Ok - so admittedly, I intentionally have not posted in a while, but that was so that I could post my 600th post on the six year anniversary of starting my blog. A lot has happened over six years, and I've taken a ton of photographs (I honestly don't even know how many!). I have done some bigger posts for other anniversaries, so I wanted to do something similar again... but how to do it.

Then it hit me, why not take a look back at my top six favorite styles of photography. Some have been a strong interest since the start (like macro photography of spiders and bugs), while some are pretty new (videography - ok, I know it isn't technically photography, but it still requires a camera!), and some I only enjoy sometimes (landscape), though others I'd do every day if I could (underwater), and some I work hard to get (wildlife), and others that I don't work for but allow it to come to me as the subject warrants (black & white). Of course sometime I am doing multiple styles of photography all at once. But let's take a quick stroll through some examples of each style with some photos that may have gotten over-shadowed or missed for whatever reason throughout the years...

MACRO Definitely my favorite form of photography, macro gives me the chance to show things that most people overlook or never even see. Of course, a lot of the time, those things are the "creepy crawlies" and spiders that most people don't want to see anyway... but I find those things fascinating. Particularly jumping spiders - my absolute favorite macro subject. But macro can be very versatile - spiders, bugs, flowers, abstracts, underwater, fungi, just about anything. And when other forms of photography just aren't feasible because of bad light conditions or such, there are always macro subjects to be found.

BLACK & WHITE This is a style of photography that I have to admit I don't work at at all. I let this one come to me. If the scene or subject screams to me to be shot in black & white, I might see it while I'm taking the photo or sometimes not until I'm home and processing the photos on the computer and sometimes still not until months or years later looking back at the photo. The great thing about B&W photography is it can be merged with any type of photography, and as you'll see, I've tried it on just about every style of photography I do. Actually, that makes me realize that I have yet to ever convert a macro spider photo to black & white... I guess that will be an upcoming project! While I was tempted to process some new photos for this little set, I decided to just dig through the archives to find ones I'd processed previously and get them some due screen time...

WILDLIFE Wildlife photography spans a number of areas for me... birds, reptiles and amphibians, mammals, truly wild, and zoo kept animals. All of it is a huge draw to me. Luckily, Anya and I have moved to a place where we get exposed to so much more wildlife than we did before. As such, I was able to pick this entire assortment from photos I've taken right here on our property or close by (technically the owl and the snake were from the local park where we go to walk the dogs). This is definitely what I probably consider one of my most difficult forms of photography. The amount of patience and luck required are simply staggering at times, and the time investment is one I wish I could devote more effort to. But as I said, luckily all of this is right outside our door, so the convenience factor certainly is helping me to improve and get better shots all the time!

UNDERWATER Well - what can I say about underwater photography other than I wish I could get to do it more often! It is a very challenging form of photography, and quite often by the time I'm getting into a groove and starting to feel like I'm able to get more creative with my shots, that's exactly when the trip is over and it will be another year before I get to try again. Honestly, if I could go diving every day, or even every weekend to hone my underwater photography skills, I would. For now though, I'll just have to be happy with the once a year that I do get to go experience and record such amazing things!

So there you have it... six styles of photography, six years worth of trips, experiences, passion, sights... all recorded and shared here in 600 posts. Amusingly enough, at three years, I made the claim that I looked forward to three more years but figured a site redesign was in order before then and I'm still using the exact same site. I do think that needs to change, but part of my reluctance is the fantastic compendium that this site has become for me. I quite often refer back to old posts to share things again or even just a reference for myself. So hopefully I can figure out the challenge of upgrading this site while maintaining the integrity of all of the history that I've built here. For now though, I'll focus on continuing to capture and share photos like these!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

PS: If you are interested in exploring further into some of these examples, the section headers and the "button" below are links to the history of posts that have been tagged with that label, so if you want to see more of any specific style of photography, just click and explorer!

Don't remember the last time I posted some spiders, so....

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

It wouldn't be a sweep net foraging attempt without some spiders...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

So after Anya finished her shopping at the antique sale she went to (while I was visiting Sugarloaf Mountain), we decided to grab some lunch and take a bit of a walk along the C&O Canal at Point of Rocks, MD. We eventually found a picnic table and ate our lunch. As we were finishing up, this little guy stopped by to say hello...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in eTTL mode. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw

Surprisingly, a few minutes later, a female (I think of the same species) showed up...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in eTTL mode. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw

I tried to play match-maker, and the male was putting on some decent displays (which I should have tried to get video of), but the female would have nothing of it and quickly ran off.

Regardless, it was an interesting encounter and chance to observe the mating rituals of such tiny little critters.

- Bill

Just stopping by real quick to share a couple spider photos... I'm not sure if this is the male and female of the same species (I need to look that up), but this isn't the first time I've photographed either of these types of spiders, but they both have a similar and very nice pattern on their abdomens, and the male has that nice rusty "mustache".

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

I am trying to get through all the back-log of photos I have, but with my schedule recently, I'm not making any promises.

- Bill

So I've been a bit lazy with photography lately as we've been anything but lazy with projects to beautify our property. Yesterday during one such project, we found this fairly decent sized spider. I believe it is a Parson Spider (Herpyllus ecclesiasticus) though my ID book says it is a small spider and doesn't get as large as the one we found...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

Hopefully I can be a bit more regular in my posts in the future, but we'll see.

- Bill

So we've talked about feeding bloodworms to reef critters on multiple occasions, and I've briefly touched on how annoying they can be... but today I will show just what photobombing jerks they really are...

The night dives in the Bahamas were especially bad with bloodworms, and this is just a small sampling of the photos ruined by these prolific little annoyances (most of the rest just got deleted).

- Bill

Yep - you read that right - Caribbean Sea Spider (Andoplodactylus sp). I'm sure to some folks, it comes as no surprise that I managed to find spiders underwater too...

Ok - it isn't a true spider, but it is somewhat related. Both spiders and sea spiders are in the subphylum (the classification above class) Chelicerata. I've been fascinated with them ever since I first saw them listed in my identification, and so when I spotted one during a night dive, I instantly knew what I was seeing. I unfortunately did not come back with the best photos, but I'll explain that a bit more later.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/250th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port and Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion in Photoshop CS5.

I know - I'm sure for most folks those photos look like a while lot of nothing - if you can even figure out what you're looking for at all. In general, the sea spider just looks like a jumble of legs to be honest, but like I said - I knew instantly what I was looking at and was thrilled with my find. I only spent about three minutes photographing it, and the conditions were absolutely horrible (I'll explain more on that tomorrow) and so I will have to continue searching for another one to get a decent photo.

But for now, I get to show everyone that there are spiders in the ocean too... :)

- Bill

A quick break from the dive trip photos today to share a spider shot.

So I have this obsessive-compulsive behavior when I eat an apple - the first thing I do is to remove the stem. I don't know why, I just do. Anyway, I went to eat an apple I had packed in my lunch, and I noticed a web in the spot where the stem comes out. So I gently remove the stem, and low and behold, there is a small jumping spider that had been living in the web.

Somehow he had survived multiple days in the refrigerator living on that apple, and as a coworker pointed out... of all the millions of apples in the world, that spider managed to pick the right one to decide to hang out on. Not only did he not get squished (which I am sure would have been the reaction most people would have had), he got save in a container, taken home, given his own photo-shoot, and then released into a house plant to be able to stay warm and hopefully survive the winter.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/200 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Hopefully that doesn't put anyone off from eating apples - out of the hundreds and hundreds of apples I've eaten in my lifetime, this really is the first time I've ever had a spider on one. And yes, this photo is staged... since I wanted to finish my lunch and I had kind of destroyed the web already by removing the stem, I had to put the spider on a different apple once I got home.

- Bill

Hahah! I can't believe I haven't used that yet...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill