Month: January 2011

My High Hat Camellia, a lovely, light pink peony form, is a sport of Daikagura, a camellia developed in Japan in the 19th century. Many years ago, my plant started returning to its roots, so to speak. About half the plant now exhibits deep rose and white Daikagura flowers instead of the light pink High Hats. This is not one of its better years, but the plant currently has about half High Hat and half Daikagura flowers. I think I prefer the Daikaguras.

18-200mm lens at 150mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/60

Today, I had my first “photo shoot.” My personal trainer asked me to take her baby’s six month pictures. I prepared by asking a friend, who is learning baby photography, about appropriate settings and what to expect. I bought a bounce flash contraption and some reflectors to use to enhance the lighting. I practiced muting the intensity of my flash, hoping there would be a large window to allow enough natural light to avoid using direct flash. As it happened, we shot outside. . . at noon. The sun was intense, even in January, and everything I’ve read and been told is that you just can’t shoot outside at noon and expect to get any results. I took 273 photos in about an hour. There were a couple of people there so I had one person hold the reflector so I could get more light on Faith’s face. Then, when I changed sides, I used it to block the sun. It was a challenge; lots of photos were blown out, overexposed beyond repair. I shot mostly closeups and learned first hand about the warnings I’d been given that if you use too large an aperture, one eye will be in focus and the other will be out of focus. In the end, though, I got some great shots from a precious model. I love three things about this photo: 1) the shallow depth of field, 2) that I managed to get both her eyes in focus, and 3) the drool. One of my photographic quests is getting the perfect water drop. I realize saliva is a little more viscous than water, but I’m claiming the water drop in this photo. Faith’s mom gave me permission to post this photo.

18-200 lens at 52mm
ISO 200
f/5
1/200

Costco has been my favorite place to shop for a long time. And here’s why:

I don’t even know what kind of wine this is, but they’ve got plenty of it. . . seemingly endless rows. I loved the way those few bottles in the middle are tilted a bit.

18-200 lens at 80mm
ISO 800
f/51/40

I tweaked this a little in Aperture, with a slight crop and applying Curves, In: .281 Out: .426

I visited my high school alma mater today; it was at once familiar and totally alien, but the ramps are still there.

18-200mm lens at 18 mm
ISO 1600
f/5.6
1/200

This is a glass door in my friend Honora’s house, taken about 8:30 this morning. I found the reflections on the glass and the wavy images on the opposite side of the glass to be intriguing.

18-200 mm at 200 mm
ISO 1600
f/5.6
1/25

It’s hard to find any better seafood than Dungeness crab at peak season. We came home with a huge pan of Dungeness crab claws from the Santa Rosa High School Foundation’s Second Annual Crab Feed. Nom, nom, nom, nom.

18-200mm lens at 200mm
ISO 1600
f/5.6
1/20

In early January, my gym is normally bulging at the seams with resolute slackers who descend like locusts on the treadmills, elliptical machines, and various weight contraptions there in the hopes of transforming their bodies in just a few visits. It’s still the first week of January and I had hoped to try my hand at taking pictures of motion. My plan was to photograph legs running on a row of treadmills or pedaling on a row of elliptical machines as a good way to show motion. I guess people have foresaken their New Year’s resolutions a little earlier than usual this year. This was my gym at 10 AM this morning:

18-200 mm lens at 40mm
ISO 1600
f/4.5
1/125
ev -2

What I learned today was that I need to check all my settings before starting to take photos. At some point yesterday, after posting the glass spheres photo, I changed the exposure compensation setting to -2 as I was experimenting and failed to return it to zero when I was done. While I don’t think it ruined the photo, it would have been a bit brighter if the setting had been at 0.

Well, Don Ho probably wouldn’t call these tiny bubbles. They’re actually glass balls, part of an odd chandelier I was intrigued by at Lamps Plus where I had to go to find some special light bulbs for one of my light fixtures. I asked permission to take some photos of the lights and was met with some degree of resistance because corporate thieves apparently take photos and try to duplicate the patented light fixtures at Lamps Plus. This photo, along with several others, was okay’d by the manager. I ask you, who would possibly want to steal this fixture? What is most interesting to me, besides the bokeh effect, are the tiny bits of dust that can be seen in profile; click on the photo to enlarge it to see the dust.

18-200mm lens at 200mm
ISO 400
f5.6
1/80

I took my camera with me to the gym this morning because the valley tule fog was hanging thickly on my route and I wanted to try taking some photos in the fog. Quite a challenge I discovered, especially because the ISO was set to 1600. Once I changed the ISO to 200 I got better results but I should have changed the metering to spot metering from matrix metering so that I would have had better exposure on the foreground branches. I had to tweak the photo a bit in Aperture, using Auto RGB in the Curves setting to enhance the foreground branches.

18-200 mm Lens at 62 mm
ISO 200
f/4.8
1/500

I went shopping at Whole Foods this afternoon. I turned around after selecting my shopping cart and saw this display of winter squash reflecting the red from the window above; I knew that had to be my photo of the day. I even went to Whole Foods to buy an acorn squash!

18-200 mm lens at 36mm
ISO 200
f/4.2
1/640
Aperture Tweak: exposure: + 0.47

I took several photos of just the acorn squash swathed in red but when I looked in the monitor, the colors looked faded and orangey, not the brilliant red I was seeing from the window. I kept adjusting my aperture and shutter speed, not knowing how to photograph the reflection accurately. I was disappointed in the results. I went into the store and shopped for about 30 minutes. When I came out, the sun had shifted slightly and this beautiful reflection of the red-glassed window was on the floor so I took a couple more shots, with better success. In Aperture, I increased the exposure by + 0.47 to highlight the squash slightly but still keep the dramatic dark area surrounding the window and its reflection. This is a fairly accurate depiction of the colors without my having to adjust the color.

I also discovered after I downloaded the photos to my computer, that the red in many of the photos I took of the squash, that appeared orangey when I viewed the monitor in the reflected red light, were very close to the actual red. I guess the reflected red light made the photos viewed on the monitor appear orangey. When I changed my settings to compensate for what I thought was incorrect exposure, I lost the red completely. This is obviously something I need to learn more about.

I wandered in the yard a while ago trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (or to find something photo-worthy amidst the dead plants, mud and weeds there). I decided to focus on the hummingbird feeder just in case. I’d just refilled the feeder after letting it stay empty for a few days and just before I stepped out, a hummer hovered in front of the window, as if to say, “thanks.” While I stood inches from the feeder, I became aware of that familiar hummmmmm and there he was, in my lens. Trying to use autofocus on a fast moving target is not an easy feat and I’m not sure this is really in focus but I was blown away when I saw this photo on my monitor and I knew it was my photo for the day! And there’s a bokeh effect to boot! Life is good.

18-200 lens at 200mm
ISO 1250
f/5.6
1/500

No tweaking in Aperture at all.

I was so excited to post this that I realize it does need some tweaking. Here is version 2 with exposure +1 and a slight tweak in “curves.”

Cropped:

I had to go to The Bird Shop to replenish Bobo’s pellets and I brought my camera along hoping to get some good shots of Trouble, the shop’s resident Ruby Macaw. I got a few mediocre shots of Trouble, some so-so shots of a baby Blue and Gold Macaw,a beautiful shot of an orange canary but my favorite shot of the day was of a patron’s African Gray perched on her shoulder.

Lens: 35mm
ISO 800
f/2.8
1/100

I’m starting off my 365 project the same as my favorite way to start the day: with a cup of coffee and the newspaper.

I used my 35mm f/1.8 lens set to spot metering (the spot was where the handle joins the cup); obviously, a very shallow depth of field.
ISO: 1250
f/1.8
1/160