For the last week, I have procured access to a car. This is great, because it gives me the ability to do things other than watch the same flowers grow on the same streets.

One of the places I visited was Hawk Mountain, which I hope to return to later, both as a topic for this blog, and as a place I physically go to.

The highlight of my visit on this Wednesday morning was no bird of prey (alas!), but instead some deer munching on greenery, who were far less spooked by the presence of myself and fellow hikers than I would normally expect.

So, with three or so deer to point my camera at, and a killer telephoto lens (with suboptimal forest lighting) how did I do?

A photograph can capture a scene, an image, a fleeting moment, and transform it into an object of study.

Macro photography does this, but like super hardcore. By definition, macro photography is a 1:1-scale reproductions, where an object should be captured at life-size relative to the camera's sensor. The lens needs to be able to focus quite closely on the subject, and it should be able to capture as sharp and distortion-free an image as possible.

A steady hand is needed, because shake can easily blur an image taken so close-up. Having a lot of light and a wider aperture can help cut down on shutter speed, but due to the closeness of focus, the focal plane also becomes quite narrow, such that you can only focus on a single facet of a complex surface.

With all that technical description provided, I invite you to instead picture me hopping around shoving a camera as close to a grasshopper as possible, framing photos poorly, and having it jump around.

Not too, too long ago, I was having a great conversation with Sepi in which the topic of what we really cared about came up.

Music was among my answers. My friend was a tad incredulous.

How much did I really care?

A little over a week ago, I decided to go on a stroll from my parents' house to a park with hiking trails and preserved woodland.

I was interested in the hiking trails.

Then I got to them.

They weren't interesting.

The walk to the woods, however, was.

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It was a little bit of a hectic day.

I needed to mail a relatively bulky package, and being without a car, I needed to walk it to the post office in the early afternoon.

This is a time I'm not usually out. I was sure to bring my camera, because you never know.

And it was a great day for photography, particularly because I got to see this fellow.

It's unusual around this area to see a bird of such a vibrant blue color.

He was also quite small in size, and pretty skittish and distant from me, which made the photography more challenging.

No matter. There's always cropping in post-production, right?

Many, many moons ago in a parent-teacher conference, a teacher told my parents that given the opportunity, I would always choose to stop and smell the roses.

Strictly speaking, that's not true.

I think my mother's more recent observation that "no grass grows underneath my feet" is probably more accurate, especially given my tendency to sometimes not spend as much time visiting a place, or appreciating things as I should.

Let's hold that thought for now.

Some people say that lightning doesn't strike twice.

Well, some people are wrong.

Quite possibly my second favorite animal that I had the pleasure of photographing this summer was the box turtle seen in these photographs.

This time, the turtle was younger, more orange, and more skittish.