Month: June 2012

Today my friend Peggy and I ate at our favorite downtown pre-Music Circus restaurant, Lucca on J St. in Sacramento. We were served on the patio and enjoyed a delectable lunch of fresh, seasonal California/Mediterranean style cuisine. Peggy ordered Stuffed Sweet Peppers with brown rice, canario beans, zucchini, spinach, feta, and pecorino with basil marinara and I had Basil Garlic Minestrone and Roasted Beet and Citrus Salad with arugula, toasted pistachios, and ricotta salata, a fabulous sheep’s milk cheese I’d never tried. You can see Peggy’s fork headed toward the plate just as I snapped the photo of her sweet peppers. . .an action shot of sorts!

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
f/1.4
1/400
WB Auto
SOOC

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 200
f/1.4
1/400
WB Auto
SOOC

It is molting season at my house and there is no shortage of feathers. Today’s challenge theme is “feather/feathers” so I selected a few of Bobo’s most vibrantly colored tail and wing feathers and photographed them on the kitchen table. I still have made no progress in learning Lightroom but I was able to change my watermark, designed in Adobe Illustrator with a little help from Adobe Photoshop, from black to white so it will show up on photos with dark backgrounds. Woot! Maybe this weekend I’ll be able to spend a little time and advance beyond importing.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/4
WB Fair Weather
SOOC

While I was in Newcastle this afternoon, I ran across several clumps of dried thistle that I believe to be cardoon, or wild artichoke. This is my favorite of the shots I took today. It looks like a fall shot; it is very monochromatic and there is no hint of the brilliant blue summer sky that I captured in a few of the shots.

I have made no progress using Lightroom. I can download photos to Lightroom from my camera and export them with my watermark. Beyond that, I can do nothing. At this point my shots must be SOOC. While I prefer to post photos straight out of the camera to my blog, it is nice to be able to crop them, and make other modest adjustments if I have to do so. I hope soon to be able to do more to my photos in Lightroom.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/16
1/100
SB Fair Weather
SOOC

Today I am introducing two changes that affect my blog. First, I have switched my photo import software from Apple Aperture to Adobe Lightroom 4. This is a huge change for me and I think it will be a slow transition for me, but thanks to Kelby Online Training and specifically to Matt Kloskowski, I have help (along with my friend and fellow photoblogger Melinda who also recently switched). Today was the first time I used the software to import photos and it is just enough different from Aperture that it took me twice as long to do it, although the actual download seemed much faster to me than downloading in Aperture. I was having so many problems with Aperture that when Melinda, my major photography support system, switched, I decided I’d better hop on the bandwagon with her.

The second change, is the addition of a watermark to my photo. I have considered watermarking the photos that I publish on line for more than a year but I never got around to designing a watermark. Lightroom makes it simple to add a watermark to a photo, something Aperture didn’t feature (at least not that I ever discovered) so when the Kelby training video showed how easy it was to add one to a photo, I designed one using my favorite font (Melmo) and a small graphic of a lens aperture that I designed. So, today’s photo features the first use of my very own watermark.

Finally, if you’re wondering about the subject of my photo today, it is a detail of a Savage 24B over and under, a combination rifle and shotgun. Since today’s challenge theme is “over and under” I think it perfectly meets the challenge. The shotgun stays propped behind my bedroom door. It is the only gun remaining from my late husband’s gun collection; a friend coached me through firing the shotgun part and it now serves as my personal protection.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/6
WB-Custom
SOOC

Today’s challenge theme is “Geometry” and, once again, the gods of Serendip have brought the subject of my day’s photo to me. My neighbors’ above-ground swimming pool is filled for the summer and already today, the ball has been in my yard twice. The second time it came over, before flinging it back over the fence, I decided it met today’s challenge so I kept it a while to photograph it. It’s been quite a few years since I took Plane and Solid Geometry in High School but I do know that this beach ball is a sphere (solid) with a circle (plane) at its polar end. I don’t know what to call the geometric shapes that form the longitudinal segments but their bright, primary colors are what drew me to photograph the ball in the first place.

Focal Length 85mm
Manual Mode
ISO 100
f/1.8
1/125
WB Shade
SOOC

Today’s shot is a pile of Romaine lettuce that I chopped up for Caesar salad to have for lunch. I took the shot through the salad bowl, with the camera setting on the countertop so I didn’t even need to set up my tripod. Today’s challenge theme is “pile or stack” and this is, indeed, a pile.

Focal Length 300mm
Manual Mode
ISO 100
f/13
1 Sec.
Custom WB
SOOC

After spending the afternoon shoveling out the room that is sometimes my photography studio but which has, of late, turned into my catchall room into which I toss stuff and shut the door, I was rewarded with a lovely display of late afternoon light shining through a basket I had only minutes before placed onto an uncluttered table top in that room. It looks almost as if the basket were on fire. I got my camera and was able to set up my tripod unimpeded, something I haven’t been able to do in there in months.

I used timed shutter release to avoid camera shake because of the slow shutter speed.

Focal Length 300mm
Manual Mode
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/6
WB Fair Weather
SOOC

While lazing on my patio this afternoon, I spotted what I have learned is a spotted skimmer, a male twelve-spotted skimmer to be exact (thank you, Google). I’ve been seeing these dragonflies all over this spring (I guess it’s now officially summer) and have never been able to capture one in focus until today. Of course this is cropped because this guy was perched far up in my neighbor’s ornamental pear tree atop a dead twig.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
WB Fair Weather
f/11
1/125
Cropped

As I left the grocery store this morning, I was intrigued by how the late morning light played on the exterior stucco walls so I took a few shots at various angles. When I got home and looked at the day’s challenge theme, which is “warm,” I realized my serendipitous find seems to meet the challenge since my local Bel Air Market is painted in what I consider to be warm colors. And, in yet another serendipitous event, I once again failed to change my white balance setting which was left over from yesterday afternoon’s clouds, so it was set to cloudy instead of fine weather. But, as it turns out, that just gives a bit more warmth to the colors. When I was framing the shots I tried to keep the sky out of the frame and invariably I moved and there is a bit of sky in each of the 6 shots I took this morning so I cropped it out to eliminate the distraction.

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/7.1
1/800
WB Cloudy
Cropped

Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/7.1
1/800
WB Cloudy
Cropped

As I left the gym this morning, I was treated to a fascinating display by a of pair of red-tailed hawks. One flew over the parking lot just as I was driving away and when I turned onto Pleasant Grove Blvd., I saw four hawks soaring over the baseball fields so I pulled into the next parking lot by the fire station to watch. One pair quickly disappeared but the other circled, soared, and screamed overhead. I assume I was witnessing mating behavior. I have read that a precursor to mating includes locking talons and while I didn’t witness locked talons, they were flying around with their talons outstretched as if they were going to pounce on prey but they were high up and they never approached the ground. They finally disappeared from view after about a half hour.

I set the shutter speed to 1/320 but I should have set it higher or used Shutter Prioritiy because my photos aren’t crisply focused. The first shot is SOOC and the second and third shots are cropped. I also made a RAW fine-tuning adjustment to sharpen them a bit.

. . . An onion will make you cry. Today’s theme is “sliced” so I sliced up this beautiful and sweet (so it didn’t really make me cry) red onion from the farmers’ market. Since it’s already sliced, I guess I’ll fry it up for dinner.

I took this shot in my kitchen, with all lights off in the late afternoon. I tried setting a custom white balance but the dim light wouldn’t give me a good reading so I used auto white balance when the “fine weather” WB setting returned a rather yellowish image that was not the true color of the onion. In setting my aperture, I considered a comment one of my fellow Placer Camera Club members said about the shot I submitted for Tuesday night’s monochrome theme challenge. I used my garlic shot from my May 22 blog post which I changed to sepia for that challenge. Although it was generally well received, the comment I took into consideration for today’s shot was that since the garlic was generally all on the same plane, it might have been preferable if I’d used a smaller aperture so that the depth of field would be greater resulting in more of the garlic being in focus. There was quite a bit of discussion about the pros and cons of changing the depth of field in my garlic shot and many members liked my depth of field in that shot. However, in retrospect, I think he was right. In order to get most of the onion slices in focus, I set the aperture to f/16 and used a very long shutter speed along with my timer to eliminate camera shake. I think if I’d taken the shot 90° to the right, a shallower depth of field would have been effective.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
Manual Mode
f/16
5 seconds
Auto WB
SOOC

Late this afternoon, I left my Periodontist’s office in Fair Oaks, discouraged by the news that I face yet another round of root planing followed by site specific antibiotics but encouraged that Dr. Carson prescribed the antibiotic that allows me to continue to consume a glass or several of wine while the antibiotic does its thing. Sandy (my long-time dental hygienist and friend — who introduced me to “Words with Friends” a few years ago), I’ll see you next Wednesday! I can’t guarantee my sobriety.

Since it was almost 4:30 (my appointment ran well past its allotted time today) and I hadn’t yet taken my photo of the day, I drove around the corner to nearby Old Fair Oaks Village, expecting to get a few photos of the famous Fair Oaks chickens. I was delighted to find the Wednesday Farmers’ Market in full swing. Oh, happy day. Just what I needed to lift my spirits. I actually found and photographed a few chickens but what caught my eye were the colorful and beautifully woven market baskets from Ghana. I already own two and resisted buying a third but the vendor still graciously allowed me to photograph his wares and ogled my camera; he actually knew about the D800 so we had a lengthy conversation about the camera, my Plantronics wireless headphones (I was wearing them because I was expecting a phone call), and Siri, the voice that lives in my iPhone. Just give me a few minutes to wax ecstatic about my camera, or my iPhone and any worries I have disappear. To top it off, today’s challenge theme is “mystery” so I decided the contents of any one of these baskets would be a mystery.

This venue gave me the opportunity to take some photos in direct sunlight, indirect light, and facing the sun. I included one of each.

Direct Sun
Focal Length 112 mm
ISO 200
f/7.1
1/125
WB Auto
SOOC (Manual Mode)

Indirect Light
Focal Length 112 mm
ISO 1000
f/7.1
1/50
Auto WB
SOOC

Backlight
Focal Length 125
ISO 500
f/8
1/80
Auto WB
SOOC

I found myself in downtown Sacramento this afternoon so I photographed the dome on the State Capitol.

Focal Length 300mm
Manual Mode
ISO 100
f/16
1/100
WB Auto
SOOC

This morning I got a call from the California Foundation for Birds of Prey, asking me, in my capacity as a volunteer rescuer (I also serve as their newsletter editor and unofficial photographer), to pick up a baby hawk that had fallen from its nest. It took me about thirty minutes to drive to the location and when I was about to exit I-80 where it connects to the Garden Highway, the lady who had found the unfledged hawk, called frantically telling me that she thought the hawk was dead and that I should probably not bother coming. I told her I was just a few minutes away and that it was probably weak and tired from its ordeal. When I’d talked to her earlier, she told me it was standing in the crate. When I arrived about five minutes later, the hawk was laying on its side, it’s head in an awkward position. I opened the crate and, using a towel and leather gloves, lifted it up and it looked at me! Yay! It was probably just weak from lack of food and water since yesterday.

We were both jubilant (they lady and I, not the hawk and I) and I told her I wanted to take a photo because it was so cute. Predictably, I could not release the shutter of my expensive, with all its bells and whistles, Nikon D800. No time to fret about it, though. That little hawk needed care, so off I went, after putting my car in first gear for the first time ever so I could drive back up the incredibly steeply inclined and rutted driveway that I had driven down to get to the hawk. I digress, but I was amazed at how well my car responded to first gear. I didn’t have to rev the engine or push down hard on the accelerator. Slow and steady, first gear just took me up the hill. I only did that at the lady’s suggestion, too. And, I thank her for that. What a revelation.

And, I had another revelation as I drove back to the CFBP. I remembered that yesterday, I set my camera to timed shutter release. On my D90, that setting automatically expires after a few minutes of not using it and always when the camera is powered off. The D800 has a wheel that I rotate to set all shutter release modes and they remain until changed. I also failed to reset the white balance so I used the leftover custom white balance from the cherry box shot I took yesterday. So, what I learned today is that I need to tie a string around something (maybe my neck so that it chokes me) to remind me to reset my camera so that it will be ready to take photographs the next time I pick it up.

I arrived at the CFBP and opened the basket and once again, the little guy looked at me. I think he’s going to be okay. Vincent who works at the clinic, was nice enough to take the hawk out of the basket and hold it up for me so I could photograph it. So here is No. 12-102, as he will always be known at the CFBP.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 2500
f/5.6
1/50
WB Custom (!!!!) Changed to Florescent

Today’s theme is “box” and I have lots of boxes around here, some more elegant than others. Some are unsightly corrugated cartons, some are elaborately painted or carved, some are plastic, some contain rice or Cheerios. By far my favorite box is a small cherry box that my husband made for me more than 15 years ago when I was hand quilting. Ron was quietly observant as, time after time, my spool of quilting thread rolled off the quilting frame as I concentrated on placing those tiny stitches. Invariably, the spool continued rolling across the floor to some inaccessible recess. One day, he surprised me with this elegantly constructed cherry wood box, that he made from a piece of leftover cherry from another project and that he tastefully stained and shellacked. It precisely fits a single large spool of quilting thread and a tiny hole drilled in the bottom leads the thread from inside the box. A square spool holder will not roll off a slanted quilt frame and I was delighted to have this one-of-a-kind tool that helped eliminate my constant frustration at having to chase the errant spool of thread across the floor. I loved creating beautiful designs in thread but quilting was too hard on my back. After a couple of enthusiastic years, I abandoned quilting as a hobby. But the box lives on. It no longer contains thread and it is so small, very few things fit in it. But I find it delightful to look at and I wonder how many people have had someone make them a box to hold a single spool of thread. My guess is, not many.

I photographed the box on my dining room table. It seemed too plain and uninteresting by itself and as I tried to decide what else I might find to photograph that might be more interesting, I realized the Ranier cherry I was about to munch on would be an amusing adjunct to the cherry box, hence the title today, “Cherry, Box.” Either could be the subject but as I look at the shot now, the cherry is really the most prominent subject and the eye is drawn to it. In retrospect, I should have blurred the box and just featured the cherry. Can’t reshoot. I ate the cherry.

I used the tripod and timer release to take the photo, and I used a custom white balance setting. The colors are exactly as they appeared on my table. I didn’t align the horizon perfectly when I set the camera on the tripod, or one of the legs was out of kilter. Whatever the reason, I had to make a minor straightening adjustment. I probably wouldn’t have bothered straightening it but a tiny bit of the white piece of straw that I used to prop the box open showed slightly in left corner of the shot and straightening it eliminated that distraction. Otherwise, the photo is SOOC.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
Manual Mode
f/5.6
1/3
WB Custom

After lunch with a friend in Auburn this afternoon, I drove over to nearby Ashford Park because I knew I could find water there and on this hot, hot, hot afternoon, I craved water. But it wasn’t water to drink but rather water to photograph. Of course I neglected to bring my tripod with me so my efforts to get silky water flowing along Auburn Ravine were less than effective so I walked across the green field and sat down under an oak tree on the edge of Ashford Park Pond. I frightened away a large turtle basking on a rock in the pond and he never returned so I photographed some kind of floating water plant and the ripples created by the breeze and the fish biting at something on the surface. I wish there were a few water lilies so it would be a bit more Monet-like, but I was generally pleased with this shot because it is somewhat cool and serene looking. Plus, a recent daily theme from my Flickr group was “across the water” and this seems to fit.

Focal Length 190mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/100
WB Fine Weather
Manual Mode
SOOC

I’ve been so frustrated with my computer the past few days that I haven’t spent much time with my camera. This morning I sat on the patio while the temperature was still delightful (and the slight breeze kept it that way) and fiddled with camera settings, reading the manual specifications for each and trying to decide if I should make certain changes. What prompted my excursion into the bowels of my camera was a recent post on Moose Peterson’s blog announcing that he had just received his Nikon D800, a full six weeks after I received mine. I’m happy that I received mine earlier (I had to wait two months for mine as it was) because after all, I am a paying customer and Moose, wildlife photographer extraordinaire and man larger than life that he is, did receive his D800 gratis from B and H Camera, one of his sponsors. But I’m so glad he has one because I will be meeting Moose in February 2013 when I will be participating in his photography excursion to the Grand Canyon as . . . drum roll please . . . the only woman and I’ll be able to pick his brain about the camera. I was reviewing Moose’s D800 settings and comparing them to my own. And, thanks to Moose, I discovered that I could (and did) rename the default files that the camera produces with my own initials. Woot!

I was on the patio for almost an hour and a half enjoying the delightful area it has become (thanks to my sister-in-law’s recent help) and expecting the hummingbird to pay a visit. Although I could hear the hummers and other birds in the shrubs, and saw an occasional bird fly overhead, very few birds visited my patio this morning while I sat there. And, just as I stood up to go inside about noon, the hummer flew by my head and buzzed me, flying to a branch, then another, then another. I guess he was annoyed that I was camped out there for so long near his food source. I was hoping he’d come to the feeder while I was out and had my camera set to get some shots of that eventuality. Instead, he stayed secluded in the pear tree; I followed his sounds and found him but, of course, failed to reset my camera. Since I’m back to using manual mode, there was no chance for the camera to automatically make corrections. But the good news is that since my class, which required straight out of camera shots, is over, and I am relaxing my usual self-imposed requirement that my blog posts be SOOC, I edited this shot without feeling guilty. I cropped it and added a levels adjustment to brighten it. I’m posting the original as well. I was curious to see how much I could crop a shot and have it still be sharp. I’m happy with the results. This shows that Moose isn’t the only “larger than life” character in my life right now; I’d guess this photo makes the hummer about 3 times life size!

Info for both shots:

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
WB Fine Weather
f/5.6
1/320

It’s Thursday and that means Farmers’ Market Day in the parking lot by my gym. There were a few more farmers this morning than were set up last week so hopefully soon there will be more offerings. This morning I was happy to see the tamale lady who remembered me and my camera from last year. But I was so intent on selecting salsas and tamales that I neglected to ask her for a photo. Maybe next week! I did buy some gorgeous apricots and plan to make a luscious roasted apricot sorbet that I tried last year. It’s going to be really hot this weekend so I think that will be perfect for hot weather. And, the display of apricots, plutos, nectarines, and plums was irresistible to me and my lens.

I took just five shots this morning (close to a record low for me) and I liked two of them, one of the pluots, plums, and nectarines, and one of the apricots. I love the array of colors in the one and the intense richness of the apricots in the other.

Focal Length 50mm
Manual Mode
ISO 100
f/2.5
1/500
WB Fine Weather
SOOC

Focal Length 50mm
Manual Mode
ISO 100
f/2.5
1/500
WB Fine Weather
SOOC

As I passed by Southern Pacific Engine #2252 prominently on display at the edge of the Union Pacific Rail Yard where Atlantic becomes Vernon Street entering Roseville, I thought I would stop and take a few shots. I had never noticed that the engine, beautifully painted and preserved, is surrounded by a high wrought iron fence. Because of the fence, I couldn’t get a good angle on the engine. And, some railroad workers were replacing solar panels on either side of the engine making a good shot today improbable. I finally settled on the fence surrounding the engine. Although these are very similar with only subtle differences, I couldn’t decide which I preferred so I’m posting both.

Focal Length 170mm
ISO 100
Manual Mode
f/5.6
1/100
WB Fine Weather
SOOC

Focal Length 122mm
ISO 100
Manual Mode
f/5.6
1/100
WB Fine Weather
SOOC

Now that my on-line photography class has officially ended, the self-imposed pressure I’ve been feeling has lifted a little. I learned much from the class but I still have a long way to go to improve. I think I’m still in the “getting worse” phase that Karen Russell promised would happen when we started the class. I was hoping to get to the “getting better” part before the class ended but sadly, that has not yet occurred. Luckily for me however, the class participants, as a group without the instructor, will revisit each of the lessons and work together on them over the next several months so I hope that I will be able to apply myself to improving my photographic skills in the coming months.

Today I took the time to visit one of the Flickr groups I’ve neglected for the past couple of months to get some inspiration for a shot. This week’s theme for Recording Images, a group that seeks to help participants by offering constructive critiques of photos taken for the weekly theme, is “silhouettes.” I didn’t plan to participate in this challenge as the theme would normally require cooperative subjects willing to walk into a sunset or something. So, I was surprised when an uncooperative and unaware subject flitted past my lens. I thought the bee, in the process of gathering lavender pollen to make honey made a perfect silhouette for the challenge. Here are two versions of this scenario, both cropped and with a levels adjustment applied. I liked results of my tweaking so I’m submitting them both to see what kind of feed back I get from the folks at “Recording Images.”

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
Manual Mode
f/5.6
1/400
SB Fine Weather
Cropped/Levels

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
Manual Mode
f/5.6
1/400
SB Fine Weather
Cropped/Levels