Posted on October 18, 2010 in Black and White, Fall, Lensbaby, Macro, Nature, Soft Focus, Topaz
I stopped by a local park yesterday to see what was left of Fall color. Not much, to be honest. There were some splashes of red & yellow, but also trees that had completely lost their leaves already. Still I found plenty to photograph and I’ll post a few images over the next couple of days. In one area of the park, the ground was completely covered with pine needles. These always make a nice simple composition. This image was shot with the Lensbaby Composer and soft focus optic. Processing was done in Photoshop and Topaz Adjust.
Posted on September 29, 2010 in Animals, Lensbaby, Pet Photography
In my opinion, animals are THE most challenging subject to photograph because they are always moving. A building will sit there all day long allowing you to photograph from different angles, change lenses, adjust lighting, etc. to get just the shot that you want. Not so with pets. Pet photographers really need to know their equipment inside and out and have the ability to think quickly and make adjustments in a split second. I love the challenge that presents and thrive on coming away with a great shot despite difficult shooting situations. On Sunday I threw a new wrench into the mix….I decided to try photographing at the dog show with the Lensbaby. Whoo boy…..talk about challenging! I took 30 or 40 shots and I think I may have 2 keepers. Attached is one of them. Sheltie’s are a favorite breed to photograph because I love that I can fill the frame with fur! I used the Lensbaby Composer plus the telephoto attachment for this image. Because it was a rainy day, the light was low and so I didn’t use any aperture ring which resulted in only a small portion of the image being in focus. It was a fun challenge and I will definitely try this again…hopefully improving with practice over time!
Posted on September 25, 2010 in Lensbaby, Still Life
I photographed a wedding today and it was so much fun! Before going to the bride’s home, I went to the reception hall and did some shooting before the crowd arrived. This is a Lensbaby image of the engraved glass and bottle of wine. I tried out a new diffuser for my Canon 430 flash today and am very pleased with the results. It’s a Rogue Flash Bender and it did a super job of softening the light – both indoors and outside for fill. Nothing like experimenting with new equipment when photographing such an important event, huh? 🙂
Posted on August 12, 2010 in Animals, Lensbaby, Macro, Wildlife
The swimming hole is actually the little pond in my backyard. The very same pond where the water lilies grow. This toad had the whole pond to himself the other night and he was quite the model. Normally when I go near the pond, the toads and frogs hop in the water. This little guy didn’t and – believe it or not – he let me get THIS CLOSE with the Lensbaby 3G and +4 macro lens to photograph him. I was literallly only inches away from him. Good thing he wasn’t an “attack toad”! 🙂
Posted on August 10, 2010 in Flowers, Lensbaby, Macro, Nature
Back in May I planted sunflower seeds. The package said it was a “Sunflower Variety”. As usual, the birds and chippies devoured most of the seeds, but 4 sprouts eventually emerged from the ground. Of the 4, only one was strong enough to survive the hot and dry summer. I was a little concerned because as I’ve been driving around, I’ve seen really large sunflowers here and there in my travels. Mine seemed to be growing at a much slower rate. I attributed that to the poor soil in my garden. Lo and behold, the flower has finally arrived! Much to my dismay, it’s only about 1″ in diameter! Not quite the 1 FOOT that I was hoping for! Nonetheless, it’s still a sunflower and it’s still very pretty! At least I was able to photograph it without using a step ladder as it’s only about 3 feet tall! How many can say that they’ve actually photographed a sunflower from above like I did with my little gem!? 🙂 Another image is below. These were photographed with the Lensbaby 3G.
