I never hesitate, now, to take my camera, Bellatrix, with me wherever I go, especially if it is an outdoor excursion. Even the simplest of trips, like taking my daughter to Full Moon Farms for her horseback riding lesson, provides opportunities that you need to be prepared for.

My son and I decided to watch her lesson from the grass, and at the end of the lesson, a bee landed between us on a small flower. I lay on my stomach and did my best to compose the shot, but the bee was just too busy. 🙂 Here’s the best shot I could get:

As I was packing up the gear, my son saw a micro grasshopper that was no bigger than 1/8 inch in length. It was thinner than a blade of grass. I unpacked my gear, set my camera again, lay on the grass one more time, and took about a dozen shots. This is the best of them:

I think I’m getting the hang of using the macro settings on Bellatrix, even without the tripod (which wouldn’t have done any good in this situation anyway). I wish I would have closed the aperture just one more stop, but I’m pretty happy with the way that it turned out.

When we head down to the ocean this week, I’m going to shoot in the same manner, just with the ocean/water/beach as the theme to see what I come up with. I’ll have my laptop, so I’ll try to post daily.

I’m having a lot of fun, and I see the possibility in taking my best shots from this summer and making notecards out of them. If I did…would anybody be interested in buying a set? They make great holiday gifts… 🙂