Day 314 - Textured Rose

My first attempt at adding a texture failed pretty miserably! :-(  I need to revisit this technique soon.  Maybe even tomorrow.  Please don't complain if you see me posting the same flower photos tomorrow as well.

Further, since I was in a hurry to do the shot of the day in fast fading daylight, I didn't take the time to do a CWB on this.  I want to try doing that, and also taking the time to get the colour of the rose right. I'd never seen such a dark burgundy colour rose before, that's almost bordering on brown.  I couldn't come close to reproducing the colour in camera or in post.  Need to retry!

Day 290 - One Icy Day!

We had so much rain yesterday, that it was bound to freeze!  And then we had quite a big dump of snow as well.  It looked so pristine and beautiful when I looked out the window of the bus on my way home after a great lunch.  I knew I would find icicles; so, although I would rather have returned home and curled up with a nice warm blanket, a steaming cup of tea and a great book, I thought I should make use of the opportunity to take some shots of branches and leaves frozen over.

I mainly used my macro lens today, although I didn't really get too many macro shots.  I couldn't get close enough to the subjects through the piles of snow, and thus I had to settle for close-ups instead of macro.

Some of the images turned out a little grainy as I had to hand-hold my shots for the want of a tripod (I wanted to keep things light and thus didn't bring it with me) and used an ISO of 800 in most shots, as I needed to keep a high shutter speed to avoid getting camera shake - a sure recipe for disaster, but I had to do it.

Day 165 - Conquering the camera

No, I don't mean my DSLR, because that obeys my commands - well, most of the time!  But right now I'm talking about my phone camera that has caused me grief on numerous occasions.  I never seem to be able to get the right focus, the right settings - well, nothing goes right.  But today I spent a few minutes, albeit in a light drizzling rain, to check out why my camera misbehaves.  I can't admit to finding anything wrong with it, per se, but I did manage to get a somewhat decent shot.  Ok, a few decent shots.

This shot is almost straight out of the camera, except I added a little bit of vibrance and saturation to it because it was missing those.

Last night I downloaded Photoshop CS5 to try it out after hearing a lot of people rave about it.  I am exhausted after my project submission today, but I still spent a little time to play around with it.  Other than slowing my computer down terribly, I think it's a great tool.  It's got a ton of features that I could use for my daily photos, but the price is prohibitive.  And, ideally, I would like to keep Lightroom as well.  But I can no way spend a grand on photo editing tools right now.  If I spend that kind of money, I'd rather buy the new lens I've been wanting for so long by adding a few more hundred bucks.  Or, buy myself the Canon EOS 7D, which I have been wanting to do for so long!  

Anyway, more on that later.  I have to hit the hay now because I have a ton of stuff to do, besides office work over the weekend.  No Thanksgiving weekend for me!

Day 125 - Banana Nut Bread with Chocolate Chips

I had to use up the bananas before they went bad.  I had a looong work day of 11.5 hours, so I was pretty much bushed at the end of it, but still managed to turn out a decent loaf for my ever-hungry teen.  He loved it, and that's all that matters.

All these images were taken under fluorescent light and I didn't really have any energy left to try different apertures or lenses.  I used my 18 - 55 mm lens that was on my camera already and just used different PoVs.

I shot on AV, and some with exposure bias and some without.  

High ISO was my only answer to steady shots when I started shooting handheld.  But I soon realized I was wasting my energy because each and every shot turned out fuzzy.  So I transferred over to my tripod, but in the process forgot to change my ISO.  

Day 116 - Frog Prince

Remember the story of the frog prince?  Well, this frog definitely reminded me of him!  But I wonder how it feels to reign supreme over such a dirty little swamp kingdom!   Anyway,  I almost fell over into the swamp myself while trying to photograph His Royal Highness the Frog Prince.  Maybe I was his princess in some previous life and therefore the strong attraction almost had me falling head over heels (read head first).

The first shot was taken before I remembered I was carrying my C-PL.

Day 114 - Mating flies

Day 113 - Bald blackbird?

Not sure of what to make of this one - is this bird bald, or is this a juvenile slowly growing up and "upwards" as well?  He looks hilarious, however - just like a balding old man in a long, heavy coat,  and without a hat! :)

This mallard hen was just fed some bread and therefore condescended to pose for me.

Day 105 - Day lily

Day 102 - Too windy for flower photos...

... but I did manage a few, nonetheless.

Day 84 - Planters

I was waiting for the rains to revive the flowers a little bit and found this one looking really fresh and perked up.  It had been a pretty gloomy day, but patches of sunshine peeked through towards the late evening.  These photos are from another exploration of the riverside, but this was in a different section of the island, and also unfrequented by people.  Very beautiful and very peaceful - I can see myself going back there again soon.

This last one was flashed at -2 stops to freeze the branch swaying vigourously in the wind, as well as to lighten up the really dark part of the tree I found this sprig in.  

Day 76 - What bug is this?

I'm starting to get interested in portraits after an intense session on the subject with my friend Jim.  We were quite a few of us sitting in and learning hands on, working with reflectors and ambient light.  He had picked a fabulous location with a lot of graffiti on the walls (Montreal is quite famous for this) and we got some wonderful shots.  I'm unable to post those photos here, without the consent of those kind souls.  So, maybe once I've had a chance to see what they think, I'll post a few shots separately.

However, I did manage to find an interesting looking bug sitting on one of the reflectors and figured this would have to suffice as the shot of the day.  ;-)  These are quick handheld shots with my 55-250.

I have no clue what it is, so I'd love to find out.