(This post originally published in October 2010)
Yesterday morning was spent in my nearby Prairie Meadow. During the evening news the night before, the weather forecast was “colder temperatures with frost”. Now anytime I hear the words “frost” or “fog” or “snow”, I already have my arms full of camera gear and one foot out the door! I LOVE shooting in these conditions. Well, after hearing of frost, I decided to change my kayaking plans to a meadow walk … and I’m very glad I did! As I walked around the crisp meadow (temperature was ~38°F) frost was everywhere – on the flowers, on the prairie grasses, on spiders and spider webs. It looked like hell had frozen over! And then I ventured upon this lovely creature:
I found him on a dead woody plant in the meadow, as I walked it’s perimeter. It wasn’t hard spotting him … the sun had not yet risen above the nearby trees and he was in shade, giving him the appearance of being all white! Being covered in frost, he was motionless and I had complete freedom to move my tripod around, to any position I wanted. I even happened to bump the shrub a couple of times, but he remained totally still. Walking around to the other side, I set up the tripod and made some images facing him:
I then removed an extension tube from my fanny pack and placed it between my camera body and the macro lens. This allowed me to move in even closer, and focus extremely close to the frozen little guy (by the way, this next image is actual size and not cropped):
I was dancing with joy as I made these images. I had longed to grab some closeup images of a dragonfly covered with frost, and this was my first opportunity since getting back into macro photography last year. I then walked around the meadow, looking for other photo subjects in my winter wonderland. I did find several other subjects, but I’ll hold them for another post. When I had made a complete trip around the meadow, I came upon my frozen little warrior once again. He was now beginning to thaw and as I got closer, he managed to move around a bit, often moving his head from side to side, to watch my every move. But he still had some frost on part of his wings, so I cautiously set up my tripod and made a few more images, before leaving him to his sunbathing:
This ended my wonderful morning in the meadow. But I certainly will be back soon … as soon as Hell freezes over again!