Day 22: July 2010 Photo-a-Day Thread

[carregwen]

The reason I've been doing so many floral shots this past week is due to the very heavy rain we have been having. Summer! Daylily from the garden. Shot indoors with diffused studio flash. White art board for backdrop, and small reflector to the right. Panasonic G1.

EXIF

On black

PAD gallery

[rick55]

So sorry to hear about your loss, Kit. Our pets bring us so much, but it's never long enough.

Warm regards,
Rick

[rick55]

Thanks, Wendy and Rob.

We do have some religious messages on barns here and there: I wonder if anyone's done a count compared to "Mail Pouch." An interesting statistic.

These are kind of like London's red telephone boxes. I'm a bit surprised they haven't featured more in movies: they give a feeling of driving across a rural area. It certainly would have been perfect to have a guy in cowboy boots and hat leaning against the barn with his ankles crossed like the Marlboro Man.

The really surprising thing to me in Wikipedia was that the company only stopped the advertising in 1992, because people were really getting after "smokeless tobacco" by then, already having cigarettes on the run. I would have expected that the company would have started keeping a low profile much sooner.

Cheers,
Rick

[rick55]

Very creative, Colin. It works perfectly, with the thin clouds looking like a wave cleaved by the rocket. I like the vertical signature, too.

I like the Daylily, Rob: the soft inner frame is nice, and the title inside works well. The one nitpick I might make is that the gold frame mostly doesn't appear as gold, except at the corners, so along the sides it looks more butterscotch, and doesn't particularly complement the image.

We're fighting the weather around Maryland, too. It's been hot, hazy, and humid for about two weeks, with thunderstorms almost any afternoon, and clouds coming and going all the time. Every time I want to shoot outside, I have to take the camera outside and let it defog for 20 minutes. I enjoy seeing Colin's pictures of outdoor ice skating.

Cheers,
Rick

[Jim B.]

Canon 500D, EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM @ 33mm, full EXIF, PAD slideshow.

An old barn with an old advertisement on a working farm. I'm guessing that it hasn't been torn down because the Mail Pouch Tobacco Barns are actually a bit of Americana. See Wikipedia article. It may still be in use: I can see a padlock on the door.

C&C always welcome.

Cheers,
Rick

Rick,
I live in the city where Mail Pouch tobacco originated,produced by Bloch Brothers (Wheeling,WV).

[rick55]

I live in the city where Mail Pouch tobacco originated,produced by Bloch Brothers (Wheeling,WV).

Very cool! It sounds like a good deal for the farmer: annual cash in hand, plus getting the barn painted for free.

Cheers,
Rick

[Dave Humphries]

Nikon D5000 + Nikkor 105mm f2.8 VR2 Macro: 1/1000s f/11 at an inappropriate iso2000

[Antonio Correia]

...

Very, very creative. Excellent, great, fantastic.
-
The sky today was very nice.
When I realized so I was not with the camera. I had to wait until I got home.

[Crovean]

Borrowed a 420EX Speedlite from a friend today and got playing around with it.



Bouncing flash is kind of easy to do and made me interested with other techniques. What would be the next trick/technique I should look in to?

[Colin Southern]

Thanks Rick & Antonio ... there wasn't much else I could do with the day!

[rick55]

Borrowed a 420EX Speedlite from a friend today and got playing around with it.

Bouncing flash is kind of easy to do and made me interested with other techniques. What would be the next trick/technique I should look in to?

Hi, Chriss;

You cheat: your subject is too cute. Were you using bounce flash as the only (or main) light source? The other significant technique to work on is to use the flash as fill. Different modes will cause different fill behavior, as described in this tutorial.

The other thing I enjoy doing with flash is using it to freeze action. The burst of light from a flash at lower powers is much shorter than most shutter speeds we have available. For example, a 1/16 power flash from a 580EX is 1/15,000 second. See 580EX flash durations. This makes it a good tool to freeze something that's moving faster than a normal shutter speed can freeze, like a saw blade. All you have to do is make sure that the ambient light with your camera settings are such that you get a black screen if you shoot without the flash, then turn on the flash to get the frozen effect. Good for insects in flight, too.

Cheers,
Rick

[rick55]

Really rich colors, Dave. Was it windy? One of the things in the middle (that's the technical botanical term, I think) seems to be blurred, as if it's moving.

The sky shots are very sharp, António: I like the diagonals, too.

Cheers,
Rick

[Dave Humphries]

Really rich colors, Dave. Was it windy? One of the things in the middle (that's the technical botanical term, I think) seems to be blurred, as if it's moving.
~

Hi Rick,

No, it was a lot less breezy last night than when I was shooting bees the previous evening -both shots taken in my garden/back yard.

It is just a lack of/mis-placed DoF, even at f11, because I got so close. And being lazy, and only having 3 buttercups to choose from, I didn't use a tripod to get the best focus point for the limited DoF, so I may have wasted a bit behind the petals.

I went out to get some closer bee shots, but due to only hazy sunshine last night, hardly any about and those that were, were not co-operating; some even seemed to object to me getting closer. So those few shots went in the bin and this was left, so as it was different ....

Regarding deep colours - I was careful to under expose and only slightly blew the highlights (in red and green channels) on a few petal 'speculars', I was also careful these didn't get clipped in PP when a little LCE was applied.

Cheers,

[Crovean]

Hi, Chriss;

You cheat: your subject is too cute. Were you using bounce flash as the only (or main) light source? The other significant technique to work on is to use the flash as fill. Different modes will cause different fill behavior, as described in this tutorial.

The other thing I enjoy doing with flash is using it to freeze action. The burst of light from a flash at lower powers is much shorter than most shutter speeds we have available. For example, a 1/16 power flash from a 580EX is 1/15,000 second. See 580EX flash durations. This makes it a good tool to freeze something that's moving faster than a normal shutter speed can freeze, like a saw blade. All you have to do is make sure that the ambient light with your camera settings are such that you get a black screen if you shoot without the flash, then turn on the flash to get the frozen effect. Good for insects in flight, too.

Cheers,
Rick

Rick,

Yes, it was my only source of light. The room was dim and taking pictures without a flash would just be too dark. But i do need some reading though for the only control i know what to use from the speedlite is the on/off button lol. Maybe when i'm more familiar with it, i'll start try out to freeze subjects like you mentioned.

Thanks a bunch!