About
This site is a place for me to share my pictures. I mostly shoot macro / bugs, and mostly I shoot them in my own yard. I also like to shoot birds and wildlife, as well as landscapes when I can get out for a hike.
The site's galleries are created from the tags on the photos. I have tags for the subjects (broadly: spiders, insects, birds, landscapes, wildlife, ... stuff like that) and the lens/camera I used to shoot with.
Equipment and Other Boring Stuff
My main rig is a Canon R6, which is a little dated at this point but still works fine for me.
For macro shots, I use the RF 100mm macro lens (tagged as "Macro" in the galleries), and almost always use a flash with a shoot-through diffuser.
For the birds and wildlife, I use the fixed-aperture 600mm RF lens. That's a cool lens because it only shoots at f/11, which makes it lighter and also knocks a digit off the price compared to a professional-grade zoom telephoto lens. It also means the lens doesn't work that well in low-light environments, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff for $20k knocked off the price. I've also shot the moon with this lens, as well as the 2024 total solar eclipse. They're tagged as "Telephoto" in the galleries.
For landscapes I use the RF 14-35mm wide angle lens. I don't do landscapes that often but when I'm on a hike I really can't shoot landscapes with the macro or telephoto lens, so I got this one. They're tagged as "Wide Angle" in the galleries.
I don't shoot with just the R6, though. Sometimes the terrain's too rough or I'm too lazy to carry it out somewhere just for a walk (my neighbors don't really like me walking around their homes with a telephoto, oddly enough). I also shoot with an OM System TG-7 (formerly Olympus). It's an indestructible water-proof, dust-proof, drop-proof, kung-fu-proof little camera that shoots raw and has a pretty good macro lens attached to it. I've had the most success shooting with it on the beach, where it can get wet or sandy without issue. In the galleries the pictures I've taken with this camera are tagged "Compact".
Finally, sometimes I shoot with my iPhone 17 Pro. Since it shoots in raw format and my preferred software DxO Photolab 9 can process it, I've been shooting with it periodically when I don't have another camera handy. As they say, the best camera is the one you have with you. In the galleries, these are tagged "iPhone".