More Macro Fun

Continued fun with my "new" macro combo - macro converter + a 50mm lens

From Photo of the day 2012

 A local cat outside the school during photography class. He was sunning himself and was particularly amenible. One of the most photographed cats in town I imagine, the kids use him for assignments.

From Photo of the day 2012

Macro shot of some ice in the parking lot of the school after it had thawed and re-frozen with neat crystals in it.

From Photo of the day 2012

A leaf in the snow I found yesterday while supervising kids. I like the curl and the way the light hit it.

From Photo of the day 2012

Claws of the same cat as top, he was getting playful on the playground. I managed to get a close up with the full macro on it. Great textures of both the paw and the wood. Cool!

Macro fun

From Photo of the day 2012

 So I finally got my macro converter hooked up with the old Nikon series E 50mm 1.8 lens. I took it to school and took some photos while the photography class was out getting photos for their assignment. Had a blast with some really basic subjects. Above, a pine branch in the school courtyard with some snow on it (very nice) and the end of a small icicle below. I had a student with a dark sweater stand behind it so that I would get the nice contrast. I like this combo!

From Photo of the day 2012

From Photo of the day 2012

And one more of the little common redpoll on my window feeder because he's cute. This one was just with the 50mm lens, no macro.

From Photo of the day 2012 A little Common Redpoll chowing down on my window mounted bird feeder.

From Photo of the day 2012 Black-capped Chickadee on the same feeder, not cropped.

Suddenly remembered that the D200 I bought nearly 2 years ago can actually make use of my old lens that came with my old Nikon EM film camera. I had been talking to a friend in Vanderhoof who recently got a new fixed 2.8 50mm-ish lens. I decided I'd double check this old lens and see what it had going for it - f1.8 fixed 50mm! Not bad! Fairly useless for wildlife unless they come to your window, but this revelation also means that my macro-converter I had for the old film camera will also work on my D200. Unfortunately I left it at work, so I dont have any macro shots to show off today. Loving how sharp it is though - the top photo is heavily cropped, but you'd never guess. I love how Nikon never changed its lens mount through the years.

Green

Ok, old pictures but I'm getting back into the swing of things. I doubt it will be daily again soon, if ever.

From Photo of the day 2012  Anyways - found this toad outside my house in June when I came home from work. Likely the last day of school because I finally brought the camera home and so had it to take pictures with. I am considering either of these shots as an entry in the fall fair under the photography category "green". Not sure which, currently leaning to the top one because I think it is a better photo technically and if someone else is judging it.

From Photo of the day 2012 Find the toad! Its actually not as hard as I thought it would be compared to the back of the camera version.

Scenery and Wildlife

From Photo of the day 2012

My front yard on Monday morning. We got some snow over the weekend and I liked how all the branches on the deciduous trees were highlighted against the black of the conifers. On a somewhat related note, I also like that its now LIGHT when I leave my house in the morning at about 7:30 am and STILL light when I get home in the afternoon, which enables me to actually take pics for this blog. This one is straight from the cam with my wide angle lens, unfortunately don't recall the exact settings.

From Photo of the day 2012

This one I took on Friday (I think - I know its late being posted) when I hoofed out to the round bale stack in my back field after school. I liked the light on the hay and and the pretty evening sky. Oddly, this is taken with my long lens at minimal focal length (70mm) because I wasn't packing my whole kit and had only brought that lens. I had to stand way back. I wasn't sure this was actually the shot I wanted when I took it, tried a bunch more with a barn in the background, and then ended up using this one anyways. The moose have been chewing on the one in the bottom corner, a number of times last week I had to go walk the dog in the other field because they were still there and I didn't her (or me) to get trompled by and angry/startled moose.

From Photo of the day 2012

Taken on the way back from the hoof out to the round bales - I liked the lighting and the contrast of the plant (I always called them ant flowers as a kid, no idea what they are actually called) with the shadowy background. The stems came out nice and sharp too. Another successful straight from the camera shot.

From Photo of the day 2012

This one is a short-eared owl I spotted on the way home from school yesterday. I went out way past him as I was driving fairly quick then pulled a u-turn and came back on the other side of the road. He put up with a bunch of shots before this one (him taking off) but I botched most of them by underexposure. This one was salvageable and he was in an interesting stance. I have cropped this, increased highlights and fill light and slightly sharpened in Picasa 3.

From Photo of the day 2012

And the rouge pack of deer on the way home from work last week. They were considering crossing the road, one had even hopped the fence, but when I slowed down they turned tail. Got to love being in northern BC where you can stop in the middle of the road for 5 minutes and take pictures with the window rolled down and not get in anyones way. Of course I had my wide angle lens on and by the time I got the long one on they were a considerable distance away so I got a trail of butts. I cropped it to remove most of a distracting blurry bit of grass or fence in the bottom left. I suppose the deer create a bit of a leading line, the shot is mostly included because I thought the deer were cool (hence its included at the bottom).

Obviously my students are beating me at keeping up with the whole 3 shots posted a week thing. Hope to do better next week!

Ungulates

From Photo of the day 2012

Spotted this big white-tailed buck on the way home from school on Monday with his girlfriend. I think he has 5 points, regardless he was big. I'm not really happy with this picture because it was waay to dark and I had to tweak it too much in Picasa 3 - highlights, fill light, too much sharpening, etc. Looked at anywhere other than here it would be grim. But it works and a neat subject. I liked how he held his head up and looked fairly regal.

From Photo of the day 2012

These two moose I spotted on the way home from school on Friday. It was intended to be posted as part of last week, but I got too busy. Again, the shot was far to dark and this is much over edited. After marking my student's work I am beginning to think I am getting horribly out of practice, as their current shots put these to shame. The moose were cool though - these are the first moose I have seen since moving up here, though there are loads of tracks in my backyard.

Catch-up and recommit

I am now teaching two photography classes and have challenged my grade 11 and 12 students to keep a photo blog as part of their course work. That said, I didn't think it was fair for me to not hold to the same standards. So. Three photos a week, taken in that week, not necessarily posted in three separate posts (because of time constraints) but hopfully so. Here goes....

From Photo of the day 2012

Technically this one doesn't count because I took it over the Christmas break a few weeks ago. This is at Echo lake outside of Vanderhoof on the frozen lake. I went snowshoeing with Meg in the -20C or so, and there were a number of abandoned ice fishing holes. I'm not sure how they cut these giant chunks (or got them out of the hole) as they were square. Maybe someone here will enlighten me. I think I tweaked the lighting in Picasa 3 afterwards. I used Meg to give the blocks and the hole a sense of scale. She wasn't to sure about the black part.

From Photo of the day 2012

Another taken at the same time - the contrast of the white crystals against the smooth black ice was cool. I think the dog came by to check out what I was doing and had a go at digging the hole again (ruining the smoothness of course). Ah well, I liked it. I may have tweaked the lighting in Picasa, don't really remember.

From Photo of the day 2012

This one I did take yesterday - after work no less! Those down south don't appreciate their longer winter days enough. It is now light to about 5:30 pm (bliss!) so I don't have to run Meg in the dark in the morning AND the evening. This is almost straight from the camera - I liked the long red light and the fence leading off into the back - I did have to touch up a big sensor dust spot in the sky with Picasa 3. Now I just need to find my sensor cleaning stuff so I don't have to fix all my pictures... where did it get put after the move??

From Photo of the day 2012

The side of my house - this has made me laugh over the last week or so. It makes me think that the house must have an itch and is trying to scratch it with its 4 ft long curly chunk of snow. I like how the icicles are no longer verticle and get a curve as the gravity has changed for them. Not the most spectacular picture, but one I've been meaning to get for a while (hard when its dark most of the time you are home). I did take some others from other angles but they just didn't work. I guess thats two for this week. I will have to find another.

A few more

So I've got a bit of time to update this.

From Photo of the day 2011

I took this while helping some of my photography students find pictures around the school yard - to be honest, I think I swiped the idea from one of them, or at least partly. I like all the textures in the worn out swing, and the sharpness and colour around the rust stains. I will fully admit the blue post in the corner is a bit distracting and perhaps should have been cropped out. Anyways, one that just kind of worked. This is straight from the cam with my wide angle lens.

From Photo of the day 2011

This one I took at my house just as the sun was going down on a friday evening a few weeks ago. The temperatures were down around -15 or -20 C and still falling. That weekend it got down to -33 C at my house - and this was just the first of my windows to display frost. Later in the weekend this little feather was lost in more frost. I liked the fading light in the background too. Straight from the camera, wide angle lens.

More to come later.

Back online

I've been offline since my move to Vanderhoof in Northern BC in August so I have a fair bit of catching up to do. I have still been taking photos, not as often as I should, as I am teaching a photography course as part of my employment. I will post a few photos at a time over the next couple of days and weeks as I have some time.

From Photo of the day 2011

Low bush blueberries - the whole plant is about an inch or two tall, and the berries are very small, but absolutely delicious. I took this shot at the end of August off the trail to Echo Lake under the powerlines. Once Meg discovered what I was doing it was a race to pick them. As she didn't have to bother with hands I think she won by practically sucking the berries off the plants.
I think this was straight from the camera, but I have long since forgotten.

From Photo of the day 2011

A frosty, single-seeded dandelion. These pictures look odd now, as there is several inches of snow outside, but at the time I was kind of excited by the frost in early September. The back-lighting made this shot interesting - I like how it illuminates the fluff of the seed so dramatically compared to the shady background. The other stuff around it is alfalfa from one of the many hay fields around my house.

Dog Walks

Just a couple shots from my dog walking and other outings over the last couple of weeks.

From Photo of the day 2011

I took a trip up to the Crow and Gate pub outside of Nanaimo last week. The food was pretty good, the gardens were great. Lots of hummers, mostly Rufus hummingbirds like this guy, I took around 30 pictures of them but this one was the best. I like it because it looks a lot more natural than the usual one with the feeder in the shot and I managed to (almost) freeze his wings. Shot handheld with my 70-300 lens, cropped and (can't remember) I think I might have tweaked the shadows.

From Photo of the day 2011

This was an on the spot shot. I walked down to McKenzie bight yesterday with the dog and a friend. The tide was out, but coming in, and the foam was trickling in among the rocks. It must have woke up all the shore crabs hiding under the gravel because everywhere you looked there were crabs poking up or crawling in the water underneath. You could hear them there were so many - I liked how some were emerging from the foam so you couldn't see the whole thing. I was crouching for this shot, again with my long lens. This is cropped for aspect ratio and framing only.

From Photo of the day 2011

This guy I found today on my walk at Elk Lake with Meg. He was only about 4-5 inches long and he didn't look like the typical garter snakes (red or yellow stripes on the side) so I thought I would brave the snake stink and grab him to see if he was something different. He coiled himself firmly around my fingers and actually let me swap my long lens for my wide angle with him there! I wanted a bit more zoom but the focusing distance on my long lens is further than my arm length and I'm awful at trying to shoot without aiming through the viewfinder.

Anways - this is straight from the camera. I think he's just a young garter, but all my vertebrate ID books and notes from school are packed so I can't check.

From Photo of the day 2011

And another find from Elk Lake today - a red squirrel. Actually - it could be a douglas squirrel - one has an orange tummy, one white. Anyways, I spotted him as he scampered to the far side of the trunk as I was coming up the path so stopped and got the camera all ready. He came around and went up the tree - I have some shots of that too - but then turned around and was glaring at the dog in this one. I liked his stance - it just oozes squirrel. I did have to tweek it a bit - a fair bit of shadows in Picasa 3, nothing else.

Scaley

From Photo of the day 2011

This is a European Wall Lizard - introduced into BC. I though they were alligator lizards until 5 minutes ago when I looked it up to make sure. They are all through my friend's rock garden in Brentwood and, yes, they do crawl up his walls (the outside!) This was shot through a lot of grass, so I was impressed with how it came out. He is quite sharp, and I had to be sneaky. As you can see he is watching me, any quick moves and he would run down a hole. This guy was about 5 inches long. I cropped it a bit to get rid of some of the more distracting grass, sharpened (a touch) and gave it a little bit of highlights to bring out his colours and brighten it up a bit.

From Photo of the day 2011

Also from my friends garden - a swallowtail butterfly on mock orange flower. I cropped and sharpened only in Picasa 3. Technically butterflies have scales too, hence the title.

From Photo of the day 2011

And not the best photographic quality - but Mr. 6V was back at my place today, so I thought I'd throw this in. I had a few of him preening but they are a lot darker. This was cropped only. Maybe he will find a mate for next year and nest near here.

Bee and the bird

From Photo of the day 2011

The bee beats out the shot below for top spot for photo quality, as opposed to subject. The full size version of this is remarkably sharp, and could easily be printed quite large. I took the dog to Elk Lake again on off chance of seeing the red-tails again in better light. I hadn't heard them at all where I usually do and was in a photo taking sort of mood. The light was nice and the bees were pretty close. It was harder than I expected, they move quickly and unpredictably and I was working at the end of my zoom. I took several of a couple of different bees and this was the best. I sharpened a touch and cropped a bit in Picasa 3.

From Photo of the day 2011

And then I did manage to find one of the young red-tailed hawks from the last week. He started soaring over top of me, and did a couple of passes. Evidently he was curious as he's looking right at me in this shot - cool! The evening light helped me out a bit, and its way better than the last posts shots in terms of quality. I did a little saturation for the sky, a bit of highlights/shadows, sharpening and a crop in Picasa 3.

Fledgelings

From Photo of the day 2011

This is the "official" shot for this post. It makes the cut for this size, but it is cropped and a bit over worked (some saturation, sharpening, and cropping) for viewing large size. It is good for the light available (bright overcast) but not a great shot quality-wise. It looks cool here with the white background, the bird looks like it is not framed.

The story behind the angry adult red-tailed hawk above follows:
I found a number of early fledgling red-tailed hawks yesterday while walking at Elk Lake. Of course, I hadn't packed my camera (or binos!) so was left squinting at them and listening to their calling. Today I packed my camera and headed back out as they were young and likely to be found in the same area. It took me a bit but I did find them in the end - two - and just learning to follow mom around a bit on their wings. I got a few pictures of the babies hanging out and flying, but I was shooting towards the sun in bright overcast conditions. Quality not so good - the bird watching very cool. I included one of the babies in flight below.

From Photo of the day 2011

Catch-up and Merritt

I have spent more time away from home in the last week and a half than I have here. I've taken a number of good shots, just no time to put them up. So here are some of the more interesting pictures I shot in the last couple weeks:

From Photo of the day 2011

This shot is actually sharper than it appears at this size (maybe it's just my monitor) - all the details are pixel sized. You can view the large size by clicking its link. I took this at Island view beach on the 19th of June. The dog spooked a couple of herons towards me so I got a mass of shots of them flying by. This is one of the best ones - the hill in the background gave it some perspective, and the bird was in breeding plumage. I like how smooth the back of his wings look.

From Photo of the day 2011

This is a marmot hiding from my dog - the things I would miss without her! A friend and I decided to head out to Merritt to do some kestrel trapping again this year. I think the cold spring set everything back - we did catch one adult male kestrel, but we didn't find any active kestrel nests. While we were checking out a likely tree, Meg found this guy. I took some pictures and hauled her off.

From Photo of the day 2011

Again from Merritt - the lighting wasn't great so I metered off the tree to make sure the bird didn't come out a silhouette. The tree had a bunch of these mountain bluebirds in it. Not sure if they all had separate nests in it, or just liked the tree and were nesting in the bluebird boxes on the fence posts by the road.

From Photo of the day 2011

I believe this is straight from the camera - possibly a little sharpening. Large aperture to blur the background and a step back with the long lens to get as much zoom as possible. A wild columbine - the overcast kind of morning light really worked. Taken outside of Merritt on the hike back from another fruitless nest check.

Cooper's Hawk

From Photo of the day 2011

This little guy came to hunt around our birdfeeder and the neighbour's back yard this morning. There has been another juvenile hanging around the last couple of days, not sure if it was him - I thought the other one was a female, but not sure. He has bands on from Andy Stewart - a local researcher who bands most of the cooper's hawks in Victoria. Blue bands are male, red are female. I've sent off the numbers to (hopefully) get a bit of a backstory on this particular bird. I had some pictures I went outside to get when he was further back in our yard, this was from his second visit this morning, and I shot all three through our dining room picture window.

From Photo of the day 2011

Just a different pose, another good shot from a larger series I shot while waiting for him to take off.

From Photo of the day 2011

This one I think is very cool - even though the bird has a bit of motion blur. For the speed he would have been going I was suprised how well he came out and that I actually got all of his head in the frame (just). He had just launched himself from the previous branch and was chasing a crow. It was just as cool as watching my own bird hunt - he had his feet on the crow, tussled with it in the air for a bit before he lost it and chased it up over our roof and flew away. Not suprisingly all our feeder-visiting finches were sitting very still and quiet in the labernum tree!

Photo hunting

This is going to be a post for photos from a few days ago.

From Photo of the day 2011

I took this on Friday morning at Cadboro Bay beach on my morning dog walk. It turns out its almost as handy to have a pointing dog for picture taking as it would be for hunting. Meg is trained enough that she will wait, pointing the ducks, until I tell her to chase them. It works out for me - I can get my camera set and ready - and for her training for when I have another bird and want to hunt ducks. You can just see her blurry head in this shot. I was going to crop it out, but then the framing was off, and besides it tells a story. I could even call it "shooting" - she's just a camera dog, instead of a gun dog.

I cropped, increased shadows, and sharpened this in Picasa 3.

From Photo of the day 2011

Same duck from the same chase, just with a bit more time. With the 5fps I've been able to catch a lot more action, and had several shots to choose from. I liked how sharp her tail was and the side lighting worked. Again, a bit of a crop (the ducks were a bit far for my lens), increased shadows a touch, and sharpening.

Scale

From Photo of the day 2011

I took a paininting down to Prism Imaging in Victoria to have some prints made a few days ago in the morning. Seeing as I had to go downtown for that, I took the dog to the Dallas Road beach for her morning run. It must have been a spring tide (or close to it) as the water was way out and this big rock was exposed. I thought the big barnacles were cool - about the size of a twoonie around - and then I noticed that they had little barnacles on top of them. I was reminded of the saying "even my bruises have bruises" and figured this could be the "even the barnacles have barnacles!". The kelp added a bit extra for perspective and interest. I've been discovering the auto-bracketing function on my new camera which is cool. It gives me a chance to take the same picture in a three (or more) frame burst, and the camera will vary the exposure a little bit with each shot. I have it set to do this using shutter speed. You can do it with aperture too - I guess you could use that for action shots - but that would change your depth of field, which was way more important to this shot. I think this was the -0.3 exposure shot (meaning my chosen settings resulted in the image being more exposed than I would have liked) , which I further sharpened in Picasa 3. No cropping.

From Photo of the day 2011

While the previous was small scale, this is obviously large scale. I took this one the day before - actually, this several - on a hike up the aptly named Mt Work on Sunday afternoon. This is another stitched panorama shot using ArcSoft's Panorama Maker Pro (though this time version 5). Unfortunately the free version of the software only outputs 1/16th size panoramas - good enough for here, but not for printing. The free version of Pro 4 did the full size ones, but I guess then they weren't selling any software. I may remake this with a purchased version when I get some money.

Anyways - I shot the individual shots in a vertical camera frame to get more of the foreground in with the rest of the scenery. Also used as high an F-stop I could get and still hand-hold the shots in the given light (f 11) to maximize my depth of field. A total of 5 shots to make this one. You can see the Bamberton mill/quarry/construction site on the shores of the Saanich Inlet, and I think if had I bothered to haul out my binos on site I could have made out bits of Mill Bay and Cobble Hill. Of course, having the camera set up with the wide angle lens for scenery shots, I missed two great opportunities at eagles flying by at eye level or lower off the edge of the rock face. Bother. Other than the stitching, I did no post processing.

Flowers

From Photo of the day 2011

I took this photo yesterday, but didn't get a chance to process it. I took it on a walk around Oak Bay and Willows Beach with my mom and sister in the morning. I didn't see anything much that sparked my photo-eye until we were almost finished and I spied this iris in someone's roadside flower garden. It was huge, and I liked the brush of stamens waiting to paint the next bee to visit with pollen as he crawled in. I stood back and shot this with my long lens (70-300mm) to make it more like a macro shot. I sharpened a touch in Picasa 3 just to bring out that brush a bit more.

From Photo of the day 2011

This one I took today at the end of a walk around Durrance Lake with a friend. I liked how they were clinging to the rockface above the parking lot, and I liked how the light was hitting them from the side, but not the rock behind them. This made it look like they had a bit of a spotlight on them. It also let me meter off them and leave the rock behind them underexposed enough to be black. Just cool. Again, I shot this with my long lens as they were up out of reach, and it just does macro better than my wide angle. Slight sharpening in Picasa, nothing else.