruhr area, you can’t really step out and be in the nature. Even the forests are fields where trees are planted to harvest wood.
I know, some people grab their camera an go into the city for taking photographs. They are either in architecture or in street photography. For me, non of these topics is really interesting although I do it sometimes.
Instead, I’m planning visits to natural places in my greater region. Quite often these are trips to nature protected areas with significant bodies of water to photograph birds. During the last two years, I also captured some butterflies and dragonflies as well as blossoms in our garden, And I hope, this year the monthly photographers roundtables will start again.
So, for today, I assembled a small collection of images taken in our garden dring the last years. Most of the images are unpublished. I’m extremely proud of the hummingbird hawk-moth having visited two times our garden and me being able to get a few very nice images of this really fascinating and extraordinary insect.
As the other kinds of wildlife photography, this can also be quiet time consuming. Be prepared and wait patiently for your subject coming in the right position. Although this collection might look amazing, I’m not one of these guys going out in the wild meadows to search for and photograph insects. I really admire those people bringing back home those fantastic photos of insects, but for me the necessary effort it too high. So, I only have an open eye and capture what’s around me. I can be patient to get my shot but I’m not patient enough to do so for hours.
You can enlarge the images by clicking on one of them and use the cursor keys to jumpe from one image to the next. That way you can also see the descriptions for the images. Have fun!
I hope, you enjoyed my little insect gallery. I know, not everyone loves them and I have to admit, some insects really look strange and alien like. Nevertheless, these tiny creatures also have their important role to play her on earth. They help feeding us! And each of them is worth the effort to protect them.
Take care!
MyBlog - solaner 
Wonderful!
Thanks, Sofia 😊
You’re welcome.
😊
Wow… the details are amazing! These insects are difficult to capture. I love every single of these images.
Thank you so much, Amy. 😊 You need some patience to get them.
Wow Andre, these are incredible. Surely you have a macro lens to have caught such detail. One is more beautiful than the next!
Thank you so much, Tina. Yes, I have a 100mm macro lens, but many of the images are taken with one of my long tele-photo lenses at 400 or 600mm to keep the distance i.e. to not disturb them or to cover the distance the water forced my to keep. For cutting down the minimum distance of the lens you can use extension tubes, in case your subject would be too small when having to keep distance. In addition, the long focal length helps isolating the subject from the background.
The bees and the bug are taken with the macro lens as well as some of the butterflies. The moth and the dragonflies were taken with the tele-photo lenses as well as the other butterflies.
I used to use extension tubes just for the fun of it but now I just use a long lens. Never invested in a macro lens altho the Lens-Baby lineup looks very interesting
Although I don’t use my macro on a regular basis, but I won’t miss it
Gorgeous and exactly my sort of local! 🥰
😁😁😁 thanks, Janet 😊
Wonderful insect collection, I enjoyed it very much !
Thank you so much 😊
Wonderful shots from your garden. I specially love that photo of the shadow of the damselfly on the leaf.
😁 thanks
Wowww. Outstanding!
Thanks, John 😊
Beautiful macros of your local vistas Andre! Thanks for participating.
You’re welcome 😊
Wow, Andre. Just stunning! What a beautiful gallery! So sharp and clear and the details are amazing.
thank you so much, Patti. 😊
LOVE these, Andre – wonderful macros! And I too have been visited by the hummingbird hawk-moth in my garden, but only once. And your photo is far better than mine. Wonderful post!
Thank you so much, Ann-Christine. This moth is really amazing, isn’t it? A butterfly traveling so far north where it can’t breed only for seeing the world 😮. Even here in my region they are rarely to be found.
First time I saw it I just could not believe it was real – or what it was! I remember I was thinking of a hummingbird – I had never seen one in real life!
My first encounter was also unexpected. I was standing in our living room, when I noticed a quite huge flying subject hovering between the flow blossoms about 5 meters away. I run upstairs to fetch my camera and fortunately I got one shot before it vanished. I was actually sharp 😊 and gave me the opportunity to find out who visited our garden. I’ve never seen such an animal before and even didn’t hear about it. While waiting outside with my camera, it appears again a few minutes later and I got a few more shots. About 2 weeks later we were visited for the third time. Unfortunately, it never happened again since then.
We had a visit only once. My photo of this handsome creature is from somewhere in Switzerland!
Ah, ok. When doing my research, I got to know, they are native to the Mediterranean area, but travel up to the Scandinan countries, 3,000 km north. But they are unable to couple away from their original homes. So these long distance traveling individuals remove themselves from their genetic pool 😮🙁
🙁😥