riverbend park | Our Creator's Canvas

The Smallest Damsel

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Roberto Aloi

Damselfly
Order – Odonata

I have never seen a Damselfly this small. I have always enjoyed photographing them because they never seem to sit still enough to capture anything worth keeping.

This was the smallest Damsel I had ever seen and it clung to the tiny branch and didn’t seem to care about my inspection. It was as if the animals had mentioned that I am a regular and harmless.

When you are able to land a keeper it makes the entire process more satisfying.

Nothing that comes easy is satisfying to me…Especially when I shoot photos. There has to be an obstacle involved. There has to be a race of sorts or some proverbial monkey wrench or hurdle that takes effort to pass.

It could be purely logistical in nature. Having to race to beat the sun to shoot a sunset shot in a distant place. Like the time I had to race west close to Belle Glade because I had a particular shot in mind. When you have spent as many hours in nature as I have you start to understand the timing of the sun. This insight made things more urgent because I knew I had little time.

I finally found an area out west, but now I needed to travel parallel with a field to look for a clearing. The sun was getting low at this point which means my window of opportunity was running out. I still had to stop in a suitable place, erect my tripod, mount my camera, figure out how I would compose the shot, and other decisions only a photography would understand. So here lyes my obstacle. As far as the eye could see I was surrounded by mature sugar cane serving which only served to obstruct my view. I was beginning to think my frantic journey was in vain until I finally stumbled upon a clearing without a moment to spare. My celebration was short as I rushed to setup my gear. The photos that day were some of my favorite landscape photos.

Or the time I had envisioned a bumble bee. The angle on the flower, the composition, it was etched in my mind ahead of time and I knew exactly what I wanted the photo to look like. I don’t know if any of you have had much experience with bumblebees, but I assure you they do not take orders and could care less about your desire to photograph them. I spent a month going to a particular bush day after day trying to land this shot. It took an entire month, but knowing what I went through to get it always puts a smile on my face.

Today was wet, windy, and cold. It was difficult to operate my camera because my hands were painful. It was tough to walk. Every year of my 40 years was reminding me of it and keeping me woefully honest… The experience today was a good one. We had to cover a lot of ground in the cold.

For that I am grateful.
“When something comes easy, you usually let it go the same way.” – Nora Roberts
http://www.robertoaloiphotography.com

It’s a bee?… It’s a fly? No, It’s a bee fly!

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Roberto Aloi

Meet bombyliidae!

I remember taking this shot in 2011 at Riverbend park in Jupiter Florida. Most photographers that I know use the park to shoot deer and birds. I typically visit a small grassy section that is often overlooked.

The area is host to a chimney that is surrounded by uncut grass, weeds, and a ridiculous number of insects. It’s a scene that looks like some post apocalyptic world that was long forgotten providing you take the pristine asphalt and wooden fence out of the equation. The title above? It’s the conversation I had with myself when my brain was trying to decipher the bee-like thick hair and the obvious fly eyes.

By the way… in case you haven’t figured it out it is actually a fly that resembles a bee. The resemblance is said to possibly be aposematic; a characteristic in which the fly could possible be perceived as a bee. This affords the fly some protection.

Think of it as his God-given halloween costume except no wardrobe changes are necessary.
This is from wikipedia –

Bombyliidae is a large family of flies with hundreds of genera, although their life cycles are not well known. Adults generally feed on nectar and pollen, thus are pollinators of flowers. They superficially resemble bees, thus are commonly called bee flies, and this may offer the adults some protection from predators. In parts of East Anglia locals refer to them as ‘beewhals’, thanks to their tusk-like appendages.

The larval stages are predators or parasitoids of other insect eggs and larvae. The adult females usually deposit eggs in the vicinity of possible hosts, quite often in the burrows of beetles or wasps/solitary bees. Where most often in the insect world parasitoids are highly specific in the host species that they will infect, some bombyliids are opportunistic and will use a variety of hosts.