Syrphid boy ´n syrphid girl...

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Planapo
Posts: 1585
Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2006 2:33 am
Location: Germany, in the United States of Europe

Syrphid boy ´n syrphid girl...

Post by Planapo »

... obviously , or as one of my nieces used to put it when she was little and ingeneous: "Double fly". :D

I found these guys in the very act when I left the house this morning , so I dashed back, fetched the camera and mangaged to capture this image. One out of more than a dozen finally turned out to be not too bad...my point&shoot is always a bit unpredictable, and I can actually see what I´ve got only later on the screen of my desktop´s monitor.
The morning sun was shining brightly when shooting, fortunately, as the built-in flash of the p&s usually sucks at close distance.

(BTW: Hey, native speakers, should I better say "usually doesn´t perform very well" instead of "sucks", as the latter might be indecent, rude language in this case...? Could I say "sucks" during a public presentation, e. g. ? Honestly, I dunno, hence linguistic advice would be appreciated.)

Actually, the syrphid flies were sitting on a vertical brick wall, so I rotated the image 90 degrees anti-clockwise, cropped, sharpened. Camera was Ricoh Caplio GX, 5 MP.

It could be a species of genus Eristalis. As said before today, I am not engaged in Diptera so I am not sure about this. And albeit the lateral view works nicely for the photo, IMHO, in this case is a bit unusual for recognizing features for ID, at least for me.

Hope you enjoy!
Cheers,
Betty


Image

jmlphoto
Posts: 269
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:09 am

Post by jmlphoto »

haha great shot, i love it when you have to run back in because you saw something new. hoping it will still be there when you get back. 8)

rjlittlefield
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Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Nice shot!

The pose provides an interesting clue to the rotation. If the flies really were horizontal as pictured, then most of the weight of the pair would be hanging out over the rearmost support, since the hind legs of the female are off the ground. That could certainly be done with some tension in the front legs, given the small size of the beasts, but the hind-legs-up posture seems rather more likely in the vertical position than the horizontal.

I will email you about the linquistics. :wink:

--Rik

MacroLuv
Posts: 1964
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm
Location: Croatia

Post by MacroLuv »

Superbly captured Betty! :D :smt023
Funny couple. :lol:
We hard working macrophotographers are kinda rude, so in my opinion "sucks" sounds very appropriate. 8) :wink:
Rik, is it OK to use "kinda"? :-k :wink:
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

beetleman
Posts: 3578
Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 4:19 am
Location: Southern New Hampshire USA

Post by beetleman »

A most excellent photo Betty. Very nice DOF & focus. The harsh shadow is an asset. Nothing Sucky about it. I would probably not use the word in a public presentation...I kinda like "sucky" though :wink:
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

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