More telephoto fun...

Took the new lens out to Fort Whyte today hoping to get some new critters. I found some of the expected critters like Muskrats, Turtles and Geese, but I got my first Yellow Rumped Warbler and I managed to get nice a close to a Chickadee who posed for a nice shot as well.

Here is today's collection:

Critters!

Just popping in to post some favourites from a few trips in the last few days. We visited Reptilia and the Toronto Zoo as well.

Everything here is shot with the 70-200...

Nile Crocodile


Black Mamba


Monitor (forgot to note the specific species)


Plumed Basilisk


Blue Poison Dart Frog


Cayman


White Rhino


Hippo Yawning


Sumatran Tiger


Butterfly and Blooms


Alpaca


I'll be back home in a few more days, but I have the portrait shoot with my kids and nieces scheduled for Monday. I'll be packing that night, but I'll try and get shots posted.

Cheers!

Strikeout...

Hey, remember last week when I decided to try and capture a snake strike? I apparently can't learn my lesson because I tried it again today... As the title of the post suggests, no luck. On the positive side, no bloggers were injured in the making of today's post.

So, I did have some shots of the strike, but they were bad. I did, however get some nice shots while I was setting up the lights:



All in all not a good day, and after yesterday's picture, a pretty uninspiring shot. They can't all be winners.

Ugh...

Today was not a good day for shooting. In early, worked late, we had my daughter's kindergarten orientation/introduction day tonight, and I am working on an outage at work that runs from midnight to five AM. So, you get snake pics:





Sorry for the uninspired photo day, tomorrow promises to be brutal as well.

Red light district.

Day 61 and my hand still kinda throbs. Silly little snake, people aren't food!

The snakes were instrumental in today's shot though. I was playing around with directly shooting light sources, and I was snapping a few shots of spiral CFLs. They looked kind of fun, but they lack intensity.

I was shooting a red bulb, when I realized that I have another source of red light, the heat lamps on my reptile cages. I flipped on of the reflectors over, took a few captures before I could dial in a manual exposure I liked.

Here is the keeper of the bunch:



Okay, I have to say it. I titled this one, "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave..." Since my name actually *is* Dave, I really don't have a choice, do I?

Final exposure settings were 1/60th, f/6.3 at ISO 200. I had dialed in ISO 200 earlier in the day and forgot to switch it back, but the noise level at ISO 200 on the XSi is still basically nil. I did bring this up about a 1/6th of a stop in post processing as well, just to fine-tune it.

I don't recall if I mentioned it earlier or not, but I have another family/child shoot on Saturday, so I'll keep building my portfolio in anticipation of launching my small business soon. I'm less nervous about this one, and I take that as a good sign.

A tale of two pictures.

Day 60 started off with an idea for a shot that never happened. I don't know why but I wanted a technical challenge, and I thought I would try and capture something high-speed. What's faster than a snake striking? I have snakes! An idea!

I setup up the lighting, did some test shots, figured out how to kill reflections from the glass, dialed in the focus, got my exposure sorted out, and got everything ready. I was planning to crop out any food items for those somewhat squeamish about such things, and no, I never feed live prey to my reptiles.

What is it that they say about the best laid plans? I dropped the rat, tried to grab it again with my tongs, and had my hand promptly ripped open by a five foot long python.

So no high-speed reptile shot. You get a flower instead:



I decided to take the opportunity to play around with the flower, so I cranked the lights, picked a light coloured flower and tried to blow the hell out of the highlights and see what I got. I like the effect, and all in all, the day could have been worse.

Although my hand does hurt.

Reluctant Gecko

Day 42 of my project 365 once again involved rushing around looking for a picture to post. Fridays are awful for that.

My brain says, "Take another gecko picture!"

"No brain," I say, "I can't post, like, the third gecko picture in 42 days!"

My brain, however, is a forceful and evil thing, and it yells, "DO AS YOU ARE TOLD!"



As soon as the camera comes out, the geckos hide. This one decided to give me the stink eye too.

I blame my brain for this shot.

Let's give geckos a hand!

Day 31 and man was I just out of luck today. I thought today might break my 365 streak.

Pardon the elaboration of my household melodrama, but my delightful and lovely son is going through sleep training as of last night. 'Sleep training' is a nice way of saying 'cry it out' which is something my wife and I swore we would never do. Having said that, the boy was up an average of 6 times a night for the last two weeks, and at six months old, that's not a good thing. He needs to learn to sleep.

So, I'm exhausted, so is my wife. Family dinner, grumpy older kid, loads of errands, you name it, it was a rough Sunday and I just want to sleep. In my heart, though, I know that 'The Project' must go on!

In this sort of scenario though, I am very lucky. I have a macro lens, a love of macro photography, a good flash, and some amazing critters living in my house. I give you one of natures most fascinating structures, the Gecko's sticky hands!



These pads are covered with countless little hairs that are so small, they actually form magnetic bonds between the electrons of nearby molecules! They really are nifty, and they have an amusing tendency to want to climb on my wife's face.

Shot at 1/60th, f/8, ISO 200, 580EX II on-camera, angled up 75 degrees, 1/2 power with the Omnibounce. Shot through plate glass, and the Omnibounce seems to really, really help with reflections.

I just noticed that I shot back to back hand pictures...

Let's compare!

Here we are on day 17 of my Project 365, and I thought we would do a quick comparison.

Here is a shot I took on September 3rd of my Jungle Carpet Python, Zoot:



Looking at this picture now, I decided to try a similar shot, but using the tools and techniques that I've picked up in the four and a half months since I took it. Here is the result from today:



Better white balance and colour, better lighting, and better composition (to my mind). Essentially, I think I've improved on pretty much any point you choose to compare.

I'd also like to add: Zoot is awesome. I luvs her!

She speaks with a forked tongue.

Day 5 of the Prject 365, and here I am again. I hope I can keep this up!

Today's photo plans started with a walk-around at lunch time. That had to be canceled when my workload simply wouldn't allow it. No trouble, plenty of time, right?

Plan two was to camp out at the bird feeder in our backyard after work. Twenty minutes in the snow later, and that plan was scrapped. Not one bird came out, and the shots of the empty feeder were rather lackluster at best. Well, I can always shoot in the house tonight, right?

Plan three, my reef aquarium! Lots of colourful fish, corals, etc... In the midst of adjusting the lighting, I blew the GFCI outlet and spent the rest of my spare moments before putting my daughter in the tub, trying to get the rather critical life support systems in the tank running again.

So, we get another macro shot today. I like shooting the macros, the textures are often interesting, and there are always nice colours, but shooting on the white background does tend to make rather clinical pictures. Having said that, I'll take any shot that I can get today!



This is Rio, my Brazilian Rainbow Boa. She's a beautiful snake and I'm rather proud of getting this shot off at all, as snakes are not fond of sitting on white nylon fabric with two flashes going off and no cover around. Getting the tongue out on the shot is a mini coup also, with a 1/200th second exposure, and the speed with which they flick and retract the tongue, it's pretty lucky. I'm happy with the exposure and depth of field as well.

These shots are also being done in manual mode now as well, with manual settings on the flash. It's one more step in my technical education, juggling the exposure triangle of ISO/aperture/shutter speed along with one variable flash and a fixed supplementary light.

This shot was taken at ISO 200, 1/200th shutter, f/7.1 with the 580EX II on manual at 1/8th power on-camera with the Stofen Omnibounce, and the Cameron 36 W/S optical slave firing opposite and above the camera, using a reflecting umbrella. I can't believe that I know what all that means!

More lightbox shots,

I had a brief moment to set up the lightbox again tonight after getting my daughter off to bed. I wanted to try some macro work, but I was surprised to find that I wasn't able to get much of anything working my extension tubes. Serious blurring and razor-thin depth of field even at f/9 or narrower. So, I went back to the 50mm and shot with that.

A dedicated macro would be so nice... *sigh*

Anyhow, I tried an 'art' shot. This was a great learning experience. First the shot:



The setup here is straight forward. Two drops of food colouring in a crystal wine glass. I learned a lot here. First, the white balance on this shot is really, really off out of the camera. I have no idea why. I was able to correct to a degree in post processing, but there is still a distinct grayness to the 'white' background. Second, one sheet of tissue paper isn't going to cut it for diffusion, there are some real hotspots on the glass. I also couldn't fire the flash because the front of the glass would blow out from the reflection.

Plans to correct these issues include purchasing some proper diffusion material for the box, and purchasing a nice, powerful gooseneck style lamp to light from the top. Something in the 100w or more range to really pick up the light levels.

Here is the second shot of the night:



This is a baby Crested Gecko, one of the acquisitions from the Reptile Expo last weekend. The 50mm really, really shone on this shot. I would suggest following the link to my Flickr and looking at the scale detail in the large size shot. The 50mm is insanely sharp for the price, like, crazy sharp.

This shot came out better than the water shot, crisper and better exposed. I had to add a full +1EV in the water shot to brighten the background, and I didn't have to do it on this shot. I was able to fire the flash on this shot, so no doubt that was the difference.

Manitoba Reptile Breeder Expo

Today I visited the Manitoba Reptile Breeder Expo, both for a photographic opportunity and to peruse some new additions to my collection. The expo usually has twenty or so exhibitors with a variety of snakes, amphibians, lizards, tarantulas and the like, so there are good opportunities to browse and shoot.

My wife and the kids came as well, so I didn't have much time with the camera, unfortunately. I did get two shots that were decent however.



This is a clutch of young Bearded Dragons. I regret not noting down the name of the breeder, so I'm not sure who these cuties belong to. My daughter loves Beardies so when you get a pile of a dozen or so all clambering over each other, she thinks it's just about the coolest thing ever.



This is a variety of Ball Python called a Bumblebee, owned by Geckoland Reptiles here in Winnipeg. A Bumblebee is a combination of two other morphs, the Spider Ball Python and the Pastel Ball Python. They have been bred in North America since early this decade, and their white, yellow and black colouration is striking.

Since my last posting, I've looked at the 'wife-on-maternity' financial situation and I'm no longer sure I'll be buying a flash or photobox kit. Thinking it through, those photobox kits might be convenient, but is it really worth $300+ for a couple of 75 watt lights and a box of white fabric?

I think my next plan in a DIY photobox so that I can do some more 'art' photography and take better pictures of my animals.

That's the plan at least.