Month: March 2011

Today, because I volunteer at the California Foundation for Birds of Prey, I met and photographed Stig, a gyrfalcon/merlin hybrid whose handler is Kim Mauch. This gorgeous falcon is named after The Stig, from the BBC’s Top Gear show. The Stig is a white-suited race car driver who never removes his helmet. According to Top Gear, “Some say he’s a CIA experiment gone wrong, and that his blood smells of Root Beer. All we know is, he’s called The Stig.” Perhaps Stig, the falcon, was given this moniker because of the helmet he wears when he is out and about and not hunting. The difference is that Stig, the falcon, sometimes goes without his helmet. And I don’t think his blood smells like root beer!

Lens at 48mm
ISO 500
f/4.5
1/160
SOOC

I’m not much of a collector but over the years I have accumulated lots of funky frog garden ornaments given to me by friends and family. Here are just a few. The bright green guy in the middle actually lives inside, so he still has vibrant color unlike his outdoor counterparts whose colors have been faded by the harsh valley sun.

Lens at 200mm
ISO 1600
f/5.6
1/1600
Exposure +.75
Curves

. . . more than 260 million years. The common horsetail is a survivor of the Carboniferous age and it is a strange and unusual plant. I walked across the street behind my house and down the bank to the little creeklet that runs along the sidewalk. Instead of the cattails that I was looking for, a thick swath of horsetails stretched in both directions along the water. I was drawn to the color and the vertical lines of the plants.

It was overcast so I set the White Balance to cloudy. I used the widest aperture. And, I was presented with another conundrum: some of the photos were overexposed and some seemed fine, although all the settings were the same. The photos I took when I faced west were appropriately exposed; those that I took when I faced north or east seemed to be slightly overexposed. I should have used a faster shutter speed so that the north and east facing exposures would have been correct. I wrongly assumed that because the sky was overcast, and it was only an hour after noon, the sun wouldn’t have an effect on direction. It obviously did. And the brightness of the sky when I faced west resulted in the slightly darker exposure which, in this instance, was correct.

The photo I chose for today was not taken facing west. I applied “Curves” in Aperture to this photo and did not decrease the exposure.

Lens at 200mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/100
White Balance Cloudy
Curves, cropped

I was returning from photographing my neighbor’s ornamental plum tree and I glanced to the space between my front window and the azaleas. There was a pair of tiny mushrooms emerging from a patch of Irish moss. I got down on my knees and looked for the Leprechaun napping underneath. He wasn’t there but I took a couple of photos anyway. I was intrigued by the color and the bokeh in the foreground.

Lens at 200mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/125
Cropped

I ran across a guy offloading racks of flowers in large pots at Raley’s this morning. Lots of primroses (hence the title of this post) and ranunculus. I like the basic composition of this one and the colors are very spring-like.

200mm lens
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/500
SOOC

Today I attended a Raptor Rescue and Transport class sponsored by the California Foundation for Birds of Prey, an organization started by my parrot’s veterinarian. It was held at the Roseville Bird and Pet Clinic where some of the rescued raptors are being rehabilitated. I was privileged to watch Dr. Joseph interacting with a few of these birds and she allowed me to take some photos while I watched her. This is a red-tailed hawk gulping down a chunk of thawed quail. I don’t know why part of the beak looks green…a reflection?

Lens @ 200mm
ISO 1600
f/5.6
1/30
Exposure +2

I went to the newly reopened Farmers’ Market at Sunrise Mall this morning. It moved last year to the south end of Sunrise Avenue at the light rail station in Rancho Cordova, twice as far away from me as the Sunrise market. The market at Sunrise Mall was large and bustling and it was disappointing to have it move away. I was happy that it returned but now the market place is split between the two locations. One of the farmers told me that the other market had lots of produce and that the Laotian green grocers were all at the Rancho Cordova location this morning; the Sunrise market was mostly fruit. So I didn’t come home with the vegetables I’d planned to buy; instead I found kumquats and some fabulous Shiitake and beech mushrooms. I have no idea what I’m going to do with either yet but I guess I’ll think of something.

I took photos of fruit and mushrooms and flowers and the funky blues band playing off to one side but I thought the most colorful and interesting sight at the market was the clown twisting balloons into monkeys clinging to vines. The white balance was set to auto but the photo looked cold so I adjusted the white balance to warm it up.

200mm lens
ISO 200
f/6.3
1/400

Last night, while reading up on using polarizing filters after my disappointing results yesterday, I discovered something else I wanted to try. I was fascinated by a technique discussed in the book Understanding Exposure, by Bryan Peterson, given to me by my friend Melinda. What caught my interest was an interesting shot that used a long shutter speed and a zoom lens to achieve an “exploding” effect. So, here is my version of Bryan Peterson’s exploding meadow. Mine is exploding googly eyeballs (the tiny little glue on eyes for toys) that were in a box of stuff I once dragged home from a garage sale. Finally, a use for them!

I attached my camera to the tripod (it seems to be structurally sound today), faced it down to a chair seat with the googly eyes clustered on it. Then, with the lens at maximum extension (200mm) and a slow shutter speed (1 second), I tripped the shutter and zoomed out the lens. I had to crop the photo a little but I was fascinated by the end result.

ISO 100
f/11
1 second
Cropped

Today, I decided to see what effect the polarizing filter has on glare on water. I’ve tried this on other glary surfaces and found that it makes a difference but I found today’s result to be the most dramatic. The first photo was taken with the polarizing filter turned for the least polarizing effect. The second photo was taken with the filter turned for the maximum effect. It is clear that the polarizer greatly reduces the glare and reflection on the water. It also seems to have had an effect on the overall color of the photo. The photos were taken in succession but the first was taken with the camera turned 90° so I cropped both photos so they would have the identical layout for comparison. Also, these photos were taken at 11:59AM, so the sun was directly overhead.

Both photos:

18mm lens
ISO 200
f/4.5
1/125
AWB

I have a door stop that is a disembodied hand made of iron. I was staring at it this morning and it made me think of “Dexter,” which I have just started watching at the insistence of a couple of friends and I am loving it. So, this is my homage to “Dexter,” Season 1, anyway. The disembodied hand says,”Hi there!”

I fiddled with the white balance a little but was dissatisfied with the results so I ended up using the Auto white balance setting. I tried different backgrounds and decided the uncluttered sleekness of my stainless fridge was the perfect sterile background that this subject seemed to require.

35mm Lens
ISO 800
f/1.8
1/160
AWB
SOOC

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