Drunken Bee???

I was walking by my wife's flower garden the other day when I spotted this big bee in one of her flowers. I ran to get my camera, hoping that the bee wouldn't fly away, but when I got back, I found out it wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. For some reason, it was completely moving in slow motion. Covered almost entirely in pollen, the little guy was acting like he was stone drunk! So it didn't take much effort to get a good closeup of him, as he staggered around the flower like a college freshman with a fake ID.

Of course, I don't know squat about bees ... I'm not an insect fan, I'm just a former historian-turned-amateurish photographer. But that's what it looked like to me!

Yet some more Cape Cod photos

Hell, I took 640 photos ... so I have plenty to spare. Though to be honest, I only like about 160 of the ones I took, which isn't bad ... and of those, there's probably only a couple of dozen that others would say are good. But those aren't bad photographers. I watched the documentary about master photographer David Plowden, and he'd be shooting pictures all day; if ONE came out good, he thought it was a very good day. So if I only have a few really good shots out of those 640, then I'd say it was a good trip!

And actually, it was a good trip, even if none of the photos would have come out. But here's a few that I like from the stack:



Okay, I like sunset pictures ... and I take a lot of them, hoping that I'll get one that I like. This one was actually kind of accidental. I was looking around at this beach (Corporation Street Beach in Dennis), trying to get a good angle, when my wife pointed out the seagull sitting on top of the streetlight. Duh. Neat picture. I completely would have missed it without my wife. This is why it's always good to have a spare pair of eyes on your photo excursions!



What, ANOTHER sunset? Yep ... this one is from Rock Harbor, in Orleans. If anything, it's a jealousy picture, because I'd rather be the guy sitting in the beach chair, enjoying the sunset, than the photographer wandering around fretting that my exposures were correct. I'm still not entirely sure they were, but this came out enough to suit me.



Same location, same evening, Rock Harbor. The "trees" in the picture really are trees ... the locals jokingly call them "Clam Trees," but what they really are ... are dead trees, planted in the channel to Rock Harbor, so that boats coming and going from the harbor know where the channel is ... and since Cape Cod Bay has some amazing tides (at low tide you can walk out onto the tidal flats almost a mile), it's important to know where the channel is!



Same location, a few days earlier at low tide ... See, I told you that the tides are amazing! And now you can see the channel, which gets dredged to keep it from completely filling in. And why the "clam trees" are important (besides providing a tale to dupe gullible tourists).