You Capture – “Spring”

This week’s You Capture theme is Spring. I LOVE Spring, so of course I’m all over that one!

Turtles Basking in the Spring Sun

If you read my regular blog, you’ve probably already experienced my new fascination with turtles. Maybe I should’ve been TurtleMama?

Actually, I just love critters in general. But it does crack me up to see these turtles of all shapes and sizes lined up on logs soaking up the sun. That’s not pollution in the water. It’s pollen.

Turtles Dig Spring, Too!
Yep, Another Turtle...
The Final Turtle Pic

Check out this turtle picture I stumbled across on someone else’s Flickr site. Isn’t that one of the cutest things you have ever seen?

I actually posted the next two shots previously on my general blog, but I really like them both so am sharing them again here.

Variegated Weigela in My Backyard

If you happen to know the name of this honeysuckle, do tell. I love the uniqueness of its flowers. I bought and planted it years ago and for the life of me cannot remember what it is called.

Honeysuckle (any idea what kind?)

That’s it for my Spring You Capture. To see what others folks have captured, CLICK HERE.

The Calm Before the Storm

So, I was sitting here thinking to myself, “what can I possibly blog about today?” when an e-mail arrived from my new friend, Julia. She saved the day! Because I was about to say something boring like, “It hasn’t started snowing YET. But it will. Predictions vary, but we could get a couple of FEET.”

The e-mail contained a bunch of doggie pics, which I decided my faithful fans deserved to see. I call this collection of images Weird Shit People Do To and With Their Dogs. Thanks, Julia!

These images got me thinking about what other weird dog pictures might be out there.

So I googled “weird doc pics”. These are just some of the gems I uncovered…

Sorry, but that’s all I have time for.

And, by the way, it hasn’t started snowing YET. But it will. Predictions vary, but we could get a couple of FEET.

UPDATE

I was reminded that I forgot to add my girlfriend Tracey’s baby girl, Snowy Day, the toy fox terrier who was less than thrilled to be dressed as a pumpkin and then in a Santa suit. Truth be told, I think it was the gold lame booties that pushed her over the edge. She was SO not happy that she refused to move. So when Tracey stood her on the floor, she just fell right over!

Unhappy Halloweenie
Unhappy Snowy Santa
Really Unhappy Snowy Santa

I would have loved to get a picture of Snowy laying frozen on her back, with all four bootie-clad feet sticking straight up in the air, but we were laughing way too hard. You just had to see her face. She was pissed. It was priceless.

If you’d like to see a slideshow I made for Tracey a few years back, click the link below:

Snowy Day’s Tour of America

Fun With Water

As I’ve mentioned before, I am determined to master this camera setting thing (what ISO, shutter speed and aperture to use) so I can have more creative control over my images. The only way to master anything is with practice, practice and more practice.

As I am learning, my primary goal isn’t just to get fabulous images, although I certainly would not delete any grand images that just sort of happened. My goal is to take lots of shots at a wide variety of settings to see which ones turn out the best.

Since we were at the WV place in the dead of winter, interesting subject matter is sort of limited. Actually, I should qualify that by saying subject matter that most normal, look-at-a-snapshot types would find interesting is what’s limited. People, flowers, landscapes, etc.

So I had to improvise. One thing that was definitely in abundance was water. Saturday was all about snow melting. Sunday was all about rain and fog. Lucky for me, I decided to experiment on Saturday. I was inspired by one of my Flickr contacts, Michelle in NY, who does amazing stuff with liquids and macro photography. (NOTE: I am not sure if those links will work for just anyone. Some Flickr people restrict image access to people they have identified as contacts. If either link does not work, please let me know.)

My attempts are nowhere near as creative as Michelle’s, but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing I did, without a tripod. I REALLY need to make a habit of carrying one of those things along.

Shattered Silence

“Shattered Silence” was actually cropped from a larger image. I thought a close-up of this particular drip made for a more-powerful image. I have posted the original below. I can’t really call it the SOOC version, because I did make some adjustments to color, amount of light, sharpness, etc.

Shattered Silence... the Bigger Picture

See what I mean? All the action sort of gets lost. The bigger picture isn’t interesting at all to me.

GULP!

This looks like the mouth of a large-mouth bass to me. Or maybe even a large bullfrog. I’m going with the fish, though, because that came to mind first. “Gulp” was also cropped from a larger image.

In and Out in a Heartbeat

“In and Out” was also cropped, but not nearly as much. The more I looked at these drips through the lens, the more I realized closer was better.

In and Out... the Bigger Picture

You may also notice some color variation between the cropped and bigger versions. I tweaked the lighting a bit differently for the cropped version.

Eye-popping Goodness

The title for this one alludes to the fact that I think it looks like an exploding eyeball. I’m not trying to say this is eye-poppingly good photography. Although this is my favorite drip shot.

Here’s something different for your viewing pleasure… a series of shots.

Cannonball!
The Aftermath
It Gets Worse

I’m sorry if my titles are a bot hokey. I consider them a necessary evil. If I don’t add a caption, then I don’t get that cool, almost-invisible frame around the image I am posting. And I really like the frame.

So, just ignore the hokey titles, okay?

You have just seen seven of my drip shots. Any idea how many shots it took to get those seven images? I am not sure of the exact number, but it was close to 80. Yes, 80. See what I mean about practice?

Who Should Read This Section of My Blog

NOTE: I recently moved the contents of my old blog (ToadMama’s Web Abode) to this new and improved blog. If the images or text look weird, it is because of the import. Posts going forward should look better.

I created this Blog for the sole purpose of sharing my progression from someone that takes decent pictures because their camera has all the right automatic settings to someone that takes good pictures because they understand how to compose shots and capture just the right amount of light. That’s a big distinction. And it is a leap I have yet to make. Because having a camera with all of the right automatic settings can make for a lazy photographer.

So, if you are a person who just likes to look at good pictures, you might find this blog tiresome. I mean, I will be posting lots of pictures, but I’ll be analyzing them, too.

This first post is a good example. As promised, I took some shots this morning with my camera set to manual. That means I have to determine what shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings are right for the amount of light available.

I tried some shots yesterday, but was using a zoom lens with a teleconverter and no tripod, which means it was almost impossible to get a clear image. So I slapped my 50 mm prime lens onto the camera body and stepped outside.

When I say “prime lens,” I mean fixed focus. So, you know how a lot of SLRs have lenses that you turn with your hand to move subjects closer/farther? That’s a standard zoom lens. With a prime lens, to get closer to a subject, you need to move closer. To fit more of a subject in your frame, you need to move back. Folks that are used to having the zoom on think you have some weird, retarded camera when they try to use your camera to take a picture. That’s because zoom lenses have pretty much become the standard lens on consumer-grade SLR cameras.

This is the straight-out-of-camera (SOOC) version of the above image. There’s technically enough light and the shutter speed was sufficient to freeze the action without much blur, but the image is a bit dark. You can’t see the detail in Belle’s face.

That’s where post-processing (i.e., Photoshopping) comes in handy. You can use your post-processing software to make all kinds of adjustments.

Here’s a side-by-side look at the image before and after processing.

Next time, I’ll have to make some adjustments to the camera settings to see if I can get a better SOOC image. Here’s another before and after look at another image where the same settings were used…

This is the SOOC version.

And here’s the image after processing.

Speaking of processing, you can do some very cool stuff with processing software. One of which is combining images. This is a simple example where I took a picture of K and a picture of Belle within about a second of each other when they were standing pretty close together. Both images shown below are SOOC.


And here’s the merged image…

The images did need to be lightened a bit, but I did that after merging to make sure the light was applied evenly to both. Cool, eh?

I’ll get more into processing at some point. I just thought you’d like to see the results of my manual experiment. I should same “some of” the results, because there were a whole bunch of images I deleted, too.

Go Ahead, Knock

Yesterday, I made sure I was outside at sunset so I could get some more pink sky images. But this time, with my wide angle lens.

I think I was a tad too late. The pink is really VERY fleeting. But I did get a cute dog pic.

Go ahead, roll your eyes and say, “More dog pictures?” My subject matter is limited. And I love my dogs. 🙂

All I have to say to those pesky solicitors is, “Go ahead, knock.”

As for the pink sky, yes I missed nature’s show. But I did capture some nice, wide-angle sky shots.

Missing nature’s show isn’t the end of the world when you have processing software. I just added my own pink.

The difference is quite dramatic, isn’t it? Just so you can really appreciate the difference, here’s another picture that’s straight-out-of-camera (SOOC).

I did not edit the above shot at all. I didn’t even remove the dust spots from the dirty camera sensor I am afraid to clean.

Here’s the same image with dust spots removed and a little color enhancement.

That’s what is great about processing you image after shooting. It can be quite time-consuming, however. I got a few more decent shots, but I didn’t feel like doing any more processing before writing this post.

On Taking Better Pictures

A little over a week ago, I wrote a post about cameras. The general gist of that post was that having a fancy SLR camera doesn’t necessarily mean you will be able to take better pictures. Taking good pictures takes work. And practice.

I practice a lot. On Saturday, while Hubby was home baking cinnamon rolls, I decided to drive over to the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge to try out my new teleconverter (think of it as a booster that increases the power of your lens).

The reason I wanted a teleconverter was to increase the power of my zoom lens. So I can get clearer pictures of stuff that’s far away. When you use a zoom lens, every teeny tiny movement of the camera will make your image blurry. That means, in addition to a zoom lens, you really need a tripod. Even with a tripod, if you are not careful pushing the shutter, you’ll shake the camera and blur your image. A cable release or remote (wireless) shutter release button is good to have, too.

Often, I don’t have the time or inclination to drag all of that stuff out. Saturday, I did. And I managed to get a few good images.

I was really just playing around to see how well the teleconverter worked, i.e., does it really bring subjects that much closer? Will it allow for clear focus? Will I be able to use autofocus or will everything need to be manual? That sort of thing.

With the tripod and remote shutter release, it worked pretty well. There weren’t a lot of critters around to try the long-distance bird shots, so I was just shooting pics of the grass and trees and stuff. That’s when a bluebird couple decided to drop by.



They were far enough away that I couldn’t see them well with my naked eye. I am pretty sure there was a Mr and a Mrs, but the Mr was being elusive. The Mrs sat still a tad bit longer, so I was able to get a few nice pics of her. (This might be a male. Females are usually much duller than the males. This bird is much duller than the elusive one, but the more I looked at these shots, the more I realized it isn’t as dull as most of the females I have seen. But it could have been the light making her chest look more orange. Her head is sort of on the dull side. Here’s an old pic of mine with a male and female side by side, with the male on the left. Bluebirds

The camera was on the tripod and I used the wireless shutter release for all of the above shots. Those two pieces of equipment really do make a huge difference.

I snapped this image of the woods as I was walking out, then I edited it with Photoshop Elements.

As I was shooting pics, it was getting darker and darker. I had to stop shooting when the flash kept firing and I realized I don’t know enough about aperture and shutter speeds to capture any really good low-light images.

That’s because I have become lazy. I have been relying way too heavily on my camera’s automatic settings to do most of the work for me.

So, this morning I decided that I was going to limit my SLR shooting to the camera’s manual mode. That will force me to become aware of and practice using the various aperture and shutter speed settings. I told myself I would not revert back to automatic until I’d mastered those two things.

And then this bird landed in our backyard…

It is a Red Shouldered Hawk. I was fortunate to catch a glimpse of it as it swooped in.

They don’t land in the yard often. And, when they do, they never stick around long. Luckily I still had the teleconverter and zoom lens on the camera. I did not have time to set the tripod up or use the remote shutter release. And, I had to shoot through the window. I also didn’t have time to fiddle with manual settings I know so little about, so I went back to automatic temporarily.

I did tweak the shots with Photoshop Elements slightly, but overall I was pleased with how well they turned out. Considering I was standing at the window just snapping away.

It wasn’t exactly close to the house either.

Since I started feeding the birds again yesterday, the yard was pretty busy with birds and squirrels today. I thought it would take the hawks a while to notice the smorgasbord in our backyard, but was very pleasantly surprised when this one showed up. Usually, it’s Redtailed Hawks that we see.

Anyway… this year I am going to be working on learning how to use aperture and shutter speeds manually. That means you’ll probably be seeing a lot of pictures of odd stuff. But hopefully they will be good pictures. Then maybe by next fall I’ll be able to take good eagle pics when they come back to Conowingo.

Speaking of eagles, have you checked out the nest cam yet (there’s a link in the navigation bar on the right)? I just added a link to the osprey cam today. My favorite nature photographer, Jon the Nikographer, was kind enough to let me use one of his osprey images for the link button. If you haven’t looked at his stuff before, you should check it out. He’s really very good. You’ll have to remember to check the nest cams periodically to catch a glimpse of the birds.