Return of the worm

Since spring has erupted here, I set out this morning to get some nature/landscape photography and take a break from wandering around the ruins of the rural south. It wasn’t long before I found pictured forest tent caterpillars on a tree.  These caterpillars seem to come in cycles and are the masters of funking up outdoor events during the warm months here. They rappel with silk strands onto birthday cakes, splash in drink cups, leave dirty mats of webbing in trees, leave all the decks and sidewalks stained with goop after being squashed, and love to take up residence in flip-flops.

As for the picture, I kept a prime .50 on most of the time today which isn’t a lens I go for when out in the woods but I wanted to experiment with some of its in-camera bokeh methods. The photo above is nearly straight from the camera. I used a slight contrasting tone curve to make the worms stand out a little bit from the tree. Although I haven’t read extensively on it, I’m wondering if the lens doesn’t duplicate color from somewhere else when rendering its bokeh effect. I mention this because I’m not sure where the Atlantic blue blur on the left side came from as the real background was just more green trees. The caterpillars, however, do have some similar blue markings and I wonder if that’s where/how the camera referenced from.

On a final note, I’ve started to toy with the photo documentary movie idea. I’ve done a zillion family slideshow stuff before but recently someone prompted me to the idea of putting “sets” together in similar fashions.