Bryce McQuillan's Photography

dewdrops

2011-11-07T00:57:00.000+13:00

early in the morning, most days the grass has morning dew on it what makes for awesome photos if you stick a flower behind a dewdrop :D

26/10/2011 shoot

2011-10-28T20:07:00.000+13:00

A good range of images from Wednesday night.

first up - crab spiders

Square ended crab spider

Different orb web spiders

Nursery web spiders

Vagrant spiders

tunnel web spider

Slugs

small flowers

2011-10-27T11:37:00.000+13:00

All the small flowers I've found in my garden over the last few weeks :)

To give you an idea on size of the small flowers

lastnight shoot 23.10.2011

2011-10-24T15:02:00.000+13:00

Lastnight I went to the board walk (over in Hamilton east, New Zealand) with a good friend to take some photos...

We often go to the board walk as there is such a large range of things to take photos of.

So below I have added some photos of the things we took photos of last night.

First off is the tree wetas.

I didn't find many spiders lastnight, but here are the species I did find.

Female wolf spider

small private spider

Small female jumping spider

Good size orb web spider

Small female Nursery web spider


Small cob web spider

Other small insects/bugs

Crane fly mating

Slug on flax

Slater feeding

Small black ant

Small Black ant

Caterpillar infected with Larva

Lacewing

Mayfly

Small black beetle

Crab spiders

2011-10-24T12:21:00.000+13:00

I think crab spiders would have to be one of my favorite spiders!

I have added a few shots below of crab spiders I have found.

Start with: flower spiders, Diaea Albomaculata

Female guarding her nest full of egg, if you look closely you might be able to see the eggs on the left

Another shot of the nest, if you look closely you might be able to see the eggs in the nest

Female

Female face shot

Female

Male face shot

Male

female


female

Square ended crab spiders Sidymella species

Female

Female with Prey

Yesturdays duck shoot 23.10.2011

2011-10-24T11:11:00.000+13:00

Yesturday meet up with another photography friend and we went out to photograph some birds, but we found none :O But we did find some ducks that were more than happy to sit there and have there photos taken.

all these images below were taken on my Nikon D90, with a Sigma 70-200mm, we were lucky to be able to get so close to these ducks, we would of only been about 1m away.

Young male duck, I think sitting under the shade

Small grass flies..

2011-10-24T11:01:00.000+13:00

Some shots of different flies I have found in the grass over the last few weeks... while doing dewdrops

DPP_19817E

2011-10-24T10:54:00.001+13:00

DPP_19817E, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

small grass fly (Ephydridae

Hakarimata scenic reserve

2010-10-23T22:23:00.001+13:00

Hello All,

Thought id give this blog thing a go...

So lastnight (Firday 22/10/2010) a friend and I went out to Hakarimata scenic reserve, just out of Hamilton (Ngaruawahia aera) North Island, New Zealand.
We got out to the bush about 7pm-ish sort of time, we went along the Waterworks track. Our goal was to get to the dam/waterfall before dusk ,so that we at least had some idea of what the track looked like etc before it got to dark - always good to scope a area out doing daylight before going at night (well i think anyway)

We got up to the dam/waterfall a bit quicker than we expected to (10-15min) So we took a bit of time to chill out and take some photos of the dam/waterfall :

Now the bonus about wearing waterproof pants and waterproof hiking boots is you can happily sit down/knee into the running water go give you a nice low angle (shots of me photographing the waterfall, Photos taken by Steve Reader) :

The waterfall was about 4-5m high, quite nice to sit up at the top and take photos looking down:

just off to the right of the path there was like a man made cave type thing, it went in for about 2m only about 1m high (so photographing things on the roof of this cave was a little tricky) but all over the roof of this cave there was 100s of cave Wetas, I tried to get a shot showing the large number of Wetas but It didn't quite work:

onces it got dark, the bush came alive, with invertebrates (heaven for me) didn't see as many spiders as I would of liked to, but the cave wetas and harvestmens made up for the lack of spiders.

I ended up shooting 4 species of spiders.
First one was a Female Scuttling spider (Cycloctenus spp) blending in nicely with the surrounding environment, these spiders are quick to run, So approaching them slowly and carefully is everything, making sure you don't break any sticks etc:

The next spider was a Large female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) The first one I saw, was in the middle of the creek sitting on the edge of a rock - I tried to get close enough to get a shot... end result was the spider runs off laughing, as i tripped over all the rocks losing my footing and ass planting into the creek (lucky the camera was all good) what i didn't realize was my phone had come out of my pocket and landed in the creek, I carried on up the creek a bit where I found a second Nursery web spider and manged to get some shots of her sitting on the water, it wasn't till i started to walk back down the creek that I realized my phone had fallen in the creek (lucky for me the phone was flashing) pick it up out of the water and dried it off and thankfully it still works... for now...

So here are some shots of a Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on the water:

Next spider was a Large Female Black tunnel web spider (Porrhothele antipodiana - pure black species) this one was about 3cm body - a large one! Sadly the 2 shots I got were not as nice as I would of liked...:

Now to the harvestmen!

I saw 3 different species I haven't photographed before, so they were a must! Now if im correct, the first 2 are males, the second one is a immature male, and the third one is a female... (could be very wrong)
first species

Second species

third species

Cave wetas/crickets

we also found some fresh water lobsters

Female nursery web spider

2010-04-12T14:15:00.000+12:00

My mission for this year is to re photograph every subject I find. Ideally want to get Body shot for ID'ing then a side shot, face shot, and then some nice composition shots.

So my First bug I found was a lovely little harvestmen wandering around on some rocks.

Number 2, A male False Katipo spider Steatoda capensis don't oftern see these spiders wandering around at night so It was good to be able to get some shots.

Nursery web spider, I was very surprised to see this girl with an egg sac this late in the season. Sadly I don't think many of her young will live very long, if they survive at all. I will be doing a photo series on her and her nursery web.

Ladybugs

2010-04-06T16:11:00.000+12:00

Hello everyone.

Some shots of the different species of Ladybugs/Ladybirds I have found.

First species - Steelblue Ladybird Halmus chalybeus

Elevenspotted Ladybird

Coccinella undecimpuncata

next species

Yellow shouldered Ladybird

scymnodes lividgaster

HoverFlies

2010-04-05T19:16:00.000+12:00

Hello everyone,

These are the 2 different species of hover fly I have found

Pregnant hover's

second species

Bugs

2010-04-04T19:20:00.000+12:00

Bugs:

Over the past few days I have found a nice aera to take photo's just down the road from my place.

A large number of bugs and spiders to photograph.

Start with the green vegetable shield bug (Nezara viridula) This species come when fully grown are a boring green, but while they are juveniles (nymphs) they come in a lovely range of colours and patterns as photos below show.

There are a large number of different species of orb web spider, ranging from size and colour. Sadly I havent photographed all the different ones I have come across down there, but I have a few show I thought id show them below. only 2 species here Male and Female and then a large more orange colour female.

Other bugs I found are of Hoverflies/drone flies/beetles/house flies/blow flies.

Start with the lovely hover flies, 2 species here.

First species - sadly only got a face shot of it.

next species, what is alittle bit larger than the normal species I find.

Now to the flies, a few different colours and species.

now some shots of Drone flies

Ladybirds

Miner bee

A few other bugs - beetles/harvestman and a butterfly

photographing small frogs at night

2010-02-21T15:45:00.001+13:00

Hello All,

A few photos

one of me doing what i do best, and then a few of the results i got
Photo of me photographing a small frog of the Lilly, Photo taken by Steve Reader

The Results I got

MONDAY NIGHT

2010-02-17T01:31:00.005+13:00

Hello,

On Monday night me and a good friend Steve went to the board walk over in Hillcrest (Hamilton East) North Island, New Zealand. We got there at about 9 p.m., and decided to go left instead of right, we have never been left as it has been fenced off for quite some time.

There were a lot of small grass type bushes with a load of insects and 100s of nursery web spiders sitting all over the bits of grass it was quite mind blowing to see so many.

NURSEY WEB SPIDERS

Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on a grass type plant

Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor)

There must have been a really good food source that lived on these plants, as the nursery web spiders were all over them.
I thought I’d take the chance to get some nice body ID shots, since they stood out so nicely on the green plants, you don’t often get a chance to get nice shots of them on green plants as they normally run before you can get close.

Male Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on grassy type plant

Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor)

another angle

The Nursery web spiders just seemed to be on every plant we looked at, ranging in different colours and sizes.

Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) with prey

a face on angle

Young Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on the end of a grass type plant

Medium size Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on a leaf, only managed to get the one shot before she jumped and ran off

                                                             WETA'S

As we looked into these plants and came across more of these types of plants we started to find a large range of different types of insects, but there was one insect that should out from the rest, what was the tree Weta (Hemideina species). We started to see heaps of them, males and females. Most times when we go to the board walk we are lucky to see maybe one, but this time we found a lovely big female. Her body length would have been about 5cm. We haven’t come across one quite as big as this girl so it was quite exciting.

Female Tree Weta (Hemideina species) sitting on a grass type plant

I tried to get some nice shots of her on my hand to show the size of her, but sadly the shots came out a bit blurry. However, I did manage to get a nice shot of her sitting between my fingers.

Not long after that I found another 3 tree wetas sitting on the one plant- 2 males and one female. I assume there was a bit of a mating game going on between the two males.

Male Tree Weta (Hemideina species) sitting on a small flax type bush

Another angle of the Male Tree Weta (Hemideina species)

                                                               SPIDERS
                                                  TWO SPINED SPIDERS

We found a large range of different species of spiders. Here are a few of the interesting spiders we came across.

There was a small dried up creek bed in the middle of the plants, so I pushed my way though into the middle and found a Female Two Spin Spider (Poecilopachys australasiae) hanging from a small branch.

Female two spined spider (Poecilopachys australasiae)

I always find these spiders hard to photograph as they have a strangely shaped abdomen, and the colours are very unusual, making exposure a little difficult. When we were photographing we saw a much smaller one, at first we thought it was a baby spiderling, but as I was photographing and wondering why there was only one, (they normally lay anywhere from 200-400 eggs), it turned out to be a male trying to mate. The males are only 2mm long and look somewhat different from the female, and the female is 10 times the size of the male.

You can see the male two spined spider (Poecilopachys australasiae) on the left of the image, a brownish colour, then the larger female on the right.

Another shot at a slightly different angle, once again Male two spinned spider (Poecilopachys australasiae) on the left and the female on the right.

                                     GREEN ORB WEB SPIDERS

I was really excited when I came across this little female Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas)

Female Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas)

Trying to shoot this girl in the web was quite hard as she was moving back and forward with the light breeze so trying to get a shot in focus was difficult.

We struck lucky as about a metre away there was a lovely small Male Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas) sitting on a bit of grass.

Male Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas)

Another angle of the Male green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas), such a pretty species of spider.

                                               VAGRANT SPIDER

A fairly large male Brown Vagrant Spider (Uliodon species)

SQUARE ENDED CRAB SPIDER

A large Square-Ended crab spider (Sidymella species) sitting on a bit of flax

   BLACK HEADED JUMPING SPIDER

Last but not least of the spiders was a lovely Male Blackheaded Jumping spider (Trite planiceps)

Male Blackheaded Jumping spider (Trite planiceps)

Face shot

Side shot

Another side shot from a slightly different angle

Another face shot

And another side on shot

CICADAS

Now to probably my favoutie shots of the night, Some beautiful Cicadas just hatched out of there old skin, its quite amazing how the Cicadas can live under ground for 17years before comming out of the ground to shed, then they only live for 2months matting and sucking the tree sap.

Cicada still emerging from its old skin

Just finished pumping the blood into its wings, it normally takes about 30-45mins for the Cicada to fully emerge from its old skin, then about another 10-15mins for them to pump their wings up with blood.

Cicada

Amazing colours and patterns in their wings as shown below in the next two photos

Two cicadas side by side

Last but not least of the cicada shots is this amazing blue/green colour Cicada

   LARGE GREEN STICK INSECT

Another interesting find, well spotted by Steve, was this large green female stick insect

Large female Green Stick insect

We managed to get her on my hand to show the sheer size of her, quite impressive

Trying to act like a stick, their defence strategy

                                                       OTHER BUGS

Some of the other insects we found.

Plant hopper


                                                  GREEN MOTH

Beautiful green moth that landed on my finger

I decided to stick her on a tree after getting a nice photo of her on my finger; she made quite a nice photo on the tree.

Green moth

                                              BEETLE

Now this next bug was a very interesting Beetle something neither me or Steve have seen before, had quite a nice orange colour to it.

Small orange colour type beetle

Another angle

Last bug, a lovely brown shield beetle

I think that night was probably one of our most interesting/fun nights we have had out photographing bugs.

Hamilton Gardens

2010-02-13T13:22:00.000+13:00

Hello everyone,

Yesturday I went to the gardens with a friend to try get some nice photos, sadly the weather wasn't the best
But we wandered up by the road and got some lovely shots of some small frogs only about 2cm long

trying to get in a good spot on the lilly

peaking out over the top of the lilly to see whats going on

got a good view here

O crap! Ive been spotted

I better go hide.. . . i think im safe here. . . i dont think they can see me

mmm gosh this smells good

enjoying the little sun there is

Cicadas

2010-02-13T13:14:00.000+13:00

Cicadas

I thought I’d do a little info thing on cicada’s there is roughly 2,500 species worldwide and about 40 species in New Zealand. During the summer months the Male is commonly herd doing mating calls, if you click you fingers you can sometimes lure the male cicada to land on your finger.

Cicada sitting on my finger

There are many different colours/patterns cicadas in New Zealand, coming in a range of different sizes. Cicada’s live underground for about 17years, then amuging to shed there skin

Cicada shedding its skin

It normally takes the cicada about 45mins to fully shed its skin and amuge.

Then it takes about another 10-20mins for it to pump its wings up.

Once the cicada has shed its skin, it only lives for about 1-2months feeding on the sap of plants and trees and finding and mate. Male’s are able to suck the sap and sing at the same time, but normally stop singing when you get close, Females (normally larger than the male) do not sing, between there 2 compound eyes they have 3 smaller eyes called “ocelli”

Photo of a Little grass Cicada (Kikihia muta) showing its ocelli

a few more shots of different species I have found and photographed

Mahoenui Giant Weta

2010-02-03T19:19:00.000+13:00

Mahoenui Giant Weta

On the second on Feburary 2010, I went out with DOC just out past Te Kuiti to photograph some of New Zealand's rare giant Weta's.

Me and a good friend Steve got to the location of where we were going to find the Mahoenui giant Weta, there was abit of a walk up a large hill to get to the scientific reserve

Doc worker Lisa far left leading us up to the scientific reserve.

hiking up the hill . . . still a fair way to go. . .

the hill still goes on . . .

It took us some 15-20mintues to reach the top of the hill, where the view was just amazing.

Steve taking in the fresh air and the amazing view over all the farm land.

once we got to the top, we look over the other side. . . there is some 180 hectares whats about 380 odd acres, of scientific reserve, what is full of gorse.
Looking into all the gorse that we were about to walk though

The Mahoenui Giant Weta scientific reserve sign, with some 180 hectares of gorse in the background

The Weta's like hiding in the gorse for protection, with out the gorse and goats the Weta's could not survive here, The goats eat the edges of the gorse what keeps it dense making it hard for prey to get into the gorse.
Mahoenui Giant Weta

Sadly we only managed to find a male. We saw a number of smaller ones but Lisa (DOC ranger) only wanted us to handle the larger ones as the samller ones are a lot more lively and tend to get agressive more quickly. We also so a pair mating but we were not allowed to disturb them. The Male that we had found we decided to move him on a smaller gorse bush to make taking photos a little easier, also if the weta decided to jump it wouldnt hurt its self.
Mahoenui Giant Weta

Mahoenui Giant Weta

The large male weta wasn't keen on sitting around and poseing for photos, So we only mangerd to get a few shots sadly, Lisa (DOC ranger) had stressed to us that we were not to stress them or disturb them to much, so we got a few shots and thought right we'll leave it as that.
Mahoenui Giant Weta on my hand

Mahoenui Giant Weta on my hand

Every where we looked there was insects! So we thought we take some shots of the other insects around, seen we didn't have many if any shots of the different insects we were seeing. This one butterfly really got our attension its was a beautiful little Glade copper butterfly (Lycaena feredayi complex) It also like the Weta's kept us on our toes trying to get a half decent image, we were unsure if we had any good shots as we couldnt see our view finder from the sunlight, so it was a case of shoot and hope we get something good.
Glade copper butterfly (Lycaena feredayi complex)

Large robber fly with prey

We spent at least 4hours searching though all the gorse looking for the Giant Weta's and other insects, the heat up there was so intense, it was like someone was pouring a bucket of hot water over me every 2mins.
on the way down we thought we would try and get some nice shots of the view.
Looking down at the cars on the road.

a more zoomed in zoom of the cars

Steve walking down the hill

Just before we got to the bottom of the hill Steve spotted this lovely orbweb spider sitting in her web catching small flies and other flying insects, and we dont seem to get this species near where we lived so we just had to stop and get a photo of it
Small orb web spider catching prey

this place was a perfect place for insects, dream come true for macro photographers

Over all we had amazing time out there.

Special thanks to Lisa for allowing us to go out and photograph the Weta's, Also special thanks to Steve for comming out with me!

Dead Dragon fly stack

2010-02-02T22:32:00.000+13:00

Hello all,

Mum found a dead dragon fly at work and thought she bring it home for me to photograph. . .

So i thought id try stacking, where you take a number of images at f8 of the subject and stack them all together to get better DOF- dept of field

DSC_3712E-1

2010-02-02T19:18:00.001+13:00

DSC_3712E-1, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

Giant Weta

DSC_3732E-1

2010-02-02T19:17:00.007+13:00

DSC_3732E-1, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

Giant Weta on my hand

DSC_3752E-1

2010-02-02T19:17:00.005+13:00

DSC_3752E-1, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

Butterfly

DSC_3799E-1

2010-02-02T19:17:00.003+13:00

DSC_3799E-1, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

Robber fly, with prey

DSC_3854E-1

2010-02-02T19:17:00.001+13:00

DSC_3854E-1, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

Orb web spider, Natural light

shots from tonight

2010-02-01T22:35:00.000+13:00

Some photos from tonight before I got rained on!

Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor)

Green Stick Insect

Young Female sheet web spider
(Cambridgea foliata)
Family Stiphidiidae with prey

Young Female sheet web spider
(Cambridgea foliata)
Family Stiphidiidae with prey

DSC_3452E-1

2010-01-31T23:06:00.001+13:00

DSC_3452E-1, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

Small Male Garden orb web Spider
Eriophora pustulosa photographed tonight 31/01/2010/

DSC_3443E-1

2010-01-31T23:05:00.001+13:00

DSC_3443E-1, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

Small green Plant hopper found tonight 31/01/2010

my flight over to Australia

2010-01-31T14:11:00.000+13:00

Some photos of my flight to ATG - Australia tricking grathering held in Sydney

Dolomedes minor (Nursery web spider)

2010-01-31T12:17:00.000+13:00

Some shots of a female Dolomedes minor (nursery web spider) sitting on water,

It is very hard to shoot spiders on the water for a number of reasons I guess the main reason is that the water is WET and camera gear and water dont mix to well, So trying to get low angles makes it hard.

Also shooting anything on water can be a real pain due to reflections, seen I do most of my shooting at night it can be really hard not to get reflections as you have your headlamp shinying onto the water also a powerful flash firing at the water! But being able to hand hold your flash cerntainly helps for these kinds of shots!

Hope you like the images.

Handyman Publication

2010-01-27T19:28:00.000+13:00

Just been published in Handyman Magazine! :D

HDR Bus!

2010-01-26T13:36:00.001+13:00

DSC_3285_6_7_tonemappedE, originally uploaded by SMB(spidermanbryce).

HDR bus!!!

Hamilton Gardens

2010-01-25T23:59:00.002+13:00

A few shots of Hamilton Gardens

Insects

2010-01-25T23:39:00.002+13:00

Some different insects I have photographed

a few spiders

2010-01-25T23:27:00.002+13:00

a few shots of different species of spiders

Frogs!

2010-01-25T23:21:00.002+13:00

Some of my frog photos!

Some of my Fav photos

2010-01-25T23:02:00.002+13:00

A few of my fav shots taken over the few years.

Ty dressed as a Ninja

Net casting spider

rainbow lorikeet

Female Polkadot Hopper Spider
(Opisthoncys polyphemus)

Bell frog

Male Cryptic Orbweb Spider (Cryptaranea species)
Family: Araneidae

Brush tail possum

My Time in Auckland

2010-01-25T22:55:00.001+13:00

Got a few shots when I was in Auckland last, went to the Harbour Bridge and got some afternoon shots!

Auckland Harbour bridge

Lake Taupo!

2010-01-25T19:27:00.003+13:00

At xmas went away to Lake Taupo in the Middle of north Island of New Zealand!

While I was down there I got some shots of ducks and birds, Hope you all like

Male House sparrow

Young Duckling sitting in the wet sand

Young duckling sitting in the wet sand

Seagull having a clean

Male duck enjoying the afternoon sun on the sand

Late evening sunset

Early evening sunset

Me In Sydney

2010-01-25T17:29:00.010+13:00

I went to Sydney on the 11th of Jan, for tricking (ATG)

while I was over there I got the chance to go out

at night looking for spiders :D So i dragged some of my mates along to help take photos of me holding some huntsmans! Also I got a photo of one of the Trickers holding a Brush tail possum.

Photos taken by:

Jono Tai Wong

Male huntsman on my hand photo taken by Jono Tai Wong

Male Huntsman on my hand photo taken by Jono Tai Wong

Female Huntsman on my hand photo taken by Jono Tai Wong

One of the Australian trickers holding a brush tail possum!