When Hummingbird Meets Butterfly

Staying home a lot is not a bad thing when you love your home. Magical things can happen when you stay home. 

 Making your home a lovable place is work, but if that work is done with joy, you don't feel it, except in your muscles when you get up the next morning. It is a gift you give yourself. 

This past summer I learned how to make and use outdoor rooms. It's pretty simple. You run some extension cords from the basement, get some comfortable furniture and a Yeti thermos full of something nice like lemon mint water, and set up with your laptop, camera and binoculars in the shade of a handy tree, say Jemima's Japanese maple. This is now your office, and you get to work out amongst the salvias, with orthopteran music as your soundtrack.

On this particular late September day, some late rubythroats were working the salvias and zinnias in my terraced bed. My bedsheets flapped gently in the warm breeze behind. I couldn't stop snapping photos. The cream-colored sheets add a dreamy touch, don't you think? 

Salvia greggii "Cherry Chief" is a favorite, as it always has a few fresh scarlet blossoms full of nectar to offer each day, floating high on wiry stems where it's easy for hummingbirds to access them. 

Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" is a favorite of mine. Last fall, I cut them off and saved the roots to these plants in long planters set on the cold floor of my greenhouse, so I wouldn't have to go looking to buy them again this spring. When it warmed up, they sent out new growth and we were off! Saved a ton of money and made another successful experiment. I love this shot, with the hummingbird glugging down nectar or perhaps a tiny flying insect.

I heard a persistent buzzing, as of a hummingbird investigating something, off to my right, and that was how I found out that the chrysalis I had hung on a tomato cage, thinking it might be a bit off, had hatched successfully!  I watch the chrysalides I bring into the house for safekeeping over the two weeks it takes them to metamorphose. If one looks a bit off-color or anything other than perfect, I take it back outside just to be safe. I don't want anything infecting my precious jewels.

Well, this one was a bit off color but turned out to be perfect anyway, and a beautiful female monarch had emerged without my knowing it only an hour earlier!

And wouldn't you know, there was a hummingbird pestering the poor creature!

Who knows what the hummingbird had in mind? Just deviltry. This is a juvenile male, as evidenced by its darkish streaky throat. Figures.

The monarch wasn't having any of it, and she snapped her wings open and closed to try to startle the hummingbird into leaving her alone while she finished drying her new wings. 

In the end, I had to holler at the durn hummingbird. I think it's the first time I've yelled at a hummingbird...no, no, I have done that before. I used to yell at Bela, one of the four hummingbirds I raised in the summer of 2003, because he was soo bad, first to fly and constantly pestering the other three before they were ready for release. 

Bela was just as unpleasant as he looks here. He was much better once he got out in the yard. 

Aren't we all? (I loved him just as he was). 

Oh man. I just realized that the bonsai behind him is the one that got so big I couldn't keep it in a pot any more, and I planted it out on Bill's grave last spring. Wow. It's coloring up out there; it made it through the summer OK, even though May froze its leaves off twice. Pfffft. 2020. 

The four orphaned hummingbirds' story is told in my book, The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds, in a huge chapter that threatened to take over the whole book. At one point I was considering calling the book My Hummingbird Summer and Other Stories.

Where was I? Yelling at a hummingbird, right. Well, the whole point of this post is to say that something very special has happened with me and monarch butterflies this fall. Starting in early September, I began work on a photography project that I am still working on now. Yes, my last caterpillar just writhed around and became a chrysalis. It's 9:40 pm on October 11...late for me, and wicked late in the year, but I was determined to stay up until it happened, to record the event with my iPhone on timelapse setting. 

Guess when I started making timelapse videos of this caterpillar? Around 8:45 this morning. With monarchs, you have to BE THERE or you'll miss it. I've probably got 50 timelapse videos to delete now, ones where nothing much is happening, but I got it, and I got it good. The timelapse is still running.

All this makes me nostalgic for the old days. My love affair with monarchs started in the summer of 2010. I had sketched and painted the various stages of metamorphosis, but I knew there had to be a better way to capture it--get the whole thing, not just snapshots. So I put my tiny Olympus point and shoot camera on a little bitty tripod, and I sat next to the metamorphosing caterpillar, pushing the shutter button every few seconds, through the entire caterpillar to chrysalis transformation. Then I waited two weeks and was somehow miraculously THERE for its emergence as a butterfly. I did the same thing, click click click click, for the emergence and wing drying.

In the end, I had 1250 photos. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, but at least I had the data.

So, as I often do when I'm trying to figure something out, I wrote about it, and one of my pieces ended up as a commentary for All Things Considered, back in the good old days a decade ago when I contributed natural history commentaries. Imagine! We had something else to talk about but spreading disease and beastly human behavior.  Oh, for those days...In the end, I wound up giving the 1250 photos to NPR, where a brilliant producer named Mito Habe-Evans stitched them together into the animation you see below. It's still one of my favorite things I've ever done. And all without iPhones or timelapse or anything but persistence and a little Olympus camera. Oh, and being there. Enjoy it! 

The "new Blogger" is giving me fits; won't let me into html to load the video. I've tried twice to embed it here. If you're reading from your phone and you see nothing in the space below, scroll down and tap View Web Version at the bottom of the post. If that doesn't work, here's the link to the video on YouTube.  Monarch Metamorphosis

Heere's Phoebe!

It seemed only fair, given my successful senior pictures photoshoot with the Thin White Duke, to give my Eternal Flame a chance at digital immortality. The trick was finding a sunny afternoon during her winter break--more difficult than it should have been, but that's this winter for you. Cold and wet and snowy and anything but comfortable. On the morning of March 22, I watched thick clouds ever so slowly break up, and gave Phoebe, who was busy with homework, a heads up that we could get lucky in the afternoon. A broken sky gave way to blue, and we mobilized, jumping in the car and speeding to my favorite place for afternoon light, rolling hills and decrepit buildings. We brought an array of outerwear but no hairbrush--she says her hair looks better when she doesn't brush it. Must be genetic; my only hairbrush is my fingers.

 

I'd been looking forward to this ever since shooting Liam. I love photography, but more than that I love helping someone appreciate and truly feel their own beauty. "These won't be good. I don't look good today," Phoebe warned. Oh. I hadn't noticed that she didn't look good today. And I'm pretty observant. "Let me show you not looking good," I answered, cackling. "You've got youth, estrogen and an ectomorphic body type on your side, hon. If what I'm seeing through the lens is 'not looking good,' I'd love to not look that good."

I've said it before: shooting people is a lot like shooting wild creatures. The longer your lens, the better you're going to do. Nobody likes to have a camera stuck right in their face! The other great thing about a telephoto lens is that it automatically has a relatively shallow depth of field, so you get this beautiful blurred-out background, focusing on the subject. Oh, how the sky picks up her blue eyes. Red hair and blue eyes is the rarest combination.

 

All through high school, I tried to get my daughter to wear denim, without success. As I think on it, denim was what everyone else she knew was wearing, so she steered clear. I forced one of my 18 denim shirts on her when she left for college. "Trust me on this. Denim goes with everything, and it looks fabulous on everybody. But it'll look even better on you. " Imagine my delight when she turned up for the shoot in that same shirt. It works with weathered barnwood, blue eyes and red hair, that's for certain.

 

A stray shaft of sunlight tricked out her hair in the shot above. We went inside the barn to see what we could do there. Oh my! Shadows from a leafing honeysuckle vine fell on her face. Her hair was on fire. The light gave a lushness to her features I hadn't seen before--the slight cleft of her chin! Rembrandt light.

  

I love these Phantom of the Opera shots. There was so much more we could have done, but the Golden Hour was fast fading away.  

  

 

 Let's try a shot through the mullions. Uh-oh!

 

It's the Creeper! We had to have the Creeper shot. I think Phoebe's scarier than Liam! Things like this, I think, have to happen so you can get images like these next ones. 

We moved out to catch the last of the sun's rays. The siding was a beautiful black, and there was just enough sun to light her cheeks. She was totally relaxed and we were getting some really good stuff.

Never oblivious to what's going on around her, she watched and listened to the birds all around. A crow landed briefly in a nearby pine and just as quickly reversed course when it realized there were humans below. "Is that a crow?" she asked, suddenly alert, laser-focused and crouching. It was such a Zick moment I felt I was seeing myself as a 21-year-old.

Such rich textures, between the barnwood and the brambles and that glorious hair. I don't know how one person gets so lucky on the colorful genetic Wheel of Fortune. Both my kids have been lucky.

 Back to posing. "Mess with your hair. Put it up."

Ahhh. Good.

 

I decided to try the black doorway once again, the one that had bamboozled me with Liam.  Two professional photographer friends had suggested exposing on the barnwood as a neutral gray, instead of on Phoebe's face. It worked! I got velvet black and true skin tones. Now I want to take Liam back and try again.

I love the peace in her face here.

 

 Chasing the last red rays of sun, we found them slamming against some red leaves. We'd been practicing the sudden turn that whips her hair into a wildfire.

 

 

 

 Time for jumpshots! We were happy we got such beautiful photos, and I was happy that Somebody wasn't thinking she "didn't look good today" any more. 

Launch it, Red Rocket!

 

 

 

 

 

Some say youth is wasted on the young. Not these young.

With such a graceful and willing subject, it was hard to turn the camera over to Phoebe, but I wanted a photo of myself with the Toothless Lady before she falls down.

I kind of melt right into that old barn. But my teeth are better.

 

We were heavy into shooting when a red pickup came barreling up the never-traveled road. I knew who it was, and was surprised at the speed at which she was driving. She skidded to a halt as I hurried to get my car out of the way. A relieved smile spread across her face. At a distance, she'd taken my camera for a gun and was hell-bent on chasing me out of there. We both laughed.

"Now I know who you are and what you're doing. Thought that was a gun!"

"Well, that's our adrenaline rush for the day!" I answered, and with that, what little light was left fled.

 

 

Thus ended our most excellent Senior in College Photo Shoot. Both kids now, thoroughly documented.  And a couple old ladies, too.

There's something about the juxtaposition of this slender flame, balancing on the brink of her whole life, and that deliquescing barn, waiting for the derecho that will bring her down, that brings a lump to my throat. Time never stops. People keep moving. Buildings left untended fall down. All we can do is love them while they're here.

Senior Picture Shoot: Heeere's Liam!

 Senior pictures. Lots of people spend a lot of money on senior pictures. Which is nice, because photographers have to make a living, too. The best photos of humans, in my opinion, are not the ones that are produced in a ten-minute session in front of a rolldown screen, when the subject is bathed in the glare of  hot klieg lights.

Formal photos have one thing going for them. They produce predictable results. You're going to get a kid in a borrowed tux with his head slightly canted and most of his teeth showing. He's enduring the experience, doing what he's told, holding a grin until its freshness date has passed.

As for formal school photography, I side with Dwight. 

"I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life."  -Dwight Schrute, The Office

But what are you going to do? You're batch-processing high school seniors. You can't follow each one around grabbing candid shots. But psst!  Mom can...

 I've never been much on studio shots. Yes, each year, for both kids, I dutifully bought the smallest possible package of school photos, feeling I'd be somehow remiss if I didn't. For the big stuff, though (senior photos, prom, homecoming), I've always taken photography of my kids into my own hands. What I lack in technique and fabulous portrait lenses, I make up in sensitivity to who they are and in which settings they look their best. Which would not be against a mottled gray screen under floodlights. It would be in what nature gives us at the moment: low late winter light, weathered barn wood and the landscape in which they have grown up. I shoot them with my old Canon 7D, fitted with 70-300 mm telephoto, the same rig I use on Buffy and Flag, Jolene and the birds. This lets me get the photos I want without sticking a camera right in their faces. I'm standing 30' away; he's just doing his thing, and we get along fine.

 

 I give him a coat (Mine, a men's Kuhl) that I think will work with the hues of the timeworn wood.  We try a bunch of different settings. That's not the best, but it's already a lot better than the frightened chimpanzee.

We're both hugely enjoying ourselves, expending nothing but photons in a quest for a good shot.
 I'm being horrible, and he cracks up.

 

 I've seen something interesting in his direct stare. "Look at me like you're p-ssed off at me."
"But I'm not! I can't!"
I forget what I said to get this look out of my loving boy.  Probably something awful.

 Ooh. Now we're getting somewhere. Gravitas suits you, Liam!

I've always talked to my subjects. I talked constantly to Chet Baker, often mentioning animals with which he was acquainted. The ears would come up, the light would come into his eyes, and click!

We keep moving. The light keeps changing. I love his straw-colored hair against the hills, covered in fading little bluestem.

 

"Hey! You! Turn around!" Sometimes he takes my breath away. From whence came this creature?

 

 

Turn your collar up! Work it!

 

We keep walking to the old barn that used to shelter cattle.  I have the windows in mind.

 

I love the glimpse of pines and sun through its dark interior, as warm as his smile. 

In this setting, I feel I'm finally getting through to his Liamness. He's relaxed, enjoying the shoot

and all the different places we're exploring. 

And being Liam, he throws me a curve or two. Eeeek!! It's Pennywise the creepy clown!

And then he goes all Broadway on me, throwing those amazing hands wide. Hellooo world!

I ask him to pause in the doorway. "I have cow poop on my shoes."
"Nobody's gonna see that."
I struggle with the exposure. The camera's freaking out, and I'm not able to conquer its desire to expose on the velvet black interior. So they're all overexposed. I take a bunch of shots and finally give up. This is the best I could do. Gotta give that another go. There has to be a way to compensate, because I love this off-kilter shot.

The light is fading fast. We have to work our way back to the hillside where there's still a little sun. I can't resist working the Toothless Lady into a couple of shots. It's cooled down a lot, and we're fighting the natural tendency of one's nose to turn red in the cold. I'm sure it even happens to models. I forgot to bring face powder. Oh well.

I love the juxtaposition of my favorite barn, deliquescing rapidly, and this vital young sapling of a man. It would be hard to find a nicer setting. This is not the first time I've thanked the Providence that led me here, that opened my eyes to the landscapes all around me, that made me take the dirt roads and start a heart collection of such things and places.

 

I need a little bit of the road ahead of him in this shot, to give him somewhere to walk. The sun catches his eye, colorless but for the light refracting in it, scattering to blue.

 

"Stand up against that particle board there."
"But it's ugly!"
"It won't be in the photo."

If I haven't made my point yet about taking the time to let a person relax, so you can coax out his true beauty...

This one settled out as my favorite, but I love them all for different reasons. I can't pick just one. Do click on it and you can quickly scroll through them all at a larger size. So much is lost in the blog version.

 When we were all done, Liam jumped for joy! And so did my heart. Laughing my head off, feeling like the luckiest mom in Whipple, or the world.

What a guy, what a day, what a sunset, what a shoot!  This Do It Yourself Moment brought to you by Low Spring Light, Weathered Wood, Beautiful Youth, and Poverty.