Sweet red...

This weekend, my wife and I broke out one of our new Xmas gifts, a nice little fondue set from my parents.

We had a few leftovers, and as such, the camera came out.



This was just a simple shot; macro lens, on-camera flash with an omnibounce diffuser.

Growth in the Garden

I saw a few things in the garden on the way home today, so I went for a wander with my Macro lens to see what I could see for day 171.

Here are two lessons I learned:

1. Wind makes shooting macros of flowers pointlessly hard.
2. No matter how hard you try, the Dragonfly knows you are looking at it, and will fly away if you come within five thousand feet of it.

Having said that I got a few shots I liked, and I'm posting two that are both themed around growth.

First, a Poppy Pod from the front garden. This will likely bloom in the next day or two so you have a limited time to shoot them:



Second, the same Blackberry bush from this shot has started to lose it blooms and grow berries. I took a different angle and opened the lens wide to get a shallow DOF shot of the last full bloom and some of the new berries:



Sadly, the bloom blew out in the shot, so the very slight purple tone was lost in the shot. Damn auto-exposure!

Stand out!

Day 163 and I was screwing around with glass and lights again. Being back home I could mess with all my toys again, so I had a bit of fun browsing around Flickr for inspiration. One shot that I really liked was this one which is just wine glasses and lighting.

The clever perspective really appealed to me, but I wanted a little more interest beyond the lighting. As such, I messed around with the elements of the shot and changed up the lighting.

Here is my shot for today:



There are a couple of keys to this shot, the biggest being a small aperture and a wide angle. This was shot at 17mm at the minimum possible distance so the focus was crisp across the whole shot and the perspective was exaggerated. I also let the background drape and throw shadow a bit since pure white tended to lose the details. I both like the hint of gray, but I admit that in some ways I dislike it since it comes across a bit 'dirty'. Perhaps shooting on just gray would have been a bit better. The raspberry was just for a hit of colour and interest, which I think the shot needed.

Lighting was an LP120 above at half power using the SB3 softbox, and an LP160 on either side at 1/8th power shooting through the sides of the lightbox. ISO 100, 1/250th shutter at f/16.

The Waiting Game...

Day 159 of Project 365.

Why is it that when you come back from vacation you have so much to do that you need another vacation? As you might gather, this is my excuse for not having a great picture today :)

Anyhow, there is a male Goldfinch frequenting our backyard feeder, but he is incredibly skittish so the few shots I managed are distant and otherwise craptacular. While I sat waiting for him to return, I realized that there was something else I was waiting for:



The blackberry bushes in the backyard are in full bloom. Soon, my sweet little berries, soon...

Also, I know that I shouldn't be craving any equipment at the moment, but I'm in love with these!

Summer on a dessert plate...

Day 134 of my Project 365, and 2-for-1 quarts of strawberries at Safeway meant that there could be no doubt about dessert tonight.



Oh yeah, it's summer alright.

So, let's talk about the picture. I didn't want a blown background again, I think it makes the pictures a little to clinical, and I'm trying to work on adding depth and character to my 'object' shots. I specifically went white background though as I do like the brightness. The gradient of white to gray is nice, and I think I'll continue to work on that in future.

Composition was another point. Reading about food photography I tried a tip that I had read a few times, and now I notice everywhere. You don't just shoot the food, but add some related items around it to provide a little more interest, in this case the strawberries. It's simple but it does seem to help, and if I have more time to set up the shot next time I'll be sure to add more to it.

For now though, I'm gonna eat it :)

A little piece of summer.

Last night we had one of those lovely dense snows that coats everything with thick, clumpy crystals. It's not quite hoarfrost, but it still transforms the skeletal winter trees into dazzling white firecrackers.

Imagine my delight and surprise arriving to work today when I realized that some of the trees in my office courtyard still had deep red berries hanging from the branches. Here is a last little piece of summer hanging on in the face of inevitable winter.