Month: November 2011

For today’s challenge, I had to find something that depicts my first initial. I loved this challenge for several reasons, but most importantly, because I got to try out my new lens upon which I splurged this morning. I wanted a fast lens that I can use indoors and Nikon describes its AF NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8D telephoto lens as “superb for indoor close-range sports, theatre and portraits.” Today’s challenge didn’t require a fast lens and I was not indoors when I found the initial “C” as a tendril protruding from the hardenbergia clinging to my front fence. The lens was wide open and it lived up to the gushing reviews I read earlier today about the spectacular bokeh the lens produces. I thought my next lens was going to be a macro lens but that will have to wait. I used manual focus because the auto focus kept trying to focus everywhere but on the thin tendril.

Focal Length 85mm
ISO 100
f/1.8
1/320
SOOC

Focal Length 35mm
ISO 100
f/2.5
1/100
SOOC

Today’s challenge is zigzag and I was determined NOT to spend hours trying to achieve a perfect shot. My eye settled on my honeycomb blinds covering the bay window so I attached my 35mm prime lens, opened the aperture as wide as it will go, leaned against the wall took one shot, recomposed to eliminate the distracting edge of the wall at the front of the shot; took a second shot, recomposed to eliminate distractions at the back of the shot, took a third shot that I liked and a fourth because I was in burst mode. I think four shots total might be a record for me.

Focal Length 35mm
ISO 100
f/1.8
1/80
SOOC

Today’s challenge was “soft light” so I decided to take softly lighted photos of the same shells I took for the hard light challenge. I thought this would be an easy challenge and I’d have it wrapped up in a few minutes. I was wrong. It took me more than three hours to accomplish this challenge.

Soft light proved particularly difficult for me to find in my house. I tried different artificial lighting and long shutter speeds. My OTT lights were too bright and even taping white paper over them didn’t help. I tried florescent kitchen lighting, light through my honeycomb blinds, incandescent lights. Nothing was right and I had shadows everywhere. I tried different background fabrics but settled on white, the opposite of the black I used in the “hard light” challenge. After duplicating the focal lengths I used for each of the shells I was still not happy. When I discovered that my south facing guest bedroom had the perfect light at mid afternoon, I set up on the bed. Now the shadows were almost gone and I didn’t need any artificial light but the shallow DOF was ruining my photos. Then I realized that I was trying to soften the light by using a wide aperture to make a shallow depth of field. All that accomplished was to make the shells mostly out of focus and uninteresting. I needed to use the same aperture as I used in the “hard light” challenge, f/29. Since I was using a tripod, that just meant a slightly longer shutter speed. This setting and the nice modulated afternoon light got photos I wanted.

These are all SOOC. I used varied focal lengths, ISO 100, f/29 and shutter speeds of 1.6 seconds for the Sea Urchin and the Lightening whelk, 2 seconds for the Endive Murex, and the Pink Mouthed Murex.

Today’s challenge is “Connections.” This photograph could qualify for several recent challenges, including “Weeds,” “Pointed,” and “Dualism” but I think it qualifies for “Connections” first because the barbed wire connects the fence posts and second, because the fence line “connects” the viewer to the photograph and draws him through it.

The Sunny 16 Rule worked today:
Focal Length 200mm
ISO 100
f/16
1/100
SOOC

Say that fast three times! Today’s daily challenge is “hard light.” I thought about it on my drive home from Santa Rosa this morning. I didn’t want to use flash as was suggested as an option for a “hard light” source so I decided to use my two OTT lights. What would I do without those OTT lights these days? I got them when I was hand quilting years ago to provide bright, clear daylight. I quit quilting soon after obtaining the lights and I have discovered they provide wonderful light for indoor still life type photos, freeing me from having to use flash and allowing me to use low ISOs and slow shutter speeds to obtain the look I seek.

I have a shell collection and I thought some of these shells would be quite dramatic with a single bright side light source. I used a small aperture and a slow shutter speed and laid the shells on a piece of black velvet so that the light would tend to absorb into the black rather than reflect it. I also used my remote shutter release to avoid camera shake and to ensure that these photos were in perfect focus. I had trouble choosing which of the four shells to use for my photo today because they all were interesting to me for different reasons so I decided to include all four. I will need to select one for the challenge so check out Our Daily Challenge to see which one I decide to use.

All four photos are SOOC, with ISO set at 100, aperture at f/29, shutter speed at 4/5 sec. but each had a different focal length; I used my 18-200mm lens.

I’m in Santa Rosa and my friend Honora and I spent the day in pursuit of my photo of the day. We found so many fascinating subjects in and around Santa Rosa that I had a hard time choosing. I took photos of wild turkeys and of vineyards turning gorgeous reds and yellows. I took lots of weed photos to satisfy today’s “weeds” challenge on my Flickr group. I took photos of fences and flowers and lichen-covered rocks. I saw horses, goats, sheep, and even a group of deer grazing by the side of the road. After viewing the more than 400 photos I took today, I decided my favorite photo was a closeup of a small bit of barbed wire that I encountered near a vineyard. I took this photo after seeing a woman yesterday on the side of Riego Road as I was leaving Roseville. She was crouched with her camera lens focused on a barbed wire fence. It struck me as kind of funny and I even called my fellow photoblogger, Melinda, to tell her that we weren’t the only wackos out there with a camera. At the same time it gave me an idea for a future photo, but I didn’t think the opportunity would come so quickly for me. Many of the vineyards I was photographing were surrounded by barbed wire. I love this photo because of its simplicity and the spider web encircling the barb.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 320
f/13
1/100
SOOC

Today’s challenge was “neat” It took me until 10:30 PM to come up with a decent photograph, but thanks to my friend Honora who I am visiting in Santa Rosa, I found the perfect subject. Honora produced her incredibly neatly filled weekly pill container and asked if it was neat enough. Later, when I showed the photo to her daughter Alexis, who arrived just as I downloaded the photos, she exclaimed “Neat!”

Focal Length 35mm
ISO 100
f/16
2.5 seconds
SOOC

Once again I relied on my Flickr daily challenge group for a photo topic today. Today’s challenge is “points.” And once again, my daily visit to the gym resulted in my finding a photo opportunity to fulfill the challenge. But for me, the best part is that not only does this photo contain a point or two, it has water drops and a tiny starburst. Be still my heart!

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 100
f/14
1/80
Cropped

As I drove home this evening, the rainy skies gave way just a little to the setting sun so I pulled over and took a few photos as the sun disappeared. I wasn’t particularly happy with my photo today so I’m adding a bonus photo for the day.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 100
f/16
1/125
SOOC

. . .will they come? Today’s challenge is public buildings. Since my gym is a public building and is attached to another public building, the City of Roseville Martha Riley Community Library and Exploration Center, and I was already there this morning, I thought I’d take a photo of the library. It is an interesting building with lots of angles and glass but I couldn’t find an angle I liked and the overcast skies made for a dismal exposure. Then I went behind the building and found a great playground with lots of color and angles but this nest box, wired to a stairway leading up to the library’s second floor, got my attention. I think this would qualify as a public building since any bird that will fit through the hole could use it (and it IS attached to a public building afterall). This exposure is a little washed out but I thought there was enough color in the photo to leave it as it came from the camera.

Focal Length 130mm
ISO 100
f/6.3
1/100
SOOC

While waiting at the car wash this afternoon (I know it’s supposed to rain tomorrow and until today I have always washed my car myself but I felt today’s situation required professional intervention [car covered with granite grit after a park maintenance worker blew decomposed granite on all the cars in the parking lot at the gym this morning] and besides, I just didn’t feel like washing the car today) I aimed my camera out to Madison Avenue and snapped away with a slow shutter speed.

It is fascinating to me that photographing a moving car with a slow shutter speed results in what appears to be a flying car; the wheels disappear. Here are two cars and a school bus flying along the street. It was a little overexposed despite the low ISO and small aperture but I should have used a smaller aperture so I had to do a little tweaking. And I did it in Aperture, not Photoshop. I’m not too comfortable with Photoshop yet; the class is teaching glitzy things so far, (rainbow sheep and leaves) but not how to improve the appearance of a standard photograph. I presume that will come, or I will manage to figure it out on my own.

It’s windy today and the tall grasses blowing in the wind outside the gym caught my eye. I wanted to get the blowing grasses dramatically backlit but my composition was not good so I cropped and turned the best one to black and white.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 100
f/18
1/200
Cropped and changed to black and white.