Month: March 2012

Today’s theme is “cube” and because I learned my lesson after the WalMart fiasco on Day 76, when I walked into Marshall’s and saw the huge cube suspended from the ceiling with the word “cube” I asked permission to photograph it. I was referred to a supervisor who referred me to the manager who said, “no.” So, after hours of shopping with my sister-in-law, I returned home late in the afternoon, tired and ready for a glass of wine, not ready to find a photo of the day. Fortunately, I had half a cube of butter on the butter dish in my refrigerator and I realized that half a cube of butter is actually pretty close in shape to a geometric cube.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/5
Levels

“Stereotype” is the subject of today’s Flickr challenge. And, once again, my gym provided the inspiration. The Roseville Sports Center caters to normal people with average bodies and I have never seen anyone there who remotely resembles a stereotypical gym rat. So, this morning, after my session with my trainer, when I noticed this muscle-head magazine, I decided my shot was the magazine. The cover features a guy who reminds me of Lou Ferrigno, TV’s original Incredible Hulk, except that he’s not green. This is as close to a stereotype that I’m likely to find anywhere near my gym. And, I imagine that 75 pounds would be a wimpy weight for the guy depicted on the magazine’s cover but that’s the top weight available in my gym.

Focal Length 38mm
ISO 400
f/4.5
1/60
SOOC

Today’s challenge topic is “oval.” While I waited for my car to be serviced at Walt’s this morning, I took a walk down Auburn Blvd. in search of anything oval and while I encountered some interesting things, I saw very few actual ovals. I’m experimenting with different points of view because I’ve been watching some Scott Kelby Training videos and have learned some new approaches to composition. Also, I’m trying out my newest lens, a 28-300mm FX lens that I bought for my new Nikon D800, which I have yet to possess, despite its release one week ago. I am number 6 on the list at Action Camera, only two Nikon D800’s have come in so far, and so I wait. But I’m loving my new lens; good glass as they say in photog lingo! Here are a few of my favorite shots from today.

This is one of the first shots I took. It caught my eye because while the hub cap isn’t oval in fact, it appears oval when viewed from at an angle. I’m reflected in the center of the hub.

Focal Length 28mm
ISO 200
f/18
1/200
SOOC

A little further down the street I saw this “day care” center and I couldn’t resist capturing the sign. One can only imagine what sounds the husband/karaoke singers might emit.

Focal Length 190mm
ISO 200
f/16
1/100
Cropped/Levels

As I passed the Sylvan Community Cemetery, I almost died (pun intended) when I turned and saw the red warning sign.

Focal Length 85mm
ISO 200
f/13
1/80
WB changed to Cloudy

I just liked the look of this twig looming from the darkness, although it was merely the angle of the camera and the background trees that resulted in the darkness. The sun was not out but the high overcast reflected off the top of the twig.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/1000
Cropped, Levels

The dandelions on a school field caught my eye because I occasionally post photos to my “Taraxacum official” Flickr Group (which group has 3700 members) so I knelt down to get a good closeup and a honeybee was flitting from flower to flower. The bee was settled onto the flowers in all but this shot and I was amazed that it’s in focus.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/640
Cropped

And finally, a closeup shot of a chain link fence that has a sort of oval-ish appearance when viewed at this angle.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/400
Levels

Today’s challenge? What’s in my medicine cabinet? I think of a medicine cabinet as a very personal, off limits, part of one’s life. This challenge topic brings to mind a Dear Abby column from years and years ago about a snoopy dinner guest who was finally cured of snooping in the host’s medicine cabinet by some strategically placed marbles that cascaded and bounced everywhere when the offending guest opened the host’s medicine cabinet for the last time. I took this photo of my guest bathroom’s medicine cabinet and I chose the point of view with the door just slightly ajar to reveal only a small part of what’s in the medicine cabinet. But, I will reveal that, as a lifelong migraine sufferer, I am never far from a bottle of pain relief medication.

Focal Length 35mm
ISO 200
f/1.8
1/13
Levels and vignette

Yesterday’s challenge was shadows but there were no shadows yesterday, just high overcast and clouds. Today, there are still lots of clouds but there is an occasional shaft of sun, and when I returned home from picking Bobo up from the vet where she spent the weekend while I visited Santa Rosa, I noticed this interesting shadow of my wrought iron table on the patio. It reminds me of a fan made of Spanish lace.

Today’s challenge is anything ‘mono.’ When I was outside trying to find the elusive sun’s fleeting shadows, I focused on the dead basil stems in a pot and realized that with the brown fence behind them, the entire composition was monochromatic, almost sepia tone, and it intrigued me.

Focal Length 70mm
ISO 200
f/11
1/160
SOOC

Focal Length 160mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/250
SOOC

Before I left Santa Rosa this afternoon, Honora and I went on a walk in the neighborhood. I found this raindrop covered calla lily a block from Honora’s house and I really liked the drops on it. And, I got a chance to use the new 28-300mm lens I bought to go with my new Nikon D800 which did not arrive as promised last week. Action Camera received 2 D800 cameras and I am Number 6 on the list, so I am waiting.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 200
f/14
1/125
Levels Adjustment

It is after 3:30 PM and Honora and I are still in our pajamas after spending all day planning our 2012 “Thelma and Louise” adventure, a road trip down California’s Pacific Coast Highway in September. I needed a break and realized I hadn’t taken any photos yet today, so I checked my Flickr daily challenge group and discovered that today’s theme is “things that go together.” Honora immediately thought of “lock and key” and I went with her suggestion.

I tried various views and lighting scenarios but we both favored this shot in which I bounced the Speed Light off the wall behind me. The only adjustment I made to this shot was a slight crop.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 320
f/6.3
1/200
Flash
Crop

Today we celebrated my Mom’s 95th birthday with champagne and lunch at my brother John’s house in Santa Rosa. Both my brothers, their wives, my friend Honora, John and Pam’s friend Kevin, who shares a birthday with Mom, Luisa, Mom’s caregiver, and Mom enjoyed several bottles of champagne, a wonderful fish stew and a tiramisu birthday cake.

Here’s Mom, enjoying her glass of bubbly and her happy birthday toast.

“Where bowers of flowers bloom in the spring. . . .” Well, it finally is spring in California although you can’t tell it by the weather. Today, when this “sun-kissed” miss, sun-kissed in quotes because there isn’t any sun today, drove by a gorgeous display of California poppies, our state flower, I couldn’t resist pulling over and taking photos. The result? An awful lot of orange, but I wanted the effect of a mass of flowers which is what I always think of when I hear that song, not flowers in a bower.

N.B. While I started this blog with the intention of improving my camera skills, it has served to educate me on other matters as I often decide to double-check my facts on things before I post random information. Today, I learned that “California Here I Come,” by Buddy DeSylva and Joseph Meyer, who wrote it for a musical starring Al Jolson in 1921, is NOT California’s official state song; rather a song called “I Love You, California,” is the official state song, confirmed by our legislature in 1988. Say what??? It is a song which I, a native Californian, have never heard and perhaps more embarrassing, I worked for the State of California in the year that the Legislature adopted it. I don’t believe that enactment made front page news. I’ll cast my vote with the majority who, like myself, consider “Califoria Here I Come,” as California’s state song.

Here are my bowers of flowers.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 640
f/16
1/500
Levels Adjustments

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 640
f/16
1/200
SOOC

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 640
f/16
1/200
SOOC

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 640
f/11
1/320
Cropped

Okay, people, I am continuing to venture, one toe at a time, outside my comfort zone. Today’s photo is a scene I notice every morning when I drive by on the way to the gym and today I finally walked down to photograph it. It was perfect because the sun came out, there were lots of puffy white clouds in the sky and the reflections of the trees I sought were grand. But my photo of it, only so-so. So, (to be a bit redundant) I took a step beyond my recently acquired ability to make a few modest levels and curves adjustments. I decided this scene required the HDR effect, which I’ve used before, but not with a photo to which I’ve made adjustments. I couldn’t decide which version I preferred so I’m posting the color HDR version and the same version changed to black and white, plus a third photo of just the reflections, rendered in HDR painterly mode which brings out the ripples in the water and the reflected clouds.

I’m including a fourth photo, actually related to the first three, because as I walked back to my car, I heard a hawk’s call, looked up and captured this Cooper’s hawk as he flew over my head to one of the treetops I had just photographed.

I spent some time watching my hummingbird feeders today and had a repeat of a new weird problem with my camera or my lens (70-300mm) or maybe it’s the operator. I hope it’s me. What happens is the camera will not allow the shutter release to trigger. I think it’s related to auto focus and couldn’t replicate the problem when I was on manual focus but with a subject like a hummingbird, I want to use continuous focus while tracking the bird, especially when it flies to and from the feeder. I am on a quest to get a perfectly focused shot of hummingbird in flight and I’m not adept enough at twiddling the manual focus ring to make the quick minute adjustments necessary to photograph a hummingbird in flight.

I did manage to capture a few well-focused photos when my camera/lens didn’t let me down. I set the ISO to 640 and the shutter speed to 1/640 and the aperture was wide open (not quite the Sunny 16 rule – but it was cloudy when I took the shots). Here are my three favorites, with photos of birds at two different feeders, hence the vastly different background.

The high shutter speed still doesn’t stop the wing movement.

.

Focal Length 280mm
ISO 640
f/5.6
1/640
Cropped

To me, the most unusual shot shows the bird’s partially closed eye; my shutter speed was fast enough to capture that blink.

Focal Length 230mm
ISO 640
f/5.6
1/640
Levels, cropped

Finally, I just liked the focus on this shot which was one of the earlier shots. Too bad his tail isn’t completely in the photo. This shot was at 300mm so for the rest of the shots I took, I reduced the focal length so that I didn’t cut the tail off again. I took the two shots above after I took this shot.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 640
f/5.6
1/640
Levels, cropped

As I looked around for something interesting to photograph today, a single flower blooming on my rosemary plant caught my attention. I photographed it looking straight down and as I looked through the viewfinder, I realized that the leaves on the rosemary stems are symmetrically placed to form an X, something I’d never noticed.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 250
f/5.6
1/80
Levels

I love shoes. I love to buy shoes. My shoe collection, while not yet rivaling that of Imelda Marcos, is larger than it’s ever been. But, I haven’t always been able to find shoes. When I was growing up, my shoe wardrobe consisted of white Spalding Oxfords for school, Navy Keds for play, and black flats for church (white from Easter until Labor Day), because I have big feet and shoes in my size were scarce. I now wear a size 11 (I take after my Dad who wore a size 14). When I turned ten, my foot also grew to a size ten and the availability of shoes for me was limited to Spaldings and Keds. My older brother declared that I would soon have to start wearing shoe boxes because there certainly wouldn’t be any shoes for me at that size. You can imagine my mother’s horror when my foot continued to grow to size 11 by Junior High School and not only was my foot long, it was narrow. I wore a 5A width shoe, so narrow that it was impossible for me to find any shoes that came close to fitting my feet. By now, my oh so sensitive and empathetic brother declared my feet to be like skis. Thinking back on those remarks, I’m glad I stuck him in an eggshell (Click here to see the post ‘Yes, But Is It Art’).

Luckily for me, when I was 13, my mother discovered a specialty shoe store in San Francisco that carried women’s shoes only in sizes 9 and up. And the shoes they carried were fabulous. Twice a year we’d drive to San Francisco and I got to buy shoes; beautiful shoes, stylish shoes, shoes like I never thought I’d be able to own. Sadly for me, that shoe store has long been out of business but in recent years, shoes in my size are readily available at high end retailers like Nordstrom (and subsequently often discounted at Nordstrom Rack) and occasionally, even the big discount chains carry a few pairs in my size. Today’s challenge topic is “a recent purchase.” It should be no surprise that my featured recent purchase is a new pair of shoes. I was thrilled to find a pair of platform, rope covered multi-colored wedge sandals to go with a new retro ’70’s outfit. But the best part is that I found these shoes, size 11, narrow enough to stay on my foot, relatively comfortable, AND matching the new outfit, on the clearance rack at DSW for $8.99. At that price, even if I wear them only once, I’ll have gotten my money’s worth. Oh, and one more thing, I took this photo using another recent purchase, my Nikon SB 910 Speed Light.

Focal Length 35mm
ISO 200
f/2.2
1/200
WB Daylight
Flash
SOOC

It is St. Patrick’s Day and since I’m a quarter Irish, I feel I must acknowledge my ancestry (my Great Grandfather came to the US from Ireland in the second half of the 19th century) so when I noticed what I thought was Irish Moss on the brick planter on my patio, I decided to photograph it. On closer inspection, I realized that this is REAL moss, not Irish moss. But hey, it’s green and I liked the shot. Not only is this not a photograph of Irish Moss, the bricks that it’s covering are orange which is a bit of irony on St. Paddy’s Day and a nod to my English grandmother.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 500
f/7.1
1/200
Levels

Today, I think I reached a new low. Two things happened. First, I failed to ask permission to take a photo in a retail establishment, and second, because of that transgression, I came very close to being kicked out of WalMart. Yes, WalMart. I ask you, who gets kicked out of WalMart? Only the dregs, the worst of the worst. And here I was, right there with this unsavory bunch. WalMart is NOT on my list of favorite places to shop and, in fact, I never go to WalMart except when I happen to be with someone who wants to go to WalMart, which is rare, and I try to avoid such occurrences. However, today was one of those unavoidable days. We walked into WalMart, I hadn’t taken my shot for the day yet, it was mid afternoon, there were balloons on the ceiling, and today’s daily theme topic was “up in the air.” I looked around for someone to ask, saw no one, decided to take a shot anyway, despite not having permission. I took two shots and my friend pointed out the reflection on one of the balloons so I adjusted my ISO, turned and took two more shots. Then I noticed a burly WalMart security person with a clipboard standing a few feet away, glaring at me. My friend started to explain that I had a blog (no, now is not the time to explain about that) and I looked at the WalMart security person and said, “I take it you don’t want me to take photos” and she said, “it’s against company policy.” She did ask why I was taking photos of the ceiling and I was grateful that she didn’t confiscate my memory card or for that matter, my camera, nor did she ask me to erase the photos. So, I put my camera away, my friend finished her business in WalMart and I left with the four photos I took. This is the most interesting of the four. Post processing required a change in WB from Cloudy to Florescent and a levels adjustment.

Focal Length 105mm
ISO 320
f/5.6
1/60
WB Cloudy (corrected to Florescent)
Levels

The irony of this photograph is that it was taken indoors using natural window light, while my brand new Nikon SB-910 speed light remained in my camera bag. I have no excuse for this except that I haven’t a clue how to use the speed light and until I can figure it out, it is doubtful that any photographs using it will appear in this blog.

I wonder if the Nikon D800 that I have on order will intimidate me as much as this speed light is. I also wonder if it will have an automatic change for daylight savings time, as I just realized I haven’t changed the time in my camera yet.

Focal Length 95mm
ISO 320
f/5.3
1/10
WB Cloudy
Levels

For once, the weather predictions finally seem to be accurate. The rain hasn’t let up. I say, ‘Bring it on.!’ I was taken by the raindrops on my windshield; it’s been a year since that many have fallen on my car. It’s clean again! When I downloaded the photos, I realized that the blurred out redwood trees in the background are reflected (upside down, of course) in all the drops. Two items of note, my ISO was set to 1250 and I applied a levels adjustment. I’m stepping out of my comfort zone.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 1250 (!!!!!)
f/14
1/100
WB Cloudy
Levels

My friend Melinda is helping me to get over my trepidation about photo editing and showing me how much a few simple edits can significantly improve the look of my photos. I decided to try her recommendations today. My last “selfie” (what our UK friends call a self portrait) was a post I called Warts And All. I made a couple of very rudimentary edits on that photo but nothing that really improved it much. It is dark and washed out. My editing efforts today made a much more dramatic difference. The first photo is the end result after I made a few simple edits. Despite my Daylight Savings Time ennui, I look sort of bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Well, maybe not so bushy tailed.

Focal Length 120mm
ISO 1250
f/5.3
1/50
Melinda’s Presets

And here is what that photo looked like SOOC – straight out of the camera, dull and drab, without much pizazz.

Today’s challenge topic is “cool.” I don’t have any Ray-Bans so I couldn’t take a photo of a pair of cool shades. Although the weather’s finally cooling a bit I didn’t think anything I’d photograph would show that it’s cooler. Then it occurred to me that a fan might indicate coolness and it might be interesting to see if I could capture, to my satisfaction, ribbons blown around by a fan. It doesn’t have quite the dramatic effect I thought I’d get, but I was short of colored ribbons. A red or pink ribbon would have added some punch. The ribbons look a bit like random crayon squiggles but they’re blowing in the breeze produced by the fan, cooling the surrounding air.

I have made some camera adjustments. I turned off Active D lighting and I think it may have helped my exposure. I thought I’d returned the camera to ISO 200 but old habits die hard and it’s set at 100. I adjusted levels to blow out the white background as much as possible, burned the ribbons so they’d show a bit more and cropped.

Focal Length 48mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/30
Levels, burn, crop