Day: February 17, 2013

I just had to post this shot I took a few minutes ago. Those adorable little bushtits that flit from tree to tree peeping constantly came through my yard late this afternoon and decided to bathe. I grabbed my camera and ran out, sitting a few feet from the fountain. Of course they all left when I appeared but one by one they came back down; when I clicked the shutter release, they again disappeared into the azalea behind the fountain but then, one by one, they reappeared, finally acclimating to the sound of my shutter release. They bathed for about five minutes, then someone revving an obscenely loud engine, pulled up to the signal on the other side of my wall and the bushtits were gone—but not before I got a couple of good shots. I had to increase the ISO to 500 because it was getting dark out and decrease the shutter speed but I think my new lens and Nikon’s newest VR lives up to its hype because I handheld this shot at 1/30 of a second.

This shot reminded me of the meerkats in “Meerkat Manor” they way they’re all standing rigid and on the alert. How cute are they?

I probably should save this for St. Paddy’s Day but since I took this shot this morning, I’m using it today. I was outside briefly in pursuit, yes once again, of my lovely hummers. But this morning, they were cavorting while the fountain was in bright sun so I was anxious to get them in natural light, not as I have been doing recently, with flash. But I had to switch lenses, changing to my new 70-200mm lens, and by the time I got out there, the hummers had decided they were clean enough. While I waited futilely for their return, I took a few shots of the rosemary and I liked the view of the single stalk emerging from the dark background. It was only after I had taken several that I realized I had my WB set to Tungsten, left over from my indoor ice cream shot last evening. But for some reason I couldn’t recapture the interest of those first few shots after changing the WB to fine weather. When I downloaded them and changed the WB in Lightroom, I decided I preferred the deep, bluish green created with the tungsten WB instead of the yellower green produced using the fine weather setting. The other interesting thing to me is that the shot has its own vignette so I didn’t need to add one to set off the sprig of rosemary.

Focal Length 200mm
ISO 100
f/4
1/100
WB Tungsten