Garden Photos (image heavy)

I’ve been taking a lot of pictures to get more familiar with my new camera and software.

From my initial photos I also found that I kept wanting to get in closer for more detail, so I bought a macro lens. A few quick experiments made it clear that I’d need something to keep the camera more stable for macro shots, so I’ve ordered a better tripod and head for that. In the meantime I grabbed a heavy astronomy tripod and friction arm I already had, which helped keep things steady:

There’s a lot of buds on the plants right now:

An assortment of flowers:

A bunch of macro close-ups of dahlias:

Some shots of small purple dahlias at various scales. These flowers are only about an inch in diameter to begin with:

Some close-ups of hibiscus flowers:

I also keep forgetting there’s another one growing wild up behind the garage:

A yellow garden spider has appeared in the flower beds:

I noticed a bunch of walnut(?) debris on a pile of bricks in the yard. I assume a squirrel left it there:

There’s a dead cicada clamped onto the fencing:

There was also a shed from a praying mantis stuck on the fence:

Here’s one I noticed hanging out on a Diva flower:

A mantis also ended up in the house somehow, so I took some photos before I moved it out to the flower beds: