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 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 159 - When will the rains stop?

I got caught in a huge downpour just as I left work.  My umbrella flew off and turned inside out in the most awkward ways and I was sopping wet long before I got to the bus stop.  I didn't get a seat as usual, and I think it was a good thing today - I saw how beautiful the rain-slicked streets looked from the reflections of the colours in the puddles.

So, once off the bus (this time I wasn't impatient enough to jump off it) I rushed home, shed my wet coat (and did I tell you I bought it thinking it was waterproof and then realized I think too much?), didn't bother getting out of my wet shoes, had my son hand me my camera, and I ran out.  Although the rains had held up for a bit, it was still much too dark.  So, I bumped up the ISO and started shooting.  I tried looking for the puddles, and saw one that had nice reflections, but somehow couldn't get a shot I liked.  I am certain there will be more rain in the next few days, so I am going to take a shot at reflections again.  Here's one I got from this evening:

Noting that the light was getting feebler by the minute, I left that alone and walked over to where I saw a couple of red maple leaves amidst some yellow and brown against a nice grassy, green background.  And for the first time, I saw these yellow leaves all curled up into a ring!  Amazing little things - trying to figure out what they are.  Any idea?

Here's the little leaf ring!

The shot below could have been much better if I weren't hand-holding the camera at 1/10s.  I was finding it hard to focus (even after I turned the AF off, so I could focus manually) in the extremely low light but finally managed to get a somewhat clear shot.  I've cropped it in post to emphasize the droplet.  You can click on it for a larger view.

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 122 - Lily

Day 92 - There will be sunshine after rain

I believe what Dire Straits said in their song "Why Worry":

"There will be laughter after pain,
There will be sunshine after rain,
These things have always been the same -
So, why worry now!"

And so there was - one entirely gloomy, rainy day and look at how the sun burst forth during the early evening!

This 1-banded snail was suddenly lit up by a single shaft of sunshine that somehow penetrated the deepest part of the forest.  I would have stepped on the poor guy, otherwise!  One lucky day for this little soul!  Hope he got out and away of the forest path.

I couldn't get the exact effect I was after.  But the wind was bouncing this in and out of my frame and I was afraid the droplets would roll off if I didn't get a quick shot.

Backlit wildflower with a gossamer web almost setting it's boundaries for it to stay within.

This flower was a little bit in the distance, but most importantly deep in the marsh preventing me from getting close to it.  But my attention was caught by this single flower with another single stalk a few inches away from it.  They seemed to have sprung from nowhere.

Day 51 - Lots of food, lots of fotos

Had another great class today!  My students for the day were my friendly neighbours.  I'd been apprehensive if at the end of the class I'd be leaving them with a great experience where they'd be happy to bump into me, or just give me a cross look and pass me by.  I kept my friends, fortunately! ;-)

Too much cooking since yesterday, and then cleaning up after - I was exhausted and smelling of curry from head to toe.  So, I just decided to get some fresh air and feed the ducks some breadcrumbs, since I'd disappointed them last time.  I brought a lot with me and threw them around all over the place.   And the birds and the squirrels rewarded me for my generosity (ahem)! 

I also ran into my friends with their newborn daughter and clicked a couple of photos of the baby (not posting them without permission).  So, it was portraits of birds, flowers, animals and babies.  I even did a few quick gerbera shots and reflections before I went for my walk.  

The next one is a shot at high key.  Need to practise this.

I definitely need a macro lens for shots like the one below.  I couldn't get in much closer than about 10 ft to get in close to the ladybug - I was leaning over the railing of a bridge and a little bit more would have seen me land on my face on the hiking trail.