What did you get for Christmas?

26 12 2009

Now that Christmas is pretty much over with I am still examining my loot.

My wife was kind enough to get me some things Photography, I hope she is hoping it will get me out more to shoot – something I have been slacking for some time now.
Few neat little things I got, one thing I always wanted to have was a Storm Jacket for my Camera. Even though my 40D is sealed and can to with some water, I don’t like it. Basically it covers Camera and lens so just the front end sticks out.
Besides that a small Hotshoe level (I always have a lean to the left in my photos), new Lenscleaner and flash diffuser will hopefully all work out for me.

One Book I received from my MIL, The National Geographic Image Collection really does inspire, it contains some awesome photography. Together with the DVD Collection of the National Geographic issues since 1888 or so I have yenough to read for the bad days :)

Anyway, in a way I am glad Christmas is over with and my vacation starts now. For a week I will try to take photos prior to my project for next year. Starting next year I will attempt to take at least one photo a day. Not sure how I will manage to do that but there are some interesting groups on Flickr doing the same thing.
Project365 and Project365! are two of those groups and I do read a lot about people making it 20 days or 3 month but then give up. It does not matter I think – the attempt by itself should do something for me right.

1 1/2 weeks and it’s Vegas Baby. Couple days with my old man to the CES so I might get a little technical here :)

One “play shot” I did today that I like for it’s Shallow Depth of Field.

Valve

Valve





Timelapse

11 11 2009

You read a lot about timelapse photography these days. And while I am not a video guy I never really payed much attention to it.

Last weekend I went out to shoot a fairly new building here; it has a very nice form and cool reflections. After setting up, I decided to give it a shot.  It was about 15 minutes to sunset. I had no real idea what interval to choose so i went with 10 seconds.

The below Video consists of 180 RAW photographs, shot with the same Apeture and slowly rising shutter speed. I have not manipulated the photos at all, used a shade White Balance since I did not want to waste too much time and miss sunset.

Overall I think it turned out OK but there are things I wold do different next time.

- If there are people moving in the foreground, I think 10 seconds is too long, might have to use 5 seconds.

- Never ever shoot horizontal, just not a good format for Video :)

- Research in getting an intervalometer since standing there with a cable release can get old.

As far as the export goes, I found some cool templates for the Adobe Lightroom 3 beta. There may be better ways as far as quality goes, but to get a first idea they work awesome.

Since WordPress is giving me a hard time embedding a video – please go here to view





Kanu

19 09 2009
Kanus

Kanus





Day at the lake

12 09 2009

An otherwise kind of boring lake only got my attention by it’s abundance of Dragonflies and Turtles.

The turtles were rather funny, at times fighting for a good spot on the branch, never really did figure out how they can climb up on there.

Turtles

Turtles

Dragonfly

Dragonfly





Captive Raptors

9 09 2009

While going to a Nature Preserve here in the Atlanta area which holds a lot of Raptors, in the beginning i tried very hard to shoot through the fences to make them look as “wild” as possible.
I soon discovered that this is not necessary and sometimes no possible. They are what they are. Captive birds. So from then I though I shoot them in their environment. Captive. With bars.

Since unfortunately some cages had such a fine mesh and some birds where so hidden away – it was close to impossible to get a good shot of them. Even though, here are a few that turned out alright.

Redtail Hawk

Redtail Hawk

Turkey Vulture (I think female)

Turkey Vulture (I think female)

Turkey Vulture (I think male)

Turkey Vulture (I think male)

Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle

I have to say that the Bald Eagle above is my favorite as a bird – I think I never gotten as close to one before; primarily I have only seen them in Florida. Their eyes are truly piercing. This fella had a young one in there as well but it did not want to show itself.