Dragon fly on barbed wire

Still trying to learn how to catch a dragon fly in the air with the camera. Not there yet... Not with this shot either. It still got its feet on the wire, but I like it anyway. Sort of artsy. They are damn fast bastards. This is how much one move in 1/180's of a second. For the first time I begin to understand those who demand higher flash sync from Pentax. But it is a step forward. Usually I sneak up to the dragon fly, and in the lucky coincidence that it doesn't go chicken and escape, I snap a couple of shots, at least some of them sharp, of a sitting dragon fly, like the next picture. Then I wait for it to fly...and when it does, I fire of as fast as I can. Usually resulting in an empty frame, or perhaps a bit of the dragon fly inside the frame and the rest outside.

B.I.F. - Bug In Flight

I think BIF originally means Bird In Flight, to capture a flying bird on photo. But catching a flying bug is just as difficult. Probably dragonflies are worst followed by butterflies. But the summer is already so late here that they are rare...so I'm practicing on hover flies.

Getting the bug inside the image frame and relatively sharp is difficult in itself. Then one have to plan composition and keep an eye on the background, preferably giving it a smooth bokeh in colors that contrast against the bug.

These images are taken with the Sigma 180mm macro and Pentax macro flash. For each shot I have of course erased many with the bug outside the DOF or even outside the image frame...but I am getting better.

Metalic green fly

Most flies here are just black and boring, but sometimes I find these more photogenetic ones.

Communicating 21st century style

Communicating. We do it more and more over tiny little machines originally only meant to talk in over distance. Now we one-way-communicate like reading news, watching television, listening to music and radio, as well as (more or less) two-way-communicating like texting, chating, skyping, blogging, face-booking and keeping track of all our real or less real friends in the ether. Will old style intake of information like reading a book, or old style communicating like talking face to face with someone get more and more into the background, replaced by the new habits? At least in this picture it looks like it. Recently shot outside the photographic museum in Stockholm.

NO SPACESHIP LOOKING FOR HIM

The weather is now about the same in Stockholm, as when this was shot a year ago. I am greatfull I do not sleep outdoor this time of the year, that a warm bed awaits me at home, food and familly. I was on the streets of Stockholm for a while this past weekend, almost a tourist, and saw quite many beggars, most of them I presume without a real home. Twenty years ago when I first moved to Stockholm and roamed the streets with my cameras, I rarely saw homeless or beggars. They are of course not as common as in truly poor cities, but they are far more common here than in the past. If you ask me, the first large change came in the the mid to late 90's. Now I think it has increased again the last couple of years. Is it an effect of the current policy to let sick and unemployed people fall out of the well fare system? Open begging gets more and more common, but people have alsa learned to ignore them, and walk by. There is no space ship looking for these people if just they can send an S.O.S. to the stars.