The Phone Dump

Because of various weather issues, I’ve been spending the better part of the last week just catching up on landscaping. That means fewer big, DSLR shoots, and more shooting what I can find with my camera phone. I kept planning to upload these in the evenings after I was finished working, but wedding planning and other professional editing projects took priority. So now, I just edited them all in one go in one huge memory dump from my camera phone.

While shooting a wedding, I noticed that my setups are becoming more complex.

After about 14 years of heavy use, my mower finally quit on me.

Max helped me go through my books, looking for readings for the wedding.

As summer arrives, Max must defend the apartment from ever-fiercer insects.

We had some nasty storms, but the clouds were cool.

Was shooting a local event, and I noticed that I and the mayor are the only ones cool enough to not wear name tags.

I also wound up with a ton of flower photos. Since I took so many to be sure that I had at least one clear image, I wound up with a slew of surplus photos. I decided to get experimental with the editing, and I think that I wound up with some cool results.

Did I go too far with the Lightroom effects for these? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

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Memento Mori

     Things get a little dark for tonight’s post. It started when I noticed a butterfly in the grass while I was mowing and stopped to take photos. It stayed still enough for me to snap a few shots  with my cell phone. When I saw it still wasn’t moving after that, I prodded it with a leaf. As the butterfly fell over it proved the poor creature was dead. I started to get up to resume mowing, but then it occurred to me that I would probably never have the opportunity to photograph a butterfly that won’t fly away ever again.

                I gingerly picked up the butterfly with a dead leaf and walked it over to the nearest flowerbed. I propped it up in such a way that it would look like it was standing naturally. It became a sort of delicate balancing act to get it to stay in place. The legs are a giveaway though. When an insect dies, the legs curl up. If you look closely at the legs, the butterfly is actually standing on its knees instead of its feet.

                While the photo itself feels a little morbid, I’ve seen way more twisted things in my modern art history class. Hell, almost every animal photographed before the early 1900s was stuffed since exposures could take as long as eight hours, and very few animals will sit still that long.

     The post title itself is a reference to something I picked up in art history class too. The Memento Mori (Latin for a “reminder of death”) was a popular trope amongst Medieval and Renaissance artists. They would often include skeletons or a Grim Reaper in their paintings as a symbol of the inevitability of death. The term kept going through my mind as I posed the butterfly body on the dead flower, so I decided it was a fitting title.

                So, there you go, in case awesome photos aren’t enough reason to come to the site, I now have lessons on insect biology and art history.  What do you guys think; is the photo a bit too morbid, or is it permissible in this case for the creation of art? Let me know in the comments below.

Moth Montage

I decided to take a much overdue photo walk today and noticed, among other things, a group of moths in a flower bush. I took enough photos to experiment with the editing. Normally, I only choose one from a series, but I can’t seem to pick a favorite from these. So, I decided to post them all and let you guys decide. Tell me which one is your favorite in the comments below.