This Challenge....

Manual focusing with a Lensbaby lens. The following shots were taken with a Lensbaby Sweet 50. What the heck is that?

Well the lens itself is odd looking because you can change the place of focus. Choosing your aperture and place of focus is a challenge. Most lenses are static, they stay in place and you focus on what you want composing your photo with a fair amount of ease.

The Lensbaby Sweet 50 looks like this. You can swivel the lens about to change the spot of focus you wish to have. The one pictured is a Sweet 35. To the right of the shot you can see the apertures that can be picked for shooting.

The lens can be locked in place so your focus point is in the middle or slightly off center. The smaller the aperture, the smaller the point of focus.

Why on earth would anyone want to monkey with something like this? This is considered an 'art' lens. It allows the photographer to step out of their comfort zone. The lens can create unique affects inside the camera. Meaning, no after processing needed in most cases.

The shots can create dreamy bokeh with dreamy distortions...or produce unusual effects in camera.
 

I shot this crab spider on a white moss rose. The focus was moved by me to try and catch this little spider crawling around on the petals. Was it easy? Oh heck no!

It wouldn't have been easy with any lens at all. It took me several tries and a lot of patience to get this one shot. I shot it at f 2.5 which didn't give me a whole lot of focus room. But I liked the challenge.

Here is another example. A spent sunflower in black and white.

I went to a larger aperture and backed away from the flower to capture just the flower in focus. I could have done this one with any lens, but I wanted to practice with this one.

These are a few of the other shots I felt worth keeping after walking around with this odd contraption on my Olympus camera. 

I used focus peaking which works most of the time to see what exactly was in focus. Not every shot came out as expected. 

This is an alphalfa flower blooming in a hay field.

A beautiful blue Chicory flower.

Highbush Cranberries

Nasturtium, ready to open.

In this shot, I shifted the focus slightly to the right on this oak tree. I wanted to show how the focus shifts and the areas around are 'blurred'. 

I'm fairly sure that this beloved tree will disappear once the loggers get to it. 

Sunshine walking past some Vervain flowers in her pasture. [Yes, she still needs a hair cut and a few burrs pulled from her mane]

Flutterbies and bugs

Last year I planted petunias and verbenas in the annual garden by the kitchen window. It looked great, but I noticed that the butterflies and bees preferred the Zinnias further away from my house down in the veggie garden.

So this year I took seeds that I'd gathered last year and seeds from Aurora and tossed 4 O'clocks and Zinnias in my small annual garden.

You will notice some Marigolds mixed in and those were all leftover seeds from the year before. I picked up the seeds that had fallen on the ground and poked a few here and there.

What a surprise my willy nilly casting of seeds gave me this year.

I think the butterfly below is a Black Swallow Tail! I've learned patience this year. A LOT of patience!

To get a bright back lit photo of a butterfly takes a ton of patience and waiting. 

The butterflies like to hit up the flowers when it is warm and sunny, then all of the insects are going crazy in a sense.

I even planted 3 sunflowers within close proximity of the house. In years past, Rich would complain about the sunflowers blocking his view of the driveway. I made sure that he could see the driveway, but also see the sunflowers.

This year he stands at the kitchen sink window and gives me a commentary on what is happening in the flower garden.

I planted sunflowers over a few different weeks in hopes of having more blooming time. The insects and the Goldfinches have been having a hay day with those huge flowers.

And there are all sorts of secret things hiding in the Marigolds. Crab spiders love hiding between the petals of a Zinnia or Marigold to wait for an unsuspecting 'meal' to come along.

The bees, butterflies, and spiders are all having a blast in my tiny garden. 

I'm collecting seeds from the 'Wildflower' Garden I planted in another section of the yard. I recognize the Bachelor's Buttons, the Marigolds, and some of the others, but some flowers evade ID. I think they are pretty, so I am gathering their seeds to toss in another section of the yard that I mow [hubby won't mow it over then!] next year.

I'm fairly sure that I will surely miss this riot of color after the first frost this year.

The flowers have brought me a lot of joy this year, as well as practicing with my camera.

I planted Nasturtiums because my friend in Alabama says these were her absolutley MOST-est favorite flower when she resided in the North. She says they do not survive the intense heat of the far south.

They were not always my favorite flower, however, I am reconsidering them as they have added beautiful mounds of brilliant color around my porch where the ground cover was sparse.

Apparently they too, attract spiders!

The humming birds are still either here or passing through. They are all over the 4 O'clocks in the early morning and early evenings.

I'm pretty lucky to have all this activity just outside my door.

Fungi and Chocolate Slime Mold?

I'm slowly trying to catch up with things while at the same time limit my 'screen' time. My eyes seem to tire very easily. So I am doing a lot of things to keep the eye strain down to a dull roar.

Crab Spider waiting to pounce on a woolly aphid aka known as a Fairy Fly...

Club Fungi close up and then with an SD card next to it for getting an idea of how small this was! [If you click on the photo, you should be able to see it much larger.]

I'm pretty happy about finding the club fungi. This was the very first time I'd found it and actually knew to look for it.

Old slime mold that has dried up.

Slug on a rotting stump with tube slime mold.

Drum roll please...

Chocolate Tube Slime Mold.
It has other names but I thought this was the neatest.

I'll wrap up with just a pretty little fungi that reminded me of an umbrella. It had a blue tint to it and by the afternoon it had drooped and 'melted'. I imagine it belongs to the tiny ink cap family.

I need to get back out tomorrow morning before the heat and humidity get too intense and look around on the logs.

I did watch Fantastic Fungi on Netflix today and the photography and time lapse photography was quite beautiful.

It was pretty interesting and if you like fungi and mushrooms it might be worth your time.
It also had some interesting interviews regarding the use of the ingredients of the Psilocybin Mushroom and PTSD and depression.

There are rains and storms predicted for tomorrow night so I may be out hunting the strange world of slime molds and fungi again this weekend.