Late this afternoon, I met Bandit, an adorable Welsh Corgi whose name could not be more perfect. He was a bit shy and elusive, constantly moving away from the light, making it difficult for me to photograph him at my desired ISO 100, so I had to bump up the ISO to 400. As much as it kills me to do that, I’m not noticing any noise so maybe it’s okay to do that!
Focal Length 82mm
ISO 400
f/5.0
1/80
WB Auto
SOOC
The flag at Golden Gate National Cemetery flew at half staff today in honor of Col. Frederick Hjort Nelsen, United States Air Force Retired, as a USAF Honor Guard stood motionless for almost an hour before funeral services began. Col. Nelsen, my friend Chris Nelsen’s Dad, was buried with Military Honors in a moving ceremony in which the Honor Guard, serving as pall bearers, precisely folded the flag draped on the coffin; fired a three volley salute; and presented the flag and the spent cartridges to Chris as one of the members of the Honor Guard played taps.
I planted my tomatoes a full six weeks after the recommended April 15 planting date for the Sacramento area. Finally, at the end of July, when those who planted on time around here are starting to become overwhelmed by their tomato crops and are finding out who their true friends really are (that actually applies more to people who plant zucchini than tomatoes, however) a few of my Juliets (featured in their very green state on July 1 ) are starting to ripen and might find their way into a salad in the next day or two. I can’t wait for my first bacon and tomato sandwich, though. Alas, Juliets are grape tomatoes. This shot makes them seem to be four times life size but they are not really big enough for a bacon and tomato sandwich and my Brandy Boy is not exhibiting too much promise. The Patio tomato is filled with lots of smallish tomatoes but they’ll do in a pinch if they ever ripen.
I cropped this photo, made a few exposure adjustments and then discovered the vignette panel in Lightroom so I had to add a vignette to this one.
I found this red-tailed hawk perched on the side of the road at midday. He was patiently waiting for a meal and preening as well. When I stopped on the other side of the road and pointed my camera out the window he stopped preening, turned, and looked at me, out of curiosity I suppose. Despite his taking note of my presence, but he didn’t fly away. I was only there a minute or so and when I drove by again twenty minutes later, he was still there, waiting patiently. The sun was high and the shadows were harsh and my camera settings did not result in a good exposure so I made a few tweaks in Lightroom and this is the result.
Optical illusions fascinate me. The shadows from the morning sun make the grout lines between these bricks appear to bulge up. I know that they are concave but the more I stare at this photo, the bulgier the lines appear.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/400
WB Fine Weather
SOOC
This is Winsome, one of two Ron Smith memorial roses, this one given to me by my friends Royetta and Cherry after Ron died. It has remained healthy and beautiful after five years. My blog title today is just because of my unsuccessful efforts to photograph the hummingbird again this afternoon; he was tantalizingly close — I heard him scolding me while he was hidden away in the branches of the pear tree — but he never appeared while I was outside so when I noticed a couple of buds opening on Winsome, which is a miniature rose, it occurred to me that I should try out the DX crop factor on my D800. I took the first shot with the image area set to FX as it usually is and the second with it set at DX which has a crop factor on my camera of 1.5. So I guess technically all was not lost; I learned something else about my new camera. Using the crop factor, the images appear closer because the files are in essence cropped in camera; these files are half the size as when I set the camera at full FX with virtually no loss in quality. What I see in the view finder is the entire scene that would be shot if the camera were in FX mode but with a crop mark showing the borders of the cropped shot.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/320
WB Fine Weather
SOOC
Focal Length 300mm (450mm in DX)
f/5.6
1/320
WB Fine Weather
SOOC
. . . in fact, they’re the numbers on my house, my address. Today’s daily challenge theme is numbers and I decided the brass numbers screwed to the front of my house would meet the challenge. On close inspection of these numbers, I discovered that my house painter wasn’t particularly careful when he repainted my house a few years ago, as evidenced by the splatters on some of the numbers. I used one of my new Lightroom presets, Sunday Paper, for this shot. It gave the photo more depth and color than the original.
Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/100
This pile of empty, used clay flower pots seemed like an interesting subject for my blog today. And since the weather continues to be normal and it is actually pleasant to be outside, I spent a few minutes trying out different exposures with my new 24-70mm lens. This is the last shot I took today. I was in indirect light in the shade of the house. I set the camera on the tripod and focused about a foot away from the pots, zoomed in to 70mm and kept adjusting the aperture to see how the depth of field changed. At close range, it seems to retain its shallow depth of field, even at higher apertures. This is f/9. Then, I experimented with some of my new Lightroom presets. Since this photo is monochromatic to begin with, I thought that black and white would be interesting. This is “newsprint” and I think I like it better than the original color version. The minute details on the pots seem to pop in black and white and the background pots fade into the background so they’re not distracting.
Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/9
1/13
WB Fine Weather
SOOC
After yesterday evening’s 102° temperatures and clouds (please see yesterday’s second post), I awoke this morning to more clouds and evidence of rain. When I went to pick up the newspaper outside my front door about 6:30 AM, the light in the sky was beautiful. Since I was still in my bathrobe and the light was most beautiful out my front door not in my backyard, I had to run upstairs and throw on some clothes before venturing out. In those few minutes, the light changed but while not as dramatic as it had been a couple of minutes earlier, it was still pretty so I faced into the sun to capture this shot. I decided to post clouds again today because rain, cool weather (all relative–it’s now 90°), and clouds are rare this time of year in the Sacramento Valley. And besides, I haven’t had a chance to take more photos today and it’s almost 7 PM as I write this.
Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/11
1/160
WB Auto
SOOC
What happened to the Valley’s “dry” heat and the evening Delta breeze? Despite the mugginess, I found the evening clouds to be quite spectacular. I tried the Auto tone adjustment in Lightroom and that tweak resulted in this image. It is slightly darker than the original image and much more spectacular. I find the dark streaks fascinating. They were there when I raised my camera to photograph the clouds. I don’t recall ever seeing anything quite like it before. It’s like there is something dark spewing out of the back side of the clouds. I faced west and that’s the setting sun in the lower right side of the image.
Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/11
1/1000
WB Auto
Auto Tone Adjustment
I was out in my yard early this morning trying to beat the heat and hoping to find something interesting to photograph. Then, I noticed the light magnifying through these glass marbles and creating interesting shadows on my funky purple table. This week’s theme in my Flickr Recording Images group is “hard light/strong shadows.” I know the light wasn’t hard enough to cause the table to burst into flames from the magnified light (actually the sun moved quickly and the marbles were in complete shade a few minutes after I shot this) and the shadows are not particularly strong, but I really like this shot. I used my new lens wide open so the depth of field is extremely shallow.
Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/2500
WB Auto
SOOC
I had the best time today. Three old friends who haven’t been together in more than 30 years, met today in Benicia and it’s good to know that some things never change: like old friendships that start up again where they left off. Susan, Melinda, and I roomed together in college and here is the backstory. I brought an old photo of the three of us, probably as college freshmen, so we tried to recreate the moment. Easier said than done but we laughed and enjoyed ourselves and it was like we’d never been apart.
I took a photo of the film strip that we tried to emulate. It is one of those photo booth moments taken at some unknown fair in 1964 or 1965. The next two are our attempts at recreating that moment, some 48 years later. The last is the three of us today. I took lots of shots today, most unsuccessful. Melinda, my photography mentor, adjusted camera settings for me as I struggled. Thank you, Melinda.
I should know by now that that Action Camera, a credit card, and me is a very dangerous combination. I stopped in Action Camera this afternoon because the other day I noticed that there was a spot on my sensor and I wanted to have them clean it. I left with a clean sensor, which they cleaned for free, and a new book on the D800, a remote control shutter release, and a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, none of which were free. This lens is what they call “good glass” in photographer-speak. I mean really good glass. I learned about this lens in the Photographer’s Workshop I completed last month and the instructor could not say enough good things about it. I can see why. It is a great lens for portraits and offers versatility for photography in tight quarters which I seem to run into when I offer to take photos for friends. I have only an hour or so of experience with this lens so far, but oh my, what a lens it is, despite the fact that it weighs almost a quarter pound more than my 28-300mm lens. The focus is so crisp and sharp, I wonder how I ever had doubts about the focus in my D800.
Today’s post is a potpourri of shots. The first was taken with Action Camera’s test 24-70mm lens that I tried out in the shop. The second was taken by the salesperson in Action Camera demonstrating the remote and testing how far the sensor reached. My 28-300mm lens was on the camera for that shot. The other two are test shots taken at home using the new lens.
Focal Length 48mm
ISO 2500
f/2.8
1/160
Auto WB
SOOC
Focal Length 28mm (28-300mm lens)
ISO 2500
f/3.5
1/160
Auto WB
SOOC
Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
1/4000
Auto WB
SOOC
Focal Length 70mm
ISO 100
f/2.8
6/10 second
Auto WB
SOOC
And it WAS one of those days…too busy with other things in my life to think about photos. So, while I fixed dinner and baked parrot pot pies for Bobo, and sipped a glass of wine in between, I noticed Bobo intrigued with my wine glass and that, my friends, is my photo of the day. I had to straighten it, increase exposure, change the white balance and I used one of my new Lightroom Presets called “lifestyle” to ready this photo for my blog. I guess I need to show Bobo where the “business” end of a wine glass is!
Focal Length 180mm
ISO 1000 (Melinda, please take note)
f/5.6
1/60
My friend and fellow photo blogger Melinda and I were excited to attend Scott Kelby’s Photoshop for Photographers workshop at the Sacramento Convention Center today. We met at the Convention Center at 8:30, a full thirty minutes before registration started, anticipating getting seats in front and with the hopes of meeting Scott Kelby and picking his brain. As we wandered through the mostly vacant convention center venue, the only activity we found was a Les Schwab Tire Company gathering. After finding no evidence of the Photoshop Workshop, I sought out and found a Convention Center representative who told me there was no such workshop scheduled today, that it was scheduled for August. Uh oh. I had noticed on Scott’s website that a workshop was scheduled for August and that today’s workshop was not listed. I should have been suspicious but thought it was full and they’d scheduled an additional workshop. We called Kelby Training and spoke to Diane who advised us that the only scheduled Sacramento workshop was not until August. She was shocked to discover that both Melinda’s and my tickets clearly stated July 18, issued before it was rescheduled. She told us that everyone should have been notified of the change but Melinda and I were not. Thanks to Diane, however, Melinda and I are booked into the August class and our money has been refunded. So now, we’ll be doing what we thought we’d be doing today, in a month.
A change of plans was needed. Melinda came to town with her husband, Lonnie, and he is working in Roseville while we were to be attending the workshop. We plan to go to dinner later so we suddenly had all day to devote to photography and catching up. So, Melinda and I wandered through the State of California Capitol World Peace Rose Garden in search of things to photograph. After a couple of hours, we returned to my house and Melinda has been coaching me in the use of Lightroom 4. Here is my photo of Melinda taking pictures in the rose garden edited in Lightroom using Clickin Mom’s Paparazzi Presets that she gave to me as a gift for designing Lonnie’s new business card. Our planned dinner this evening at Il Fornaio is also a thank you. So, despite our disappointment at not attending the workshop, it has turned out wonderfully because we’re still going to go and it is gratis, compliments of Scott Kelby Training, plus I have new Lightroom presets and I am looking forward to dinner at Il Fornaio.
You can tell Melinda is really concentrating on her photography here. I used the Investigative Reporter preset and it fits the subject perfectly.
Focal Length 50mm
ISO 100
f/4.5
1/100
WB 5350 Kelvin
And, I don’t mean Hot! according to the Fahrenheit or Celsius scales because amazingly it is only 75° Fahrenheit today, 20° cooler than the normal high for this time of year and 36° cooler than the 111° we had here the other day. No, I mean Hot! according to the Scoville scale that measures the heat of chiles. The habanero chile registers up to 350,000 Scoville heat units, which is considered extreme heat. The habenero used to be rated the hottest chile but it no longer holds that distinction, having been surpassed by much hotter exotic chiles that I don’t think I’ll sample any time soon. I love the flavor of habanero chiles but it takes only the tiniest bit of a chile to flavor something, not the several I feature here. Today’s theme is “starts with ‘H'” and when my hummingbird was playing hide and seek with me and the only raptor that flew near my lens was a vulture, not a hawk, I gave up and went to the grocery store to get some fresh veggies for Bobo. Right next to the green beans I bought for Bobo (I guess I could have photographed them and called them by their French name, ‘haricots verts’) was a bin of habaneros. I very carefully bagged them without touching and brought them home, arranging them on the colorful Mexican cloth with a nitrile glove.
Focal Length 200mm
ISO 100
f/16
2 seconds
WB Fine Weather
SOOC
The Flickr daily challenge group’s theme today is backlighting. When the unseasonably cool, tantalizing breezes lured me outside late this afternoon, I noticed that one of my Abraham Darby roses was beautifully backlit. So, despite the fact that I featured this flower only a week or so ago, here he is again.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/80
Auto WB
SOOC
I’m visiting my friend Honora in Santa Rosa and we woke up to a typical Santa Rosa summer morning, overcast and damp—quite a difference from the Sacramento Valley. Her garden is lovely and colorful, thanks to her daughter Danielle who did most of the planting. Currently blooming in the garden are echinacea, hollyhock, bee balm (complete with a bee), penstemon, cosmos, and yarrow, all of which I captured for this blog post, as well as roses, lots of succulents, marigolds, rudbeckia and lots of others too numerous to name and we neither one could remember what many of them are called anyway. The colors are lovely, deep and intense in this kind of light. All of the shots are SOOC, shot with my 50mm 1.4G lens at various apertures and shutter speeds. My favorite shot from this morning is the one with one of the unknown flowers in the foreground and a garden chair out of focus in the background. Enjoy.
I took a break this morning after dropping Bobo off at the vet and packing for my weekend excursion. Because the weather is cool and breezy, I sat on the patio with my camera and my camera manual planning to spend an hour trying to learn more about it and hoping that the hummingbird would stop by for a photo. I experimented with focus and tried to learn which button and dial combinations resulted in what setting changes. I fiddled and made adjustments to make sure the exposure would be perfect if the hummingbird decided to pay a visit. He stopped by briefly and settled tantalizingly on a bare twig across the patio but those shots were very underexposed. Then, the rumbling sound of a low flying airplane, one of the Coast Guard planes from McClellan Field. It flew right over my house, heading, I suppose, to help out at the Robbers Fire near Colfax. I pointed my camera up as the plane flew directly into the sun. Because I had set the camera to photograph the hummingbird, the lens was wide open so the resulting shots of the plane were barely visible and ghost-like. But I decided to try some adjustments in the Lightroom Develop module. I decreased exposure, sharpened, changed whites, blacks, contrast and who knows what other sliders I touched. But I like the result. In fact, I made so many changes to this shot, there is no point in identifying the settings as I normally do. I also discovered that there is a spot on my sensor so I’ll be taking my camera into Action Camera next week to have the sensor cleaned.
It was 111° in Roseville yesterday! I drove home from the Galleria at about 4 and my car’s thermometer registered 110° and this morning’s paper said it was 111°. Fresno was only 108° yesterday and we were a mere 9° cooler than Death Valley at 120°. But the Delta breezes have kicked in and the temperatures are pleasantly bearable again. This morning I noticed that one of my sempervivums (hens and chickens), planted with other succulents in a large pot on the patio, had produced an elongated stalk with flowers opening on it. I’ve never had one bloom and whether it was the incredibly hot temps here the past few days, or just the normal life cycle, I knew it had to be my photo today. White balance set to fine weather gave it a yellowish cast, not at all what the actual color was, so I set it back to auto WB and the resulting colors were perfect.
Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/160
WB Auto
Cropped