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 289 - Squirrel in the Tree

One lone squirrel hiding under its tail as the rain poured down!  I have posted something similar last summer, but this sight never fails to amuse.



And this one was from a couple of days ago - this squirrel was running around hoarding food for himself from the pile of loaves someone had thrown out for the birds and these little guys.

Day 288 - Odd Numbers in Photography

I had quite a photography disaster this evening!

After not having the energy to leave home to do my shot of the day, I decided that I should keep up the snow theme for the rest of the week.  So, I could take a few shots from the balcony in an effort to keep that up.  The skies looked pink, with the snow clouds and the impending snow showers, and I thought an evening sky on a long exposure would make a great shot.

I was proved wrong, when I couldn't get a single shot to look the way I wanted because of the high winds that kept moving the trees causing a lot of blurred motion.  I thought I could use the blur as the subject, since I couldn't control the elements, but it just didn't work, and the wind kept shaking the camera, besides chilling me to my bones, of course.  So, I gave up and came back indoors.

This leads me to post one of a few images I took a couple of days ago, and to explain what I mean by odd numbers in photography, which you might already know about, but which doesn't stop me from revisiting - the rule of including odd numbers in our images.

We often inadvertently incorporate this rule into our photography.  An odd number always creates a better image than an even number of objects that lead the brain to look for symmetry, which in most cases looks boring.  Additionally, it is said that the more time it takes the brain to process something, the better it is appreciated.

Sometimes three or five don't make a crowd.  However, we need to be careful of not introducing too many numbers as this will ultimately lead to clutter.  Keep it simple and clutter-free, but it's nice to create a little bit of interest and help the eyes travel all over an asymmetrical image, especially if you create a group/cluster of three or five, instead of putting them in a straight line.  Although, mind you, straight lines work better in cases where you want to create leading lines or patterns.  The artistic choice finally lies with you!

When I shot these images, I hadn't realized that I took only a couple of images with the two starlings in the tree, but most of my images had three of them in it.  There was a large flock of these feathered guys, but I was somehow able to isolate and shoot the three close together.  Maybe this was totally accidental, or maybe it was subconsciously executed.  Who's to tell!

To illustrate the case in point, here are three shots.  Do let me know which one(s) you find most interesting.

And while this is a rule in composition to use odd numbers, there are always exceptions to this rule and it's always nice to be able to break them creatively.

Day 287 - Getting Sporty

Umm.. not me.. as an athlete, but officiating as photographer for a badminton game.  I got called upon to shoot a game yesterday, and although these images were shot yesterday, I am going to post them today as I'd already done my shot for the day before the evening.

I hadn't had the chance to do any sports photography before this, although I did mention that I shot some pictures of a couple of little girls sledding, but I'll talk about that in a bit.  So, when I got called to do this, my first thought was that I would have to battle with artificial light, which means the flash.  I had planned on going for a preliminary round of test shots before doing the actual game.  But I had too many things that kept me from doing that.  Therefore, I had to wing it!  I had just one chance of getting this right.

I had already enquired about the available lighting and I'd especially asked about the colour scheme of the gym.  To my dismay it turned out to be the almost-fluorescent green gym that my son played soccer in last summer.  I knew I had to bring my grey card with me to do a custom white balance.  Although, in the end the grey card did come to my rescue, I can't say it did a fabulous job, maybe because this grey card was a cheap one that came with my PSE8 book, and therefore not that accurate.  I still saw some tinges of green (no, not from envy) in the images.

I shot in JPEG as I had to shoot really fast to keep up with the action.  Shooting in RAW could potentially slow me down as it would stop from time to time to write the images to the memory.  However, this fear didn't hold good when I realized that my recycle time on the flash was slowing me down anyway.

However, I kept shooting, on continuous mode in JPEG, in the hopes that any action I didn't catch with the flash, I might be able to fix in LR3 later on.  And I was right.  A couple of shots needed to be fixed, but I got away with turning them to B&W, so the light wouldn't look quite that ugly.  And as for the green colour cast, most of it was fortunately taken care of by the CWB, and I could fix a little bit more in LR.  I'm glad I chose to carry it with me.

I had initially started to shoot on Shutter Priority while the players were warming up, but when I couldn't help but use the flash, I pretty much had to dial down the shutter from 1/500s to 1/250s to match the sync speed.

The next three shots are from last Sunday.  Since I couldn't shoot anything with snow today, I thought I would post these shots instead.  This little girl and her sister were playing in the snow, and I went up to the dad and begged permission to snap them.  He was really kind and let me take as many shots as I pleased, and I later emailed them to him of course.  Such beautiful little girls!

Day 286 - Flocks of Birds

I started my day with the song of an Oriole - it was most probably a Baltimore Oriole, but I could be wrong and it could be the Brown Creeper I saw a couple of days ago.

I spent most of the morning running between my bedroom and balcony and being on the balcony trying to get as many bird shots as I could.  The weather was unpredictably crazy - what started off as sunny and gorgeous, turned grey and snowy within minutes, and for a few minutes we had near white-out conditions. That cleared to give way to sunshine and then some more cloudiness.  As soon as the sun came out, the birds did too.  At one point, the little park at the back was full of woodpeckers, nuthatches, brown creepers, starlings and sparrows.

I also stood and watched a squirrel running around hoarding food and eating part of it.  That was really cute!

This one is a Male Hairy Woodpecker.  The difference between this one and the Male Downy Woodpecker is that the Hairy Woodpecker's bill is longer than the size of its head, whereas the Male Downy's bill is about the same length as its head.  The females of either species don't have the red patch on the crown.

This one is a Male Downy Woodpecker.  Notice the length of the bill is shorter than that of the Hairy guy!

White-Breasted Nuthatch.  I love these guys - they look really cute!

And since I had proclaimed this week's theme to be snow, here then is a shot with snow in it!

Day 285 - Berry & Citrus Salad

I was again going to skip the shot of the day as I was out running errands and keeping appointments for the better part of the day.  However, in the last minute I found a photo op to snap my lazy-man's dinner which was a delicious berry, mandarin orange and walnut salad, with a poppy seed dressing.

My friend who was recently visiting from Ottawa, told me she loves making this salad often, but of course when it comes to me, I like to put a twist on every recipe I come across.  So, instead of the red onions, I threw in some walnuts.  I have also tried this salad with a raspberry vinaigrette, and it turns out really delicious as well.



What you will need:

2 cups of fresh lettuce
Strawberries, halved - 5 - 6
Mandarin orange, canned - 8 - 10 segments
Blueberries - A handful
Walnuts - A handful
Poppy seed dressing or raspberry vinaigrette - 2 tbsp

1. On a salad plate, make a bed of lettuce and arrange the strawberries and mandarin orange segments in a circle.
2. Drop the handful of blueberries and walnuts over the salad bed.
3. Drizzle the poppy seed dressing or raspberry vinaigrette over the salad.
4. Enjoy!

These shots are SOOC.  I could have adjusted the exposure a little bit in the second image, but I just thought it would have to pass for now.  

Day 284 - Snow, Rain, Ice - All in One Day!

And although I had originally planned to go out and get some pictures of trees or branches coated with ice, the weather kept changing too frequently.  And I was tired and in a bit of pain after the dentist's appointment.  Therefore, I just kept myself restricted to taking pictures from the balcony.