House Guest. . .

So I borrowed a 100mm macro lens from a friend and tried to take lots of lovely closeup pictures of bugs and things. I even found the cutest little white and orange caterpillar. Here is what I have decided. That macro is very sensitive. I had a heck of a time getting a good picture. The depth of field is shallow and the focus manual and my fuzzy friend never quite turned out how I thought he would. This is the best of the lot:

But then I gave the lens back and went back to shooting with my stock lens until I figure out which lens I want first. A couple days later I noticed this little guy on some daisies my four year old picked for me from my yard:

I pulled out my camera with the 18-55 mm lens that came on it and snapped away. I also spotted this guy in my yard and captured him too.

I am sure there is some learning curve to the 100mm macro. Perhaps I'm just not skilled enough to wield it with great success, but I think I will get a telephoto lens first and leave the macro for another day.

One Last Glimpse of Summer. . .

1/125 f/9.5 ISO 400

There is very little still blooming in my yard as fall sets in (not that you would know it was mid September with the unusual 90 degree weather we are having). But the Pansies are still going strong. I love the color in this miniature variety in front of my house.

Nesting

This nest, that we found in a dead pine tree in the yard, made me think of the time and effort we put into getting our house just the way we like it.

Fun With A Macro Lens

Otherwise known as trying my daughters' patience. I had the girls stand out in the yard as the sun was setting with light falling on their faces and snapped away. I used a 100 mm macro lens for all of them. Here are a few I really liked:

1/500 f/3.5 ISO 200

1/250 f/3.5 ISO 200

1/500 f/3.5 ISO 200

1/500 f/3.5 ISO 200

The first two are my favorite. I shot all these in Manual mode, which I admit I haven't been doing long, so I still have much to learn. I think I can do better, so I will keep practicing.

I need a Macro Lens. . .

I love taking pictures of things up close, like flowers and bugs. I took several pictures of my Hydrangeas over the summer and thought I would post a few. I have been on a quest to buy new lenses and have been debating the virtues of so many, but I think I would get good use out of a macro lens. In the meantime, here is what the little old lens that came with my camera is capable of. Taken with my Rebel XTi.

I took the first ones in July and then went back and took a few more in August when their color had started to fade. I still think they are gorgeous. I like to catch them when the sun in just hitting them in the morning.

The Beach House

I just love beach houses, and blue and white. . .and this picture.

Photoshop Fun - B/W with Color Wash

Sometimes it is fun to take a picture and change to effect with a color wash on black and white to bring out the one thing you want to draw attention to. I took this picture of a neighbor boy because I thought it was funny. It is cute as is, but I wanted to play with it and I think the result is fun. Here is what I did:

This is the camera shot. It's cute. But just for fun let's mess with it.

First desaturate the picture (Image>Adjustments>Desaturate). Its a little flat.



Adjust the contrast: Image>Adjustments>Bright & Contrast.

Brightness: +20

Contrast: +15

Now I want to add more focus to the face and tutu and less to the back ground. I will do this in a couple steps. First let's make another copy of this layer by pressing Control-J. Then let's put the focus on the face by going to Filter>Render>Lighting Effects. Under light type chose Spotlight. We want to brighten the face and darken the background. (The other types are fun too--play with it a little. Different compositions will warrant different light types). It will be funky looking, but that is why we made another layer, so reduce this layer opacity to 25%. Flatten image.

Next we want to sharpen the image a little to get the great detail in the face and tutu. Click Filter> Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Set amount to 80% and radius to 4.5. Threshold:0.

Then to add more fun contrast I darkened the edges with the burn tool. And the picture is fun just like this, but I miss the pinkness of the tutu.

So, make a new layer. Then with the paintbrush paint on top of the tutu on the new layer, covering it well without going out of the lines too much! It will look funky like this.

Then reduce the opacity on the pink layer to 30%. Flatten. Voila. A pink washed black and white of a cute little boy wearing a tutu on his head! What fun, right?

Just so you remember where we came from, here are the three pics:

If you don't like pink you can make it blue or orange. But pink is fun. Did you learn anything new? I like to try out tools I don't use very often just to remind myself they are there. I hope this was helpful. . .or interesting.