![\"Earthworm\"](\"http:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8557\/8702816924_e8ccc92c05.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nYes, that’s a perfectly ordinary Earthworm, wriggling into the earth under a border stone in the back yard. Having run out of other things to occupy my time (ok, I confess – that should probably also read “except for things I didn’t really feel like doing”), I decided to finally give the reversing ring I’d bought for the fabulous sum of a couple of dollars from some Hong Kong-based Ebay vendor a whirl. This lets me mount a lens backwards on my camera, which sounds all wrong, but through some optical magic results in the lens focusing at much closer working distances than it usually does. I’m probably about four or five inches from the worm here, using my good old 50mm f\/1.8<\/a> (not too different from the one you can see in this useful article about reverse-mounting<\/a>).<\/p>\n While I was turning over stones, I came across all kinds of interesting things. A lot of the creatures I found were just too quick to run away while I was juggling my camera and a flash mounted on a tripod. With the reversed-lens setup, there’s no way to use autofocus – in fact, manual focusing is pretty hopeless too, so the only real option is to move the camera back and forth until the subject is in the rather narrow focal plane. Fine for earthworms, as long as they’re not moving too fast, but far too slow for speedsters like spiders. The net results from an hour or so of poking around were:<\/p>\n All of this makes me think I should be participating in something like the Great Garden Worm Count<\/a>, and I can’t help but think that it might be fun to attempt species identification on some of these – along with the attractive pink one up top, I also came across ones that were brown, bright red, pale yellow, and even a murky green colour.<\/p>\n Of course, I also took a photograph of a Mourning Dove, since they are (a) frequent visitors, and (b) fearless, at least of dolts with cameras. This, as you might imagine, was taken with an ordinary telephoto lens.<\/p>\n There’s a whole lot more miniature wildlife out there, and I think this will be a lot of fun once I build up some more experience and as a result spend less time fumbling around. Which I can get a start on, given the ongoing plumbing problems here (minor, but annoying). In the meantime, you know where to find me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While waiting at home for something else, I take to the backyard in search of earthworms, pillbugs, and other small beasties. Continue reading \n
![\"Mourning](\"http:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8547\/8702826936_ecb307be53.jpg\")
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