Wow! I can’t believe I’m still as enthused about this project as I was on Day 1. I’ve had quite a few days (yesterday, as an example) where photography and my Photo of the Day weren’t the primary focus (pun intended) of that day. However, most days I start thinking about my photograph over morning coffee. It’s now been two months and I’m still excited to try new things in my efforts to become a better photographer. Today, for example, I tried something new. I used a star filter on my lens.
I’m always intrigued by the starbursts in photos. In a beginning photography class I took last fall, our instructor, Jeff Burkholder, by far the best instructor I’ve had in the many classes I’ve taken, offered lots of suggestions from practical experience, including how to make a star filter. This morning I noticed an interesting light pattern streaming through the shutters in the living room and wondered how I could get a star burst. I remembered Jeff’s suggestion to use a screen or some other kind of mesh so I took a piece of green mesh screen from a sprouting kit I have to sprout seeds for my parrot. The mesh is green, coarse and was not even attached to the lens; I just held it in front of the lens. I was amazed at the results.
So, I went on a mission to get starbursts on water drops. Luckily, today is sunny. Bright sunlight streamed through an upstairs window and I took advantage of that light. I dripped some water onto a round black marble salt box and set it by the sunny window. Here is the result of my efforts. I used manual focus and got a sharper image than with my auto focus attempts. I cropped the image slightly.
35mm lens
ISO 200
f/3.5
1/250
AWB
Manual Focus
Cropped