So I've got his new hobby. Have some pictures.

Like many people do as they age, I'm starting to get into photography and photo editing. My friends find this incredibly boring so I just want to share it here so someone appreciates it. Even if it's just one person.

This all started when I saw a really cool spider in my garden, and I couldn't get good pictures of it on my iphone. I am also a person with more money than willpower so obviously the thing I had to do was rush out and buy a $2000 camera and macro lens. And some of these are STILL taken by my iPhone.

I've also started to try my hand at photo editing. This is my cat Dante, chilling in his spot in my garden under the bird feeder. I found the before/after images by accident while scrolling through Lightroom and I was surprised by how different and striking the finished product was. I thought it was pretty cool.

I'm not sure what species this is but it's some kind of anole. They are everywhere where I live (north Florida).

You can tell by the dark colored throat patch (which extends into a fin for displays) that this one is a male. He was the only one in this spot with this coloring, so I assume he was the most dominant male.

This is my cone ginger plant. I actually just took this photo to test out my new camera and accidentally loved it.

I tried it in black and white on my iPhone. You'd think given that this is such a colorful plant that B&W wouldn't do it justice, but the drama of this was so neat.

My short-lived day lily. It did not like my garden and has only bloomed a couple times.

This green anole was perched on my cone ginger and I accidentally disturbed him when I walked by. He was still at first, hoping I didn't see him, but he skittered away when I knelt down to photograph him. He didn't run away entirely but he remained wary of me.

I have no idea if these are the same species as the brown anoles or not. It was much bigger than the brown ones.

This is a mason wasp. Don't be afraid! These are actually beneficial wasps. They live alone in burrows carved into my wooden fence, and they act as pollinators and eat pest insects. They are basically bees, just slightly scary looking. He was very non-aggressive too and let me get really close.

You can't deny wasp wings are kinda cool.

I literally just took this picture at a store on my iphone to use the identify feature to figure out what flowers they were. They're chrysanthemums. The color was cool though so I cropped it down into something presentable. I ended up buying them.

This is an oleander moth caterpillar, which lives on the oleander tree in my front yard. Oleander moths are kind of scary, with black bodies and dark red wings.

Oleander is a poisonous plant, so the caterpillars are poisonous too, hence the bright orange coloring. They're safe for humans to handle (but be careful of the irritating hairs!), just don't eat them.

Like the blue color? I do too. You'd think it's something cool like an editing trick or maybe the sky. Nope, it's my plastic trash bins. I had been trimming branches off of the oleander and found the caterpillar on one of them, so I set it down on the trash bin to photograph. The drama is striking but it's entirely accidental.

WARNING, SPIDERS INCOMING.

This is Gibbous, my Honduran Curly Hair tarantula. Unfortunately, he's on his way out the door and probably only has weeks or months left to live. He's in his final molt and has refused to eat any more food. All he can think about is mating with a female, which unfortunately won't happen. He'll die a virgin.

This is the spider that made me run and get my camera and lens. It's an orchard orbweaver, and it's a little over a centimeter long. The bright orange color was beautiful, and the small size makes the green legs translucent. She's still in my garden somewhere, eating pests and protecting my plants.

This is a red kangaroo joey, who I met at a private wildlife foundation called Xtreme Exotics. I met her on a personalized tour through the facility, which was immaculate and clean, with healthy and lively animals from all over the world. I have a few more pictures but this girl was my best shot from the trip.

Back to flowers. These are pentas. I'm not big on flowers but they're easy filler for any garden. I was mostly just testing the focus range of my macro lens.

I saw this pinewoods frog taking a nap in my bromeliad today. What a perfect spot! My cat, who patrols my garden with me daily, didn't even notice he was there. Good job on him!

Rest well buddy. Eat some bugs for me, protect my plants!

Those are my best shots for now. These are all low res versions, just to prevent anyone from wanting to take them for their own purposes. If anyone would like a high res version for a desktop image or something, please let me know and I can send one.

If you're still reading, thank you for appreciating my little hobby.