BIG ladybird

The enormity of the damage to my body from the Singapore trip came to me this morning. I ached, badly, all over, especially legs and hips. This was not going to be a comfortable blip session.

Today's session at the stream seemed to be going quite well. Lots of good material: a guy with two goats, lots of goat face arty shots, good wrinkly character shots of Paji (the guy), plenty of dragon, spider and butterfly shots, a bunch of shots of women planting the rice, shame to lose these, probably favorite for the blip spot. I was happy that I certainly had a blip amongst this lot.

Then Fitri and a few friends caught up with me. No big deal and I took their gang sign shots as requested, keep them entertained. The first sign of trouble was when they asked to see the shots and the replay button revealed garbled junk. I flicked back through the last two hours of blip work - nothing. I thought, 'Oh no! I've broken another one'!

I removed the card and replaced it and then everything was working fine again. So I headed off home, in the hope that once uploaded onto the computer that everything would re-appear. No such luck.

One option was to post a naff gang sign blip and just describe the insect blip that you missed, or get back out there and do another session. Well, it is not like I am snowed under with things to do, so rather than short change you all, I did the right thing.

I managed to re-capture the spider shot, but I promised not to blip spiders without notification, but it wasn't that impressive anyway. I picked up a series of red dragon shots, different dragon to the two that I have already blipped this month and I was sorely tempted. The butterflies eluded me this time around, but this beetle wins the spot for me, even though I didn't nail it.

The beetle looks like a ladybird style, except it is many times bigger at just short of ½ inch long. I will have to do some research to find out what it is, but too late today. Now that I have a camera that has a fast response, a wicked shutter speed and an ISO capability to use the speed, I might now have a chance to get a beetle in flight shot, impossible with my last camera. Definitely one for the future.

So, a disappointing blip day, but a reasonable rescue I think. You cannot have good days all the time, the blip monster will make sure of that. Today's lesson, check the images are recording before going ahead and shooting a card full.

Dave