Dragon Archives - Bliss Photographics

Posted on May 25, 2020May 17, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Red Dragon Fly

Both the larval and adult form actively hunt mosquitos in their various life stages. They are certainly near the top of the local insect predator chain. I’m pretty sure a preying mantis will make a mess of a dragon fly though 🤔.

During the Carboniferous geologic Period 300 million years ago, when coal swamps and high oxygen levels allowed it, Dragonflies grew to massive sizes. With a wingspan of up to 6 feet, they were a force to be reconciled with. They were likely a top level predator of anything they could pick up including small amphibians and proto-reptiles. There were numerous insects for them to feed on of course.

There are currently around 5000 known species, the identification of which I shall leave to a specialist. Their larval stage lasting up to two years is aquatic where they eat about anything that they can in the water. They are amazing fliers putting most helicopters to shame. They only hunt on the fly, but they also mate there. Fly United is their only option. They are the best mosquito control out there. I’ve seen swarms covering large areas down in the ranches wetlands.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands. (Wyotana) Title: Red Plum and Dragonfly

Title: Red Dragon Fly

Posted on March 26, 2020March 19, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Dragon Cloud Rising

Part of the joy of my job is I get to see odd things occur now and then (OK, every day). I sometimes consider the other places I’ve lived during my travels. Then I compare them to the 20 years I’ve spent on this wondrous place. Not even close .

Magical things often appear in the clouds in front of me. I am just a stenographer taking notes about the big stage productions in front of me. Click click of the keys of the steno machine or the camera. No difference in effect. The details are in the dark here for this fantasy image. Imagine the mood of that moment in time and space. You could hear thunder rumbling 24 miles out.

I can not record all that I see with my cameras. They possess superhuman sight much better than mine but their ability to see dynamic range is limited. It is for instance VERY hard and essentially impossible to take a stars photos behind the full unveiled moon. You could see it with your eye easily. Not so much cameras. My best camera (a Sony Alpha 7R4) has 15 fstops of dynamic range. My only good eye (I’m close to blind in one eye from an injury) has at least 21 f-stops of dynamic range. Far greater ability to see a black cat in a coal bin in a dark room and see the detail in it’s hair. Like seeing the tree silhouettes here under the very dark blue clouds. This was a tough shot to get :).

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch,Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title : Dragon Cloud Rising

Posted on January 8, 2020January 3, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Wyoming Windmill Winter Wonderland

Wyoming Windmill Winter Wonderland : Last post for Windmill Wednesday Theme Day, number 6 of 6 Windmills posted around social media, Facebook and the internet. Hope you Enjoyed my theme day 🙂 Windmill Junkies are all not overdosed for a while …..

When the winter really moves in, the game changes. The familiar ground becomes blanketed with the diffuse white. It’s MUCH harder to get around. When the drifts get much over 2 foot tall, , it get’s interesting. When they get 20 foot across, that’s a problem. A big issue are low areas that collect deep snow. You can loose a pickup in those areas till spring lolol.

January is a month that has a tendency to have long periods of cold weather. A front moves down from Alaska through Montana and we are frozen like Siberia . We do see -30 some winters and -20 virtually every winter. I clean about 1 mile of driveway. Fortunately we haven’t had any snows that exceed my skid steers ability to push through. Historically they have had some big storms up here. I was told of a 15 foot drift in our current front yard. Hopefully those storms will avoid us for decades.

I am currently testing the abilities of my new ford f-150 pickup (Raptor). It doesn’t seem to care about snow yet but there is only about 6 inches of snow at the moment after the melt off a few weeks ago. I can drive anywhere at the moment except I won’t go to stupid spots where snow gets deep very quickly and is in shade so it doesn’t melt. Snow can get VERY deep there. At any rate, I’m getting around better now.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch,Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana).

Title: Wyoming Windmill Winter Wonderland

Posted on January 8, 2020January 8, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Windmill Blue on Blue

Image number 2 of Windmill Wednesday Theme day all day. 9AM edition:

All you junkies out there might be having a little withdrawal. So don’t overdose on those windmills. …

I thought I’d throw this in as a post. Here “Sneaky Pete” the windmill has jumped over the setting sun with ian unsual blue sky. Sneaky is intent to keep it under his control. Little does he know that the wise old sun will just sneak out the back door as he’s done before again and again lolol.

This image is just a snippit of the continuing adventures of the “Pete” Brothers for you their loyal followers. (You know who you are😜 ) Don’t let your mother know you look at things like this… Just saying 😜😀

I hope I’m not the only one to see the dragon coming out of an American flag in the clouds highlighted by the overly bright scene. I never know what colors I’m going to get pointing a camera into the bright. Anything I can do the filter out the light is a good thing. I don’t use filters on my lens as they have a bad habit of ghosting images on my captures. So I use natural and man-made objects to filter some of that light out of the balance.

Personally the highlights on the metal of the tower makes the image for me. However, it has other hero’s in there if you blow this up full screen. All my images are built on the full screen to be seen on same.

Location; Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands (Wyotana)

Title: Windmill Blue on Blue

Posted on January 7, 2020January 3, 2020 by Frank Bliss

Red Plum and Dragonfly

Dragonflies are not always loners like this one. They often group into swarms. Bees and Wasps can sting you, Mosquitos bite you but there is something exceptionally magical about Dragonflies. That is of course unless your a mosquito in which case they are your worst nightmare. Both the larval and adult form actively hunt mosquitos in their various life stages. They are certainly near the top of the local insect predator chain. I’m pretty sure a preying mantis will make a mess of a dragon fly though 🤔.

During the Carboniferous geologic period 300 million years ago, when coal swamps and high oxygen levels allowed it, Dragonflies grew to massive sizes. With a wingspan of up to 6 feet, they were a force to be reconciled with. They were likely a top level predator of anything they could pick up including small amphibians and proto-reptiles. There were numerous insects for them to feed on of course.

They are amazing fliers putting most helicopters to shame. They only hunt on the fly, but they also mate there. Fly United is their only option. They are the best mosquito control out there. I’ve seen swarms covering large areas down in the ranches wetlands. I don’t see them a lot on barbed wire though lolol.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands. (Wyotana)

Title: Red Plum and Dragonfly

Posted on December 11, 2019December 3, 2019 by Frank Bliss

Dragonfly on Barbed Wire

Dragonfly on Barbed Wire (A bit out of season but this is from this summer previously unpublished. )

I’m an opportunistic photographer. Driving along two track roads one sees various things. I keep my eye open for various things, I like to think I see some detail now and again. This is of course whey I find fossils so easily as I tend to detect variations in patterns easily. Here I noticed this guy resting on a strand of old old barbed wire. There are many generations of barbed wire on ranch. This is an old one. The DragonFly is somewhat younger.

Dragonflies are not always loners like this one. They often group into swarms. Bees and Wasps can sting you, Mosquitos bite you but there is something exceptionally magical about Dragonflies.

During the Carboniferous geologic period 300 million years ago, when coal swamps and high oxygen levels allowed it, they grew to massive sizes. With a wingspan of up to 6 feet, they were a force to be reconciled with. They were likely a top level predator of anything they could pick up including small amphibians and proto-reptiles. There were numerous insects for them to feed on of course.

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Title: Dragonfly on Barbed Wire

Posted on October 31, 2019November 16, 2019 by Bliss

Halloween Sky: Who Do you See?

“Halloween Sky: Who Do You See” …… was done off a pretty impressive sky to start with (still have the original still in the raw timeline somewhere. But I instantly saw the possibilities in the image. Lore from our Pagan (pre-christian) past works it’s way into the present with this holiday mixing with christian practice in the middle ages through out Europe. Much of Halloween Lore is handed down over countless generations from parents to their children along with the handed down/cut out witches on brooms and cardboard pumpkins from many childhoods ago 😀🎃🎃

So in the pursuit of this image result…. all attempts at being photorealistic went out the window and this turned very quickly into an ART/Photo Hybrid project lolol… . Did I mention this is ART for Halloween?? (Pssst, Don’t tell the kids”. ) I will always tell you when I totally mess with an image lol.

Personally I imagine the Cartoon Character “Tigger™” in this capture (its about 95 percent real and 5 percent art, just a tweek here and there really ….a little mirroring selectively. Certainly not the whole image). I would bet some dragons and devils come out of this “Rorschach Test”.

Geeky Musings:
So what is the tendency to see faces in clouds (random data) called? Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data. I am horribly Apophenic and anthropomorphize virtually every scene I see more or less automatically.

This tendency to “see things in clouds” was once considered a symptom of psychosis…. (Let that sink in for a second and go figure lololol) but now is considered absolutely normal. (probably not by some 😜). Humans have even taught computers how to see faces from random data. (Facial recognition and all that). There are also those poor folks that have no ability or interest in such folly but I consider it a sign of artistic talent perhaps hidden away in the rooms of your mind just looking for the door. :).

At any rate: HAPPY HALLOWEEN !
Share freely to a few special ones that just don’t look but actually see. 🙂

Location, overhead plus in my workstation, Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands

Posted on October 20, 2019November 16, 2019 by Bliss

Frozen in Time and Space

To freeze a Dragonfly in Time and Space, you need to be patient and persistent. You also need to understand that dreaded M for Manual on the top of your camera. A cell phone isn’t going to do this, a DSLR on anything but manual has no chance either. Sooooo, here’s the trick… (catching a fly in between 2 chops sticks is easier) 😂

Photographers notes: This is an 800mm telephoto in direct bright sun (requirement) with your f stop on that long telephoto being f22 ish for a longer depth of focus field. He had to fly into a little zone about an inch thick at 15 feet away (minimum focal distance for my 800). That lens acts like a macro at 15 feet. IT is on a Sony Alpha 7RII giving me 70meg raw files or 40 meg .jpgs depending on what I tell it to do.

So I’m following a moving dragon fly and trying to catch him in an inch wide zone, and almost fill the frame at the same time. (this is a full sized image not a crop except for the sides of the formerly landscape aspect). I’ve never used autofocus, I don’t think it would work on this anyway. I set up a zone and let the dragon fly…fly into it. Machine gun clicks at 10 frames per second.

I digress, the faster shutter speed (which sucks up light) has to be fast fast fast at least 1/2000th of a second or more to freeze wings.. I was about 1/1500th here… Just a TAD too slow and a compromise to get more light… . Faster shutter = less light and your already loosing light from the f22 adjustment). You give up light for focal depth and fast shutter…. You have to compensate somehow….. (only three things you really can adjust on a camera , ISO, fstop/aperture size and shutter speed)

So that leaves ISO (camera sensitivity) to balance your image and gain that light back…. Less is better when it comes to ISO since too much will make your image grainy. Note how fine the grain is on this image. IT’s the last priority though because it lets you get the shot which is an important thing lolol..

18×18 inch square aspect at full resolution.

Location: Bliss Dinosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Posted on September 10, 2019September 9, 2019 by Bliss

DragonFly Landing Strip

A Dragon Fly doesn’t need much of a landing strip, one of the longest surviving critters on the planet that were up to 6 foot in wingspan during the Carboniferous periods in Pennsylvania for instance. They got big. This one was about an inch long, jumpy and he didn’t like the big one eyed monster trying to come within 9 inches of him.

Location: the backyard of the homestead at the Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.