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 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 158 - On the phone

No.. I don't mean I'm on the phone.  Today's shots were taken on my phone camera.

One wet day, today!  I saw a little bit of blue sky and was really excited hoping it would stay that way.  But the weather has a mind of its own - it decided to throw down buckets of rain instead.  I saw such pretty colours on my way home that I had to stop and admire the scene, sans camera.  And then I thought - wait!  What did I pay the big bucks for my phone for?  It has an 8 MP camera on it and so I whip it out to get some nice shots.  Of course the megapixels don't really have anything to do with the quality of the lens, but you do expect a moderately good piece of glass in a hi-res camera.  Well, at least I did!

I have used it before on a nice, bright day, but this evening was a completely different story.  I couldn't believe the grainy shots I got, no clarity or sharpness - nothing.  I am certain there are settings on the camera that I could have manipulated, but I have never really taken the time to get familiar with this one.  I made a mental note of that - make friends with your phone camera!

What a bummer it was!  Anyway, out of the 15 odd shots I took, I discarded most of them.  The following remain:

To add a final note. the first three shots were processed in LR3 and the last one is SOOC.  I think the difference in quality between them is noteworthy.

Day 129 - Bubbles

I didn't think I'd do any photography today, but I got an idea for a shot when I poured myself a glass of ginger ale and added a slice of lime to it.  Used my reading lamp as the source of light.  I keep telling myself I need to get a strobe, but it's just not happening.  Ah, well!