Photons Everywhere

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

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

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

Dragonfly

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

Turkey Vulture (I think female)

Turkey Vulture (I think male)

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.

Took a stroll through Midtown last weekend, capturing some of my favorite subjects: Tall Buildings.

I think Atlanta has a lot of nice buildings to offer, especially the reflective kind. Below are some of my keepers.

A little over a week ago I joined the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. It was a very interesting experience to walk about with 15 or so Photographers through the city of Roswell, GA.
I do think that this event, where worldwide about 30,000 Photographers in different cities meet to take photos is a great idea.
As I mentioned I went to the Photo Walk in Roswell. The Walk leader split the group up in 3 groups, two for the historic route and one on the nature walk. I guess it would be quite intimidating to walk with 50 Photographers down the road.

Even though I enjoyed the route I took, in hindsight I’d rather taken the nature route, it just suits me more. Either way below are some photos from the walk.

Roswell Photowalk Group © Mike Noa

A condemned Apartment complex.

This fairly old and very well kept cemetery offered a lot of opportunities for statues.

Roswell City Hall has a very traditional look.

A Corner

Summer Window

A civil war era Church that was used to house injured Soldiers

While being at Callaway Gardens I really tried hard getting a Raptor in flight and in focus. Now I think that my location was just bad. I was off to the side so I had to zoom and focus at the same time which is close to impossible while those birds or prey fly, they are not that slow.

I think the next time I will stay at either where they take off or land (since I know now where that is). That way I should have enough time to frame the shot while they fly towards me.

Here is a shot I think worked out just OK, the others have a much better composition but key elements are either missing or out of focus.

Overall I was somewhat disappointed with Callaway Gardens. Sure, they are nicely maintained and all but when I hear garden, I think flowers. There were a few of those naturally but it was all so spread out.

I prefer the abundance you can get in e.g. the Atlanta Botanical Gardens – either that or you go through wild fields yourself and capture what you love.

Either way, I took a few shots of Flora that I liked, here are a couple of them.

So I finally got around tending to my Raptor Shots from Callaway Gardens in Georgia.
While I have a couple more where they are “in action” I want to share those first.
Unfortunately the action shots are not as tack sharp as I would have hoped. Need a faster zoom lens after all.

Horned Owl

Falcon