Day 292 - The Sky's the Limit!

While I waited for the bus for close to an hour, I saw the strangest shapes of clouds in the skies.  The setting sun turned the sky into a riot of colours and the drifting clouds passed by like shape shifters.  Incredible!

All the images were taken with my cell phone.  I have done very minimal post-processing (slight saturation, cropping and noise reduction) as the quality of these images would otherwise deteriorate a lot.  So, please excuse the quality of the images today.

Day 195 - Macro week - Pinned!

It was pretty interesting trying to get the push pins to stay put and not rock and roll around the board (no pun intended because the board was balanced precariously on the edge of the table and a slight movement from me made it unstable!).

I took these shots in extremely low light - the only light filtering through was the fluorescent from my kitchen.  I adjusted the white balance and tone in post.

I hadn't realized how much dust the pins had had on the surface, till I looked at them much later on the LCD.  Oh, the joys of negligence!  I had to clean up my act and retouch them to remove the dust of course.  I could have spent a tenth or less of the time if I had just remembered to give them a polish first!  Lesson learned!

90 mm, f/32, 30s, ISO 100, Aperture Priority

90 mm, f/32, 30s, ISO 100, Aperture Priority

I tried a few other exposures and apertures, but I didn't quite like the results.  The only difference between these two shots is the composition, and nothing else.

Day 174 - Blue

I had been nurturing this idea of doing a shoot with pencil shavings and then I finally had the opportunity to do that today.  I borrowed my son's coloured pencils and had a play with them.

I started off with ambient light and then experimented with bounced flash and then fill-flash.  I had decided to pick the best shots without considering the type of lighting I had used.  And strangely, I picked every shot, barring one, that was shot with only ambient light.  (I looked at the EXIF data only after I'd picked the shots for today's post).

Moral of the story: I still have a very long way to go before I'm able to use flash with satisfactory results.

90mm, Aperture Priority, no flash, ISO 200, 0.4s, f/9.0

90 mm, Aperture Priority, Flashed at -2 stops, external flash powered at 1/8, held above camera, IS0 200, 0.6s, f/20.0 

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 146 - Portrait of a duck

I went out with my photo club members to learn about portraiture from a fantastic photog and a friend.   I had to sneak in a duck shot and a shot of the underwater vegetation while he was setting up.  I almost never give up a chance of shooting random stuff and in fact these were the only shots I took of these because I noticed this duck all sleepy and it was being spun around with the water current (see the ripples around it by enlarging the photo)

Since I don't post people shots without their permission, I will have to wait to get it, so I can post a couple of shots from the lesson.  We were basically learning how to bounce off light from one reflector to another to create a soft fill light as well as use another reflector to get a hair light.  Excellent lesson - can't wait to try it out for myself sometime soon.

But for now, here's something different!  I did very little post-processing on these and I'm really surprised to see how well the colours have turned out.  The sky was very blue and the slanting rays of the sun actually hit the plants underwater and I was able to get a good shot without a C-PL.

Day 134 - Wildflower

Found this little gem by the roadside.