Day 207 - Snow-Crowned Sparrow

Nah - there's no such species like that!  Read on, and you'll know what I mean.

We had the first proper snow of this season.  When I awoke this morning, I was greeted by a white blanket that God had decided to lay over the sleeping world.  It looked beautiful, and I always enjoy watching the snowflakes come gliding down.  But today, it was windy, really windy, although not too cold.  I picked up my camera, donned a jacket over my jammies and got out on the balcony for the first shots.

I probably scared the sparrows as I stepped onto the balcony and I suddenly heard a big flapping of wings and squeaks and chirps and then saw a cloud of sparrows rise up and take itself to the trees nearby.  I saw a pair of them that sat together and as I aimed my camera at them, I saw one of them lean over and eat snow off one of the branches.  I was quick enough to catch the action, however, it was so windy, the branches and the motion of the sparrow kinda blurred the shot a bit.  And then I saw the little bit of snow that had collected on this sparrow's head - he looked adorable, the little snow-crowned sparrow!

Serious birders would have a heart attack if they were to see nothing beyond the title of the blog post!  ;-)

In the above shot, I think I see a mist from the sparrow's breath.  I might be hallucinating entirely as well.

Day 196 - Macro Week - Tender Coriander

I'm truly in the doldrums, as I told one of my very kind Flickr friends!  I am actually a little low on energy and inspiration because I've been a bit under the weather and my son has been more ill than I was.  However, he seems like he's finally on the mend; but I'm quite exhausted.

I was going to use this bunch of coriander leaves in my cooking, and suddenly decided to turn this into an image.  And the droplet was an idea right after the first shot - I love doing water droplets, except this time I didn't have a lot of great ideas/objects to use for the reflection.  So I grabbed the first thing I could find and took a couple of shots quick, quick!

90 mm, f/5.0, 1/6s, ISO 800, flash fired at - 2, Manual Mode

90 mm, f/29, 13s, ISO 100, Aperture Priority

Day 170 - One more leaf

I don't think I will be doing many more leaves in the near future, although I did want to go out and shoot the leaves in the puddle behind my house.  The weather has been miserable all day, and I couldn't quite do that.

This leaf shot was taken for the Fall photography infosession I had planned for the photo club meeting.  Only 3 people showed up for it, and that too fifteen minutes too late - I had packed up already.  It's a little disappointing when you have worked hard on something because people ask you for it and then they just don't bother showing up or even letting you know they won't.  Oh well!  So much for that, but I have to say it was a learning process for me because I had to do some research besides really plan my images.

This was my first time shooting with a gray card to set the custom white balance.  Although I was shooting in RAW, I wanted to try the white balance in-camera to use as a sample image.

It was a pleasing enough shot, but later I thought I liked the shot taken with the "sunny" preset, better.  Saying this, I have to admit that the gray card came from behind my Photoshop Elements 8 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby.  And he had already added a disclaimer that the colours wouldn't be really accurate.  So, it's better to get an 18% gray card from a store.  I really like his writing and find it a very humourous instructional style.  I get a good laugh out of it.

Handheld @ 1/30s, f/5, EV -0.67, 109mm, ISO 100, Manual ExpoCustom White Balance

Handheld @ 1/125s, f/20, 84 mm, ISO 800, Manual Exposure

I bumped up the ISO really high on the second one because I wanted to get that lens flare through the branches, and this was the only way I could get a small aperture and a fast shutter speed.

Day 168 - Only work and no play...

No, I couldn't let that happen.  So. I fortunately got a ride home with a colleague and had enough time to take a few shots in the dark (well, literally!) and then head back home.

Handheld @ 96 mm, f/5.0, 1/10s, ISO 200.  Shot in aperture priority mode

Day 155 - Tired

I didn't do any photography today - I was completely fatigued for a lack of sleep for days now! :(  Happens too often for comfort, but well, that's me!

I ended up snoozing in the evening, and thought I'd take this chance to process a few shots I took yesterday.  Not sure which composition of the leaves with the house in the background I like better - probably the first one.  What do you think?

Day 145 - Raindrops

Well, the most obvious subject after a rainy day would be raindrops on anything and everything.  I went out armed with only my macro lens and my tripod, but the high winds rendered the tripod useless.  The evening was dark and gloomy so I had very little light to play in.  Therefore, high ISO and noisy pictures were my lot for today.  I tried to remove some noise in post, but just not satisfied with what I got.

The following shots are definitely not worth my trouble, but I somehow liked the shape and the pattern of the droplets on the red leaf - they kinda all appear to be within the lines that are the veins on the leaf.   

This second one has this drop caught in between two leaves - I found that interesting.

More photos from today's outing in my Flickr photostream.

Day 144 - An Ode to the Fallen Leaves

Summer is gone with its bejewelled splendour

The trees standing tall

They know it is Fall,

Their leaves they will soon surrender.

Time flies on the wings of an eagle -

Time doesn’t wait for you and me,

Time dresses Fall in colours so regal;

Time strips the trees of greenery.

Chilly winds blow the leaves asunder

The birds too are gone

The scene so forlorn

The silence deepened by the distant rolls of thunder.

Gone too will be the last seagull

The snow will be here,

Too soon it will appear

Numbing the senses, making life so dull.

Day 141 - Sheaves of leaves

Ok, so I'm cheating.  I didn't have time after my project submission to go out shooting this evening and I had these photos from yesterday that I wanted to try my hand at Photoshopping.

So, I learned a new thing today - selective colouring.  Pretty simple, but takes a lot of patience.  I picked a random shot to try it, but on second thoughts, I could have used a better image.  Nevertheless, the results were encouraging.

The rest of the frames are just regular stuff.. nothing to write home about, because I'm not looking forward to seeing these leaves lying on the forest floor. Why, oh why, can't summer last forever?  :(

 

I tried a little B&W with this not because I didn't like the colours, but I wanted to check out the tonality and I have to admit I like what I saw. 

Day 101 - And the rains came

Been busy and not posting.. neither clicking everyday.. bad, bad, bad!

These shots are from 5 days ago!

I wish I could have had a better background to show off the raindrops in the last image but being limited to a small balcony corner didn't afford much option.  Enlarging this shot will probably make the raindrops a bit more visible.

Day 62 - Great Blue Heron

Got to see this guy at long last.  Watched it for close to three hours, hoping that I could snap him while he was in flight as well, but that would be expecting too much!

These shots are from earlier in the day:

Day 63 - Exposure bias

Another experiment lying in bed - I was watching the sunny patches on the trees and loved the way this tree branch kept swaying in and out of the light.  This is what finally forced me out of bed - I just had to get near the window to see what I could do with the light patches.

My camera still had my 90 mm macro on it, which I never bothered changing.  I played with the exposure bias here a little trying to figure out how not to blow out the leaves in the sunny patch.  I also read about stopping the aperture way down to get a "sunstar" effect which didn't work out quite as it should have, but the dust, cobwebs and scratches on my window created some interesting diffraction.  And did I mention in one of my earlier posts that I absolutely love the bokeh that this lens makes?

I have to admit there's a fair amount of camera shake since the shots were handheld.

Ok.. enough for now!  My head really hurts from the light from the monitor.  I hope you'll tell me a good trick to catch the light and shade of the late afternoon sun.