2018 Project 52 by Geoff F - 1st Quarter

Thanks for the comments.

Week 12 - Approaching showers. This week has been a mix of sunny spells amongst cloudy periods with showers. So I tried some shots of the building shower clouds; but struggled to find any angles with sufficiently interesting scenes. These are the best of my attempts; with all the other hopeful shots quickly getting deleted. :(

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...5/original.jpg

Merge of three bracketed exposures. Midtones image was 1/320 F11 Iso 200. Even the horse wasn't willing to cooperate with me. :rolleyes:

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...6/original.jpg

Merge of two bracketed shots with midtone image 1/400 F11 Iso 400. And the sheep kept moving around. Eventually I had to physically flip the right hand sheep to face the other way - digitally flip during editing I mean. ;)

Geoff, I very much like the second shot. The sheep work well as foreground points of interest, then there's the rolling countryside further in the distance with its clouds.

When you flipped the sheep, did you cut it out, repair the grass, then paste back in the flipped sheep? Did it complain?:)

Just gave it a little tickle, Bruce :D

Roughly drew around the sheep with the Lasso Tool set to 8 pixels feather. Included plenty of grass with the selection. Copy and pasted as a layer then flipped with the Transform Tool and positioned that area slightly to the left of the original position to allow for a slight crop from the right side. Needed a little bit of clone work on the background grass and that was it; quite simple to do.

I agree with Bruce - #2 is eye catching. Lots to see in this calm scene and it caused me to spend a bit of time looking at it. Can't tell that you flipped the sheep since it seems to be unharmed in the process! Even the grass looks undisturbed! :)

Week 13. Another weather related image. Today started cloudy and cool but this patch of blue sky with a definite edge slowly drifted forwards; but it wasn't until the afternoon that I saw some actual sunshine.

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...0/original.jpg

7D with Tamron 24-70 lens. 1/200 F11 Iso 400. Merge of two exposures.

Leaf Mines on bramble leaves. Not sure which insect larvae made these but possibly one of the Stigmella moths. Not the best of backgrounds but I did move around a few items before shooting to make some sort of improvement.

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...1/original.jpg

180 Sigma macro lens. 1/60 F11 iso 400. merge of two exposures.

And nearby, another potentially interesting scene where I couldn't do anything about the background. A pair of Tipula vittata craneflies.

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...2/original.jpg

1/200 F14 Iso 400 with flash.

I did ask them to move to a better location but they just ignored me.

The first is a lovely picture. The second and third are full of interest. I like the texture of the "clutter" behind the leaves and the craneflies. (They were rude to ignore your request for them to move! <LOL> )

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Geoff F

Week 13. Another weather related image. Today started cloudy and cool but this patch of blue sky with a definite edge slowly drifted forwards; but it wasn't until the afternoon that I saw some actual sunshine.

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...0/original.jpg

7D with Tamron 24-70 lens. 1/200 F11 Iso 400. Merge of two exposures.

Leaf Mines on bramble leaves. Not sure which insect larvae made these but possibly one of the Stigmella moths. Not the best of backgrounds but I did move around a few items before shooting to make some sort of improvement.

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...1/original.jpg

180 Sigma macro lens. 1/60 F11 iso 400. merge of two exposures.

And nearby, another potentially interesting scene where I couldn't do anything about the background. A pair of Tipula vittata craneflies.

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...2/original.jpg

1/200 F14 Iso 400 with flash.

I did ask them to move to a better location but they just ignored me.

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Perhaps they were too busy?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by skitterbug

The first is a lovely picture. The second and third are full of interest. I like the texture of the "clutter" behind the leaves and the craneflies. (They were rude to ignore your request for them to move! <LOL> )

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I agree with Sandy.

The second one is a particularly good documentary image. You managed to keep the entire spread of the bramble leafs and stem in good focus and everything else out of focus. Were the bramble leaves in the same plane of focus when you arrived or did you have to do some discrete rearranging? Or just rely on the position/angle of the camera?

I'm curious about the plant in the bottom left. It looks like a polyanthus or something botanically related?

Turning to the first photo, it has an interesting collection of curved lines: the cloud edge, the hedgrow lines and the tops of the foreground plants.

Nice series for week #13, I'm a big fan of fluffy clouds but the first cloud get by with a bit of a crop.

Thanks. I am not sure about that plant in the corner of #2, Bruce. It is all wildflowers in that nature reserve. Maybe a young foxglove? I will have to check next time I am there. When I thought about photographing that scene I managed to arrange my tripod to a position which was sufficiently square with the leaves to keep everything in focus. But I did a bit of rearrangement with the background debris to remove some items which would have come out overly bright or distracting.

After eventually packing up my gear, I was walking back towards the car park when I spotted another Tipula vittata female laying eggs. She was running through the foliage and everytime she spotted a suitable bit of mud she dipped in her tail and laid an egg. All I could do was to quickly grab my camera out of the backpack and try to follow her shooting hand held, without flash, so my camera angles and settings weren't perfect.

https://secure2.pbase.com/crustacean...5/original.jpg

1/80 F11 Iso 800. With a 90% reject rate. :rolleyes:

The second quarter of my Project 52 starts here:

2018 Project 52 by Geoff F - 2nd Quarter

Nice insect images.