Another experiment with my new camera and macro lens. Details: 1600 iso, 90mm lens, f/8, 1/200 second. This wildflower is wingstem, a sure sign of late summer. The plant is just at the end of my backyard, and I saw the patch of yellow from my deck, so I thought I ought to investigate. A couple of bees were searching the blooms for pollen, carefully but efficiently gathering what they needed. I got close but I was not their subject of interest, so I could focus close on them and the blooms. I like it.

The kids have been in school for a month. The last days of swimming in the pool will likely be this weekend. And the milkweed pods are exploding.
 

I have a new camera. And two new lenses. Oh, wow! For my photographer friends, this image was shot at iso 2000 at f/5, with the new Sony a7rii and the 90mm f/2.8 macro, an incredibly sharp lens.
 

I'm sorry to see summer end. The summer weather has been mostly glorious. And soon autumn begins with scenes that delight the eye.

Can't wait to see. I'll take you along.

The railway turntable was invented in England in 1840 to be able to turn steam engines 180 degrees. While diesel locomotives can run at the same speed either forward or backward, steam engines were limited in the speed they were able to run backwards, so a method was needed to be able to turn them around to utilize their speed efficiently. This turntable is located in Chattanooga with an engineer operating the controls in a small shed that rotates with the section of track atop the turntable.

I can imagine other situations where it would have been helpful to easily make a 180 degree turnaround in my life. Just push the button, be patient, and head back in the opposite direction. Sounds theological.

At the end of August and nearing the end of summer, I like to say that there are still several weeks of summer. Swimming in my pool generally ends about September 21 as the water temperature drops into the 70s. In Nashville, the mild weather continues often into November. And the seasons change.

The summer has been glorious. Almost like the days of childhood that stretch on for ever, beginning with watching the hummingbirds before breakfast to the seeing the fireflies flash in the darkness. I don't have the energy to go and go, but I still have the wonder. My appreciation has deepened of what I have the opportunity to savor.  And I have time to reflect even on reflections and days gone by.

I love butterflies. I have no idea how many images that I have that contain some species of butterfly. In addition to the digital images, I have hundreds of slides and negatives, taken over a span of years, of these beautiful insects.
 

Yesterday, as my wife Judy shared my blog post on Facebook, she asked if you could hear the loons in the photo of Vermilion Lake. We spent a week there and were fortunate enough to have our hostess take us out in her canoe to find a loon family. So we got up close and personal.

The male demonstrated by his posture that he intended to protect the small ones if we got too close.

We've made a dozen trips to the far north including several visits to our dear friends, the Eischens, who live in Door County, Wisconsin. We are looking forward to our visit north this fall and listening for the loons.

I've nearly finished making some needed updates to my desktop computer, re-installing software, and finding places for all of my photos. And I'm continuing to learn to use my two primary programs: Lightroom and Perfect Effects. This photo is from 9 years ago with my 6 megapixel Konica-Minolta DSLR, shot in raw. (While I still have the camera, I have upgraded several times and am considering the newest Sony A7Rii, 42 mp.) I recall being so disappointed with this picture 9 years ago, but it was because I didn't know how to process it well. By the way, processing photos is not a rigid process. The same image can be processed by different people with the same software, resulting in vastly different pictures. I think this version is very close to what I recall seeing 9 years. This is Vermillion Lake in northern Minnesota. The canoeists are friends of mine that I will be seeing next month when I return to the area for a photo trip.

I took this photo at Twin Falls in April 2014. It's actually just half of the frame, but it is the more interesting portion. The challenge was to capture the kayaker at a relatively still position and still show the action of the river and the waterfall. I used a polarizer to cut down on the reflection of the water and slowed the shutter speed to 1/25 of a second which blurred the water. I used Lightroom to make some initial adjustments and then used Perfect Effects for additional processing including cloning out some distractions in the bottom of the frame.