Doorway critters

From Photo of the day 2012

So I stayed out later than I should with friends, and then on coming home found my entryway invaded by large moths. I'd seen them the night before and took some useless photos of them, but had another go yesterday evening. They are about two inches long, and most of them were dark brown with pink secondary wings (they keep these covered when settled), but then I spied a couple of white ones and thought of the old pepper-moth example for natural selection. Anyways, it was dim so I had to haul out the tripod. Good thing they weren't moving at all - this shot needed an 8 second exposure so I could use a smaller aperture (increase the depth of field) and keep my ISO lower (minimize grain). Beyond about 500 ISO this camera seems to need some decent light or things end up horribly noisy. I tweaked the colour temperature a bit towards blues in Picasa and used my macro combo and tripod with the incandescent white balance setting.

From Photo of the day 2012

These sapsuckers had a nest somewhere near my house. This adult was around all summer and then started bringing its babies by in July. The willow tree he is on is just outside my front door and I was on my way out when I spied one of the babies and figured I should grab some shots. This guy grabed a bug and took it to a hole (I don't think it was the nest) and proceeded to eat it there. I managed to get one shot with it in his beak and the rest came out pretty good. Cropped, increased shadows and sharpened in Picasa. I used my 70-300mm long lens to shoot it.

Dew

From Photo of the day 2012

So I went out Sunday morning in the fog/dew and got a bunch of shots. This one is by far my favourite, though it takes a larger image to truly appreciate its sharpness. I could likely blow this up to at least 11X17 with no issues. Anyways, the butterfly must have been a bit cold and damp as he wasn't going anywhere and I got to take a number of shots. This was with my macro combo, only a touch of shadows and cropping in Picasa.

From Photo of the day 2012

The dew on part of a spider's web strung between the electric fence wires. I liked how you could see the world upside down in the bigger drop. It was an interesting challenge as it was blowing in the breeze and kept moving out of the focal plane. I used some continuous bursts to get the shot and kept the few that were in focus. I tweaked shadows and sharpening in Picasa here.

From Photo of the day 2012

Some of the last fireweed of the season - the light was a bit too warm from the morning so I changed my white balance to "incandescent" to compensate - a good choice because such light is too yellow and now the camera compensated for the yellowish morning light. I think I did a touch of shadows and minor sharpening here.

From Photo of the day 2012

And lastly, a leaf on the trail I walk with the dog in the morning. I loved how it was coated in little drops and then the big one magnified everything underneath it. Same deal as the others I think, a bit of shadows and sharpening.

Fair and Frost

From Photo of the day 2012

I took some photos at the fall fair last weekend - mostly of the draft horse events because I always find such big horses fascinating. At the end of the teams with carts they had the team of four horses - this was the set of grey Percherons - turns out I've been driving past (and admiring) the leading two mares on my way to work for the last year. At this point I think they were trotting. I sat on the ground and angled my wide angle lens up through the bottom bars of the gate to make them look as big as they seemed in real life. I might have increased shadows a bit in picasa but otherwise straight from the camera.

From Photo of the day 2012

This one I shot on my early morning dog walk yesterday - I guess its officially fall. We had our first frost out on the field. I took my macro combo and spent some time getting the right angle, focus, and aperture was the hardest. It wasn't very bright out yet - long morning shadows, so not a lot of available light. I had a fairly wide aperture so the depth of field isn't what I would have liked. If I'd been thinking I would have poked the ISO up to 400 and then shot with a smaller aperture. Oh well - still thinking like a film photographer with no shot to shot ISO (ASA) control. Still it's different and I quite like how it came out.

Lightening

From Photo of the day 2012

So I finally fetched my tripod from school and had a go at the lightning that has been happening over the past few days. I missed out on the most intense storm I have seen on Saturday night because I had no tripod. I managed not too badly last night with a more spread out storm. This first shot was taken on my way home along the side of the highway - you can just make out the blur of car lights and the red glow was from the streetlights at the intersection. I shot these with either a 15 or 30 second shutter, hoping some lightning would happen in that spot during that time. Most of these are quite heavily cropped, though the first was shot with my wide angle lens with less cropping (the rest were with my 50mm lens at f 2.8). Hard to see in these sizes but there is a fair bit of ISO grain, one of the few times I got the D300 instead of the 200... ah well. Cool all the same - new type of photos for me!

From Photo of the day 2012

From Photo of the day 2012

From Photo of the day 2012