I recently went on a fly fishing trip in Utah with a friend.  It was a great trip.  I'm not a huge fly fisherman, really just trying my hand with it twice in the last 10 years, both times with him.  In fact, I didn't even fish every day.  Instead, I took my camera and tried my hand at a few things that I don't practice enough.  Those two things were:
1) Macro work
2) Manual focus technique

In brought about at least one revelation: I rely way too much on AF.  Going to manual actually felt good; at least it did for the landscape and macro work that I was doing that day.  It has inspired me to go into manual more often.

Here are some of the semi-macro shots from the day (I say semi-macro because they aren't full macro close-ups.  The photos posted are crops of larger photos)....

The Bee: 105mm VR lens, f/11 @ 1/125s, ISO: 200

The Bee shot happened when I was walking through the brush.  It was sprinkling and as I walked by this bush with yellow flowers, I noticed some dark spots on the yellow.  On closer inspection, they were bees, about 15 of them, clinging on for dear life to ride out the rain.  I had a captive subject and I was going to make the most of it.  I pulled out my camera, manually focused and starting shooting.  The issue was that it was very windy, so the bees were going in and out of the focus plane.  I was lucky to get about 1 shot in 10 in any sort of focus.  This one turned out the best of the lot.

Red Ant: 105mm VR lens, f/6.3, 1/320s, ISO: 200

This photo was taken on our last day.  My friend Stephen was fly fishing and I was taking photos in the same area.  At one point I felt and sting on my ankle and looked down.  There were red ants crawling all over my feet.  I started hopping fast so no more could get on, frantically brushing as many off as I could and crushing the rest.  If you take a close look at the phone, you can see the pincers, and they know how to use them.  After that, I sought out a less active ant hill to get a recording of what the little devils looked like.

Twisted Metal: 105mm VR lens, f/13, 1/400s, ISO: 200

This last one was actually taken on the first day.  It was part of an old wooden fence that I took a few photos of.  I am not sure what the appeal is, but for some reason I am drawn to photos of wires like this.  I'll have to see if I can do anything interesting with this one in Black & White.....

Still ticking....

Its been awhile since I have posted.  I've been busy with work but have gotten out to take photos a few some in the months that have passed.  One such time was on February 5, 2012.  I took a photo lighting workshop.  Jim Powers was a great host.  We had the session in his studio downtown and he hired a wonderful model for the session - Katty DeLux.

There were three others and we learned a lot about the use of studio lights and lighting techniques.  I also used a ring light for the first time.  Here is an example of one of my shots using the ring light:

Overall, a good way to spend the day.