On Thursday afternoon, I drove up to Foresthill on an errand. I’d never before driven on Foresthill Road in the foothills and I thought the area was beautiful. On the way home, I pulled over just to look. And this “blue pine” is what I saw. I wonder if it’s a new species of pine or if someone was trying out a new canvas for his graffiti?
I took a short walk Tuesday afternoon around my neighborhood to make sure the new walking shoes I bought for my trip were comfortable and to see if I could finally get my FitBit to register 10,000 steps. I was successful on both counts; the shoes were perfectly comfortable AND, I ended up with 12,000 steps, slightly more than 6 miles, for Tuesday. I took my D800 with the fisheye lens with me just to see what neighborhood shots would look like through a fisheye.
This is the most interesting thing I encountered on my late afternoon walk. I think this is supposed be a “green goblin,” as he was hanging from a tree along with several other Halloween-themed paper lantern like globes. It’s not too scary or eerie but I thought the sun peeking over the edge made him a bit more interesting than the others and besides, I couldn’t get up close to the others without stepping on a stranger’s lawn so I kept my feet on the sidewalk.
On Monday, I took some macro shots of a beautiful orange lily that my friend Carly gave to me. The lily is unusual because it has a second row of spiky petals surrounding the stamen. I’d never seen a lily like this, nor had Carly. I think the name of it might have been on the bouquet when she presented it to me on Sunday but the name is now “gone with the wine!” And no, that is not a typo.
When I took the shots, though, only small parts of the flower were in focus and I wanted to show more of the flower detail. One of the focus issues I have discovered with macro photography is that the depth of field is so extremely shallow that only a very small portion of the photograph is in focus, even when using a small aperture, so despite my efforts, only a minuscule part of each shot was in focus. So, I wondered if I could create a “focus stacked” image in Photoshop. A few months ago, I’d never heard the term “focus stacking.” Now, I hear it all the time. Focus Stacking is a technique used to combine a group of photographic images, especially macro images, to create a single image that is in focus throughout. And I discovered that “Yes!” I could do it in Photoshop and it is easy. I took ten photographs of the lily, focusing on different parts of the flower in each shot. Then, exported the shots to Photoshop and with a few clicks, I had a Focus Blended image that shows most of the flower in focus. Wow!
My friends Katie and Carly joined me for dinner Sunday in a Halloween themed evening during which we tried several different appropriately named wines. We had four from which to choose so we pulled numbers from a hat to pick the order of consumption. “Zombie Zin” was first up. And this is the only shot I took all evening so there is no photographic record of “Ménage à Trois Midnight,” “Apothic Dark,” or “3 Girls,” and, the Bogle Phantom didn’t get picked in the draw so that bottle awaits; Halloween, perhaps? So readers of this blog won’t get too alarmed at our wine consumption, we didn’t finish the “3 Girls” Cab and “Apothic Dark” was an already opened bottle I had on hand. We sipped the “Zombie Zin” while taking precautions against vampires with roasted garlic spread on crostini.
One of the hummers was enjoying the light sprinkling of rain Saturday morning.
Focal Length 400mm, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/800, shutter priority
I couldn’t resist using my new fisheye lens to take a selfie. But since I used the mirror to get my reflection, I decided to flip the photo so it looks as if it were taken from inside the mirror looking out at me.
Hmmm. I wonder if the Mad Hatter or White Rabbit might be lurking in there too? Uh oh! I guess I am in Wonderland after all. I think I see Tweedledum and Tweedeldee with Mady trying to pretend she doesn’t know these people.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or is it the other way around?
I missed the partial solar eclipse on Thursday but didn’t even know to look for it until my photo buddy, Melinda, texted me to make sure I knew about it and what I needed for my lens to make sure I didn’t ruin my sensor. I was out and about during the eclipse but because it was mostly overcast, the sky was just a bit darker. About 5:30, as I drove down my street headed home, I noticed a fire rainbow as the sun began to dip a little so after parking in my garage, I grabbed my camera, ran to the middle of the street (perhaps a bit more dangerous than pointing my camera directly at the sun…at least for me) and fired off a couple of shots.
I brought home a bag of gourds and mini pumpkins and decided they’d make a good subject. I’ve never really thought of an uncarved pumpkin as being sinister but when I added a dark vignette to this closeup grouping, I thought they looked a bit ominous despite their minuscule size.
Focal Length 70mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/15s
I’m not talking football here. This salad counts as 6 points on the Weight Watchers PointsPLus System and it was my lunch on Wednesday. This is my take on a Salad Niçoise with mixed greens, Feta cheese, tuna, Kalamata olives and assorted veggies that I had on hand.
In an effort to return my body to its less flabby state, I have rejoined Weight Watchers. I originally joined in 1971 when no added fat of any kind was allowed, when liver had to be consumed once a week, and when all alcohol was verboten. The WW points system is a dream come true for this life long weight struggler. Since we closed Famous Mo’s Coffeehouse & Theater a little more than a year ago, I have managed to stack on 18 unwanted pounds. I realized that I needed some help to get rid of it despite my success at dumping 80 pounds on my own almost 30 years ago and keeping most of that weight off. At that time, to do it, I didn’t rejoin Weight Watchers because of what I felt were unreasonable restrictions. But WW was my jumping off point and I modified it to make it a reasonable life style change for me, one at which I was very successful…until now. The WW points system is exactly what I needed to nudge me in the right direction and I can eat and enjoy anything that I want, including a glass or two of wine. I just have to count the points. In my case, I get 26 a day, with an additional 49 per week to use as I wish, and with additional points added for my efforts at the gym. So far, it’s working for me and in the first two weeks, I’ve lost 6.2 pounds (yes, we watchers of every pound take credit for every ounce lost).
I took this shot with my 50mm 1.4 lens, hand holding it, in natural window light. I used my Expodisc to set the white balance which I think is perfect. I also set the D800 to Aperture Priority, because I’m trying to get used to using this mode as I have noticed an improvement in exposure when I use Aperture or Shutter priority over Manual despite having used Manual Mode almost exclusively as my primary mode for the past 4 years. I’ll see how I like it.
Focal Length 50mm, ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/100
I’ve been working’ on the railroad … railroad museum photos that is. The museum is filled with dioramas depicting everyday rail activities. And although most of the figures in the museum are modeled after volunteer docents making them very lifelike, I was most struck by the silhouettes of the roundhouse workers that were just that, silhouettes cut from plywood. The backlighting was what caught my attention. And the last shot is a gear, or something, on a piece of rolling stock that would have been serviced by the roundhouse workers.
Dinah won’t you blow your horn?
A magnificent globular leaded glass chandelier hangs in the California State Railroad Museum largely unnoticed, hidden between rail cars at the back of the museum. It caught my eye immediately, though, and I fell in love with it. The lovely orb is from the Oakland Central Station which was built about a hundred years ago and is now closed. I took several shots from directly beneath it and as I walked away, I noticed it reflected in the window of one of the railcars.
The building isn’t exactly round but my new 10.5mm macro lens creates the effect of a perfect roundhouse at the California State Railroad Museum, complete with a diesel engine on the left, another railcar on the right, and, in then middle, my obsession from the last Trains and Tripods event there, the San Diego & Arizona Eastern M W 1003 1931 Ford Model AA Rail Fire Engine.
This is an HDR created from five shots using one of the HDR presets in Photoshop.
Well, maybe just the Santa Fe…and a somewhat bloated looking Santa Fe at that! My brother and I joined The California Railroad Museum’s Trains and Tripods photography event over the weekend. This Santa Fe engine replaced the Western Pacific engine I photographed there in May. I couldn’t resist using my new 10.5mm fisheye lens and was standing just inches from the engine to get this shot. I bracketed the shot and created an HDR in Photoshop. I love this fisheye lens but I was standing so close to my subject that I didn’t notice the shadow of me, my camera, and my tripod just below the coupler on the lower left before I took the series of photographs. It’s just another thing to consider when I compose using this fisheye lens.
I went outside at noon with my new fisheye lens in search of something that captured my fancy. When I looked up at the clouds and the sun I wanted to see what this lens would do to the scene. I like the end result, especially the starburst. And with the curvature created by the fisheye, the pergola cross beams appear to be smiling at the possibility of a little moisture. A recent Flickr challenge was “seasonal weather” so that helped me decide on the subject.
Focal Length 10.5mm, ISO 200, f/20, 1/400s
This is Pete Perez who works and teaches classes at Action Camera in Roseville. When I stopped in Wednesday to have my camera sensors cleaned and to pick up a travel tripod, Pete helped me pick one out and I went home not only with clean sensors and the travel tripod but, you guessed it, a fish eye lens. This is a 10.5mm DX for my D7100 but I can use it with the D800 in DX mode.
And, oh, the travel tripod is for my upcoming, totally unexpected, trip to Spain and France with my friend Charleen. Out of the blue, Monday, she asked me, as I tread on the treadmill at the gym, if I would be interested in replacing a friend unable to go on a trip they’d had planned for a year. I thought about it briefly. By the end of my workout I had decided, yes! So, I’ll be spending the last two weeks of November in Europe. The trip starts in Barcelona where we’ll spend three nights and ends with four nights in Paris with a week long cruise up the Rhône River from Arles to Lyon in between. And could this trip be more perfect? It’s a wine cruise, we’ll be wine tasting all the way. Be still my heart.
So, with the addition of the fish eye lens to my arsenal, you might be seeing some rather interesting and unusual views of Le Tour Eiffel.
The welcome morning downpour left lots of raindrops on the roses so I decided to try for some macro shots of the drops. The breeze thwarted me a bit and caused most of the shots to lose focus. I noticed a small fly-like creature with bulging eyes moving from flower to flower and captured just one shot of it as it perched briefly on the edge of a rose petal. The shot was in fairly decent focus. If the bug had kept perfectly still for the quarter second exposure, it would have been perfect. A quick Google search revealed that this bug-eyed bug has a name that doesn’t seem to fit its appearance. It is a flower fly, but it is, appropriately enough, perched on a flower.
Focal Length 105mm, ISO 100, f/18, 1/4s
I photographed my neighbor’s roof for a Flickr challenge, “architectural detail” and added a grunge filter in Perfect Effects 8. I love the ripply look that the of the edges of the tiles create.
The brisk breezes blew oak leaves every which way on Sunday afternoon.
Betty Boop is covered with blooms and all my roses seem to be trying their best for one last flush of color. I wanted to get a shot of autumn leaves wafting in the brisk afternoon breezes but instead the midday light on Betty caught my eye. I’ll try for blowing leaves another time.
I had the 80-400mm lens with its 1.4X teleconverter attached to the D800.
Focal Length 550mm, ISO 200, f/8, 1/500s
I caught a glimpse of movement outside and, thinking it might be one of the hummers, I grabbed my camera and stepped out. It was a lovely monarch butterfly, apparently lured to the same shrubs that bring the honeybees.
For the first two shots, the camera had the same settings I used for the honeybees an hour before. I took the third shot a day later when the monarch flitted into the yard again, landed briefly on the lawn, then flitted away. The first two shots feature the underside of the wing and the last shot shows the top of the wing.
Focal Length 400mm, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/250, flash
Focal Length 400mm, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/400, flash
