As promised!

So, in order to get myself going again I went somewhere with ample photographic opportunities, the Assiniboine Park Conservatory. Sure, I've been there before, but the kids like it and I needed a shot in the arm.

I took a bunch of shots but I'm only sharing two today. Not that the others were bad, but I'm trying to keep this simple and doable given the limited time investment that I have available.

Anyhow, the orchids are about the only things still blooming at the APC, but I'm okay with that!





Both were shot with my 7D, 60mm Macro and 580EX2 on-camera with the Omnibounce. The Omnibounce seems to really work well with Macro shots, it was certainly one of my better purchases. ISO 200, f/8, 1/80th shutter with the flashi providing fill light in TTL mode at +2/3 stops. The additional stops help with the light lost to the diffuser.

Thanks to my readers for sticking with me through the rather dry last several months. I'll get my groove back soon.

Dark Autumn Water

I decided to do a set-up shot tonight trying to capture a bit of the fall season.

I found a leaf that had a nice golden colour and just a hint of curl from drying out. I use a glass casserole dish on a black sheet, got the camera low and had the flash off to camera left nearly parallel to the water surface to pick up some of the minute surface ripples.

Here is the result:



I'm really, really happy with this shot. I expected the leaf to look nice, and the ripples just blurring off in the foreground and background are what I was hoping for on the clean black background. Where I got lucky was the crisp reflection. I was dropping the leaf and clicking away madly, so to catch it just at the point of contact with the reflection was a real bonus.

I'm just happy that I had an idea, shot it, and can be this proud of the result. Consider me rekindled!

Master of his domain!

Looking for Macros on day 179, and in the backyard I went hunting about the various spiderwebs.

I thought I would find something a little bit bigger, but all my arachnid pals were hiding... except one.



This guy is *tiny*, like half the width of my fingernail. Getting a shot in focus was a challenge, because even at f/6.3 the slight breeze would take it in and out of focus. This is the best of about two dozen clicks of the shutter. This was also taken at ISO 400 so there is a bit of noise, the higher ISO was required to bring up the shutter speed due to the aforementioned breeze.

Even though he (she?) was small, he just strikes me as a bad-ass. You can tell he totally owns his little stalk of Catmint.

Unfurling...

Sorry to go back and reshoot something from yesterday, but that poppy pod was starting to bloom today. I'm not likely to get another chance to shoot this this year, so I had to do it!

To try and change it up a bit, however, I used a sheet of turquoise construction to create a backdrop for it and add some complementary colour to the shot:



I also stopped down the aperture to f/7.1 (I think) to give a little more depth of field. I think it's a much stronger shot than yesterdays as a result!

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!

Faking it...

So for day 170, I was trying a different technique, where you intentionally use the wrong white balance setting in post-processing.

First the shot, and then the explanation:



This is just a macro of a bamboo leaf with water drops, but the key is lighting and processing. The background is lit with two speedlites, with a red gel to camera left and a yellow gel to camera light. A third speedlite is on the camera with the Lumiquest SB3 softbox to light the leaf.

In post processing, you swap the white balance to 'fluorescent' which tones everything blue, and you get the tones you see here. The 'bluing' also makes the leaf and drops pop. I like it!

You could accomplish the same thing just by shooting with a standard white balance and toning the picture manually, but this gives you a sense of experimentation since you don't know exactly how it will turn out. When I started this 365, I *never* would have shot like this, I used to feel like you had to have everything figured out, and it had to look *right* somehow. Now, part of the fun is shooting something and seeing what happens later.

I don't think I have to tell you which style of shooting I'm preferring!

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!

Back to work...

Well, my vacation is over, and it's back to the project 365. By my reckoning this is day 158, I didn't count any of the days on my vacation since I was largely just shooting for myself.

This morning I went out to shoot flowers in the garden, early enough to get the dew on the petals. The flower beds grew in nicely while we were away so it seemed like a natural thing to spend some time on.

Much to my delight, what I actually found was a drowsy little fly on a leaf who was seemingly not afraid of my lens. I had my Macro lens on started shooting. He moved around a bit, but I was able to get a couple of shots in focus and decently composed.

Here is my favourite of the day:



The settings on this shot were f/6.3 at 1/100th shutter. I had to go to ISO 200 to get the exposure bright enough with the decent shutter speed and reasonable DOF. Even so, I would have liked to get this shot at f/11 or so, but I didn't have enough time to fiddle with the settings before the fly finally flew away.

All in all, I can still be happy with this shot. I haven't had many macro opportunities lately so it's nice to do something different for a change.

Not so dandy...

So I've finished up my gearing. I'm done buying equipment for a long while. I started with some pretty basic gear, no lighting and no idea what I was doing. Now, I've got some pretty great gear, a 4 speedlite off-camera lighting system, and a slightly better idea of what I'm doing, but only slightly :)

My kit now includes:

EOS 7D
EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro
EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM (yeah, I swapped up from the 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS USM)
EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM
EF 1.4x TC II
Canon 580EX II Speedlite
LumoPro LP120 Speedlite
2 x LumoPro LP160 Speedlites

I'm selling my XSi and I've sold the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM to help fund this last gasp of equipment buying. I've done it mostly with used equipment and strategic price matching and swap-ups over the last few months, but it's still a big investment.

The next step is to really put the gears to generating some business. Maybe I'm crazy trying this, but I've got to give it a try.

Anyhow, playing with the 17-55 I was enjoying shots taken low and wide. I was messing with perspective and I couldn't help but notice one of THEM. You know, THEM. Sitting there in your yard, acting all high and mighty, messing up the joint. You can kill them, but they keep coming back...



I don't like using chemicals on the lawn, but man... I'm ready to go agent orange on this lawn.

Sprout in the sky...

Day 135 and it's just amazingly gorgeous outside.

My daughter and I took a stroll down to the park to see what sorts of birds were out, but small kids are not exactly adept at stalking down flighty waterfowl. I didn't really mind as the walk was great, and we had fun.

There were still some nice shots to take, and I ended up just enjoying the blue skies and the signs of new spring growth. Here's my favourite of the afternoon:



I found a Canon TC 1.4x II extender this week as well and I am anxiously awaiting it's delivery. The 200mm is decent, but a little extra reach sure won't hurt with my attempts to shoot songbirds. I know you lose a little clarity, and a full stop of aperture, but it should be a benefit overall if I can reduce the amount of cropping I need for those distant shots.