Day: April 6, 2012

If I’d only waited an hour, I wouldn’t have had to rely on the daily challenge for my photo so I decided to post a second today. Mainly because I’ve never photographed a large butterfly. I posted a photo of a small white one a while back but when I noticed this swallowtail flitting around the azaleas, I grabbed the camera and ran outside. I really like the focus and the exposure on this one but the shadows from the pergola’s cross beams resulted in part of the wing being in the shade.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 200
f/11
1/160
SOOC

Today’s photo is an homage of sorts to Jacques Cousteau, and not to the 1955 horror film titled “It Came From Beneath the Sea” in which an H-Bomb radiated giant octopus wraps its tentacles around the Golden Gate Bridge and pulls it down. The daily challenge theme is “from the sea” and this is a photo of a giant conch shell that a friend brought me 30 plus years ago from the Caribbean. The photo reminds me of the Jacques Cousteau films from the early ’60s in which sea creatures emerge from the murky depths into the harsh lights mounted on Jacques’ submarine.

I used my Speed Light and I am finding it to be a very interesting tool. I took the photos in my living room with the conch on its usual bottom shelf of the curio cabinet. There is a mirror in the back wall of the cabinet and so I was careful to make sure I pointed the light anywhere but at the mirror. I tried angles to reduce reflections and shadows on the shell and adjusted shutter speeds for the best effect. I was surprised that at certain angles even though the room was light and the mirror reflected that light, the background was completely black, and with the shallow depth of field, the shell appears to be emerging, hence my reference to Jacques Cousteau.

This shot is SOOC. It could use some brightening; I obviously need to figure out how to adjust the Speed Light and to coordinate shutter speeds to get best exposure but I actually liked this one so I’m leaving it alone. And, besides, although I’ve just begun to allow myself to edit photos before I post them, the class I’m taking requires all postings to be SOOC so I’m back to posting SOOC for the foreseeable future.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 300
f/5.6
1/100
Speed Light
SOOC