Snapshots - August 4th 2013

It's way past time I posted something here for all my readers.  Sorry for the delay but there's only so many hours in the day and lately there just seems to be something else taking my attention away from posting.  To be honest, I haven't found much time to take many photos...although I did have another cross-over between my photography and day job recently.  I had the opportunity to design a graphic advertisement for an up coming event on campus and as part of this I needed to create a photograph where I had two separate laptop screens evenly lit, despite being at differing brightness levels.

I did a few test shots as a proof of concept and found that using a single flash was not sufficient to give even illumination on the foreground, back ground and both screens so that they could both be read.  Also that flash placement would be very important so as to not cause flare.  I ended up using two flashes positioned at about a 45 degree angle at each side from the screens and at about -2EV to provide enough to light the scene but not overpower it.

Other than this I've been organizing my photo archives into one big library, and re-editing some of my older photos.  And in doing this I am formulating a few ideas on combining my photos and writing to create a photo essay.  Stay tuned on this as it should be pretty interesting.

Finally, my main website has received some updates!!  Still not entirely happy with how it looks and I'll be carrying out some further changes to give it an overhaul.  I'm wanting to bring in more photo work and need to have a good web presence to attract possible customers, which is also why I've been expanding my online presence a bit more to include a profile on DevientART.  

Park Life

(Post re-edited and re-published for changes in photo editing technique)

On another recent Saturday, I found myself back at Woodward Park here in Tulsa.  While my wife wrangled our rat terrier I was off spotting photo opportunities.  As it turned out, I have quite a lot of photos to sort through of the various subjects I found.  Among them was a selection of wildlife - insect, bird and rodent that I want to share on this post.

Without much further ado, here is a small selection of the photos I took:

Lunar...See

With the recent "super" full moon, I thought it would be interesting to take a sequence of photos over the day before, the day of and the day after the full moon.  I wanted to see if there was any real difference in it's appearance over these days.

The first photo was taken with a 55-200mm zoom.  I found this was a little too short and required a pretty severe crop to give a larger moon in the shot.  The remaining photos were taken with a 300mm f4.5 telephoto. 

~ taken at 11:22pm on 6/21/2013

~ taken at 11:19pm on 6/22/2013

~ taken at 10:19pm on 6/23/2013

I found it pretty interesting how the "slight" time difference on the last photo seems to have had a fairly large impact on the colouring of the moon.  I don't know with any certainty but I would think that with it being earlier, the sunlight refracted more within the atmosphere as it lit the moon's face, picking up the colour.

As a slight aside, I noticed on the following night that there was a lot of wispy clouds in the sky when the moon was out.  The challenge was in capturing these clouds as the moon was still (pretty) full and still had lots of contrast - the camera's sensor was having difficulties capturing the full range of darkish sky, pale clouds and brightly lit moon-face.  The following photo was the best of my attempts in capturing the image presented before me.

Snapshots - June 17th 2013

It's been a pretty mixed time lately, and filled with a lot of technological issues.  I have since overcome the ones concerning my camera, now I need to deal with my ailing Macbook Pro.  

Fortunately I have been able to source a temporary workaround for my lack of laptop - albeit having to switch back to Windows as an OS.  Thankfully my Adobe subscription to Creative Cloud permits me to use either Mac or Windows to run applications.  I also was able to track down a "free" application to give me the ability to access files on my HFS (Mac) formatted backup drive from Windows.  This means I have full access to my photo archives regardless of OS platform I use.

I'm still taking photos and as of today have over 6GB worth, in alternate archives, that I have taken since having laptop issues.  To some this may sound a lot, but to some this is a small number of photos for a 2 week period!  To me, this is  my experimenting stage, where I'm having fun and practicing my photographic vision to see and capture interesting images.  I have no real direction currently in my work, although this may change at some future time, just not for the foreseeable future.  Which is not a bad thing as it gives me the freedom to explore and experiment, which in turn could lead to new opportunities.

I have to say though that it has been good to simplify my approach to photography and return to working with a single fixed focal length lens.  For the majority of my recent work, this is what I've done.  There has been a few photos taken with one of my telephoto zooms but they are in the minority.  If the image can be captured the way I want with the 35mm lens, then that's what I use; if not, I will select the best tool for the job (if I have it). 

It's been a while since I've posted any photos here, and even longer since I posted anything on my website.  To be honest, my website has been badly neglected for a while and in desperate need of a full refresh.  While I'm at it I would like to see if there are any options to pull my website and blog together under the one URL.  If I can, this would help streamline my web presence and allow for better (and more frequent) updates.  Oh, and don't be alarmed if my website goes offline, as at the very least I need to do a big overhaul and refresh of it.

I guess this is going to be a new start for me -a  new camera, a new lens and hopefully soon, a newly serviced MacBook Pro.  Stay tuned for how it all works out.

Nifty 50

I had forgotten just how flexible and useful a 50mm (or 35mm on DX format) lens really is.  Also just how much I missed working with one on my DSLR.  I've recently rectified the situation and picked up a Nikon 35mm f1.8 lens and it's already my favourite lens to shoot with.  It's like welcoming home a long lost friend and finding out you should never have parted ways...we just "clicked"! 

If you don't have a 50mm or equivalent lens in your arsenal I would really recommend you get one and see for yourself why it's the most popular lens in photography.

I have been busy getting reacquainted with the lens (35mm on DX) and have a lot of selective focus photos with shallow depth of field, which is a great by-product of the focal length, combined with the wide maximum aperture.  This does show up one drawback of the Nikon lens...the aperture diaphragm is not truely circular so the bokah is slightly irregular.  It's a minor detail that won't stop me from using the lens.

The only downside to all my recent photo taking is that my MacBook Pro is out of action, so I haven't had the opportunity to check out all my photos.  I do have everything backed-up though, so everything is safe.  Just need to get it serviced, which will be covered by my extended warranty.

All in all it's been a fun time and I'm glad to finally be back using a "nifty" 50.

Sent from my Motorola Smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!

Another pet portrait

I'm still testing out the capabilities of my new camera and taking more pet portraits, while trying to decide on a self assignment subject to work on.  Some may not view pet portraits as a subject of value but I disagree and think that it is a subject that deserves consideration.

Once more I turned to my stand-by subject of Merlin, my tabby cat.  This time I used my Nikon 55-200mm lens, with my SB-600 on camera with a diffuser dome, set to bounce at 45 degrees.  It was also set to -1.0EV and zoomed out to 24mm to give a little pop of fill without over powering the ambient light.

~Merlin

New updates - changes

It's funny what can influence your creativity and productivity if you let it.  New things definitely has a positive effect, be it a camera or a puppy...or both.

First change is the arrival of a new puppy into the family, a rat terrier we called Amber to match the colour of her eyes.  Of course, this also means I have another "captive" photo subject, or to be more accurate it means I have to practice photographing a fast moving subject.  She's fast!!

~Amber

My previous "captive" photo subject was/is my grey tabby cat Merlin.  He's put up with my continuous annoyance of putting a camera in his face and the popping of my flash gun as I practice fill-flash techniques.

~Merlin

Both photos were taken with my "new" camera (new to me) a used Nikon D2x, with a Nikon 60mm f/2.8 Micro lens and SB-600 Speedlight providing some fill-light.

I've also been experimenting with another new purchase I made recently - a SU-800 Speedlight Commander unit to allow the use of off-camera TTL flash for either fill-flash or full lighting.  Works fantastic with the D2x.