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 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 97 - I see red

I thought of photographing three red subjects today since I'm fast running out of ideas and inspiration again.  Here are my finds - red on the licence place (the logo of the Montreal hockey team), red cherries on a tree, red-bricked house.

Day 90 - Sweet cherries

Day 77 - Light experiment

I hadn't had the time or opportunity to take a photo during the day, but when that happens I definitely start thinking about a staged subject.

I saw something similar to this earlier in the day (of course that photo used way more sophisticated techniques and props than mine), and I'd wanted to try it out.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to get the controls right, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.  I will definitely write about this again when I've had a chance to fine tune it.

Day 70 - Playing with custom white balance and lighting

My subject was a single red gerbera that a pretty little 4 yr old girl gave me.  She always has something to give me when she sees me - whether it's a "Princess" sticker, or a flower, or a paper cutting that she made herself.  Unfortunately, I never have anything on me that befits that little princess and that's worth offering (I usually see her in the elevator when I am either returning home from work or on my way down to the recycling bins)!  One of these days I must go up to her apartment and I better bring her a nice gift.

Anyway, so here are the experiments with the gerbera that I did over a few hours starting in the evening after it was almost completely dark, and continuing the following morning.

For this image I used my TV as the background, with two low-powered lamps placed at least 6 ft away on either side, aperture priority, f/5.6, ISO 100, spot metering, exposure bias of 1/3 stop.

Natural light at ISO 400, manual, f/5.6, 10s, spot metering

Shot with custom WB, aperture priority, ISO 200, exposure bias of 1/3 stop

90 mm macro lens, aperture priority, pattern metering, ISO 800 (flower was kept in low light), f/5.6

Shot with 90 mm macro lens, custom WB, manual, pattern metering, ISO 100 (flower was in bright ambient light), 1/8s, f/10