Blooms Forever….
The blooms on our Redbud seemed to last forever this year. It gave great color to our backyard!
365: Foreground…
Would be nice if I remembered a comment, huh? Well I’ve got to admit as much as I love the beach in the summer, it doesn’t get much better than taking photo’s in September/October. Other than the surf fisherman there’s no one else around. I guess being there at 6am helps too:)
I didn’t get to my Scott Kelby photowalk today(opted for golf instead) but I’m hoping some of you did so I can check out the pictures. Hope you had a great time.
365: Calm
During our camping trip I try to get out at least one morning and take a few shots of the surroundings. Lake Ocquittunk is just a short walk from our campsite and on this particular morning it was as calm as can be.You know that typical August morning with heavy, humid air and not a stitch of wind. In fact not even a ripple of water could be seen. Ahhhh, just the way I like it.
Sunburn…
…in botanical terms:)
I really like the perspectives one can get when roaming around a arboretum. The DOF at f/4 and 168mm can bring about amazing bokeh!
To Standout in a Crowd…
In today’s world what makes common, everyday sights standout? With millions and millions of photographers out there what makes viewers gravitate to your photo’s? Is is your specific style, subject, processing technique? If you care to share your thoughts on your own photography please do, would love to hear it. I guess that’s my thought of the day. Besides paying the bills, painting my garage, etc, etc:)
Simple Sign of Spring….
I had to get outside today. It was still fairly cold but winds were lite and my property is a mess from the winter. Amongst all the clean-up I did see a few signs of spring. Several of the bushes and trees have started to sprout buds. I like how this shot seems to have a mirror effect to it. And that dark background…sweet.
Letters in Nature…
During last years challenge I believe Julie(?) posted a little tut on reversing a 50mm lens to produce an extreme macro shot of some flowers. At that time I said I needed to try it out. Well, months later, after approximately 40 attempts here is my best from the session. I’m pretty happy with it but I do have to say it was an exercise in patience. The hardest part was positioning and keeping the lens steady for the split second of pressing the shutter. The dof is so small, that any, and I mean any, movement will result in a blurry picture.
So, if you have such a lens and have the patience, all you do is take off the lens, flip it over and press it against the body of your camera. Compose the shot and fire away. In this scenario just keep clicking away and eventually you’ll end up with one keeper. Give it a try. I’d like to see your efforts!
Something Completely Different 2…
I can see it’s going to be tough to beat that first artsy post. I went back into the archives for this shot and I’m thinking that this doesn’t quite have that knockout punch as the last one did.I don’t know, what do you think?
From a processing standpoint I did about the same tweaks as the last one except on this I added an adjustment photo filter layer to even out the color cast of the original. I do like the complimentary colors of this piece, something slightly different.
Something Completely Different…
Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking at great floral art pieces from Tammy and Doris so I decided to have a go at it myself. Their work has been quite inspiring and I can only hope to come close to their vision and quality of work.
I’ve recently purchased Topaz Simplify in hopes to be able to present pieces of art that may even be worthy of being hung on someone’s wall. So, as a novice I need your thoughts on this first piece. Is it too 70′s ish, too bright, colorful? I have several versions of this shot so I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.
From a processing standpoint I did little processing in Lightroom, exported to Simplify and used the Painting Colorful preset. Lowered the opacity of the effect in Elements and finished with a matte and drop shadow. Thanks for your thoughts!
Even More Isolation…
The more I look at these garden photos the more I love the ability to utilize the large apertures and/or the long focal lengths to create a shallow DOF. This shot is from my 70-200 lens at 4.0 and 200mm, even with an aperture like 4.0 you can isolate any flower amongst hundreds of others. Sweet!
Further Isolation….
These sun worshippers were easy to isolate against the dark background…again not possible without a complimentary light source.
PS: sorry about the blotch must be from compression for the web.
Shot settings: f4.0, 1/3000sec and iso 200 at 200mm
More Isolation…
I’ve been quite busy with not much time to shoot but I did get out to shoot a few macro shots the other day. The next few posts will feature shots from that session. These posts will feature my Canon 70-200L lens. This glass is very impressive and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in purchasing it.
As a side note, I’m up to 11000 views to my blog from that post on wordpress.com….thanks again everybody.
Shot settings: f4.0, 1/750 sec, iso 400 at 113mm
Isolation…
Part of my purpose at the arboretum was to use my nifty-fifty to isolate some of the flowers in the garden. This was shot at f2.0 and I love the SDOF. This is straight out of the camera, cropped to square.
Settings: f2.0, 1/4000 sec at 50mm, iso 100
Perspective 2…
You may have remembered a few previous posts(last year) from the arboretum just down the street from my house. I hadn’t been back in awhile so I decided to make it a point to go back and take some shots…it didn’t disappoint. This time I was concentrating on taking shots from unique perspectives. This one was a must as the clouds started to gather towards the end of the shoot. I forgot to change my aperture and at 2.8 I just missed the focus point.
HDR from base shot of f2.8, 1/1500th sec and iso 100 at 22mm
Space
_MG_3806_5_4_tonemapped, originally uploaded by boomer3297.
The conservatory at The Bellagio is a place that can only be photographed well when there are few people around. I happened to get there at about 6 am and still encountered about 20 people, fortunately these workers were just about done replacing hundreds of flowers in the exhibit.
I’m sure all the gardeners out there would absolutely love this place and this photo can only do it justice if you click on it.
