CalevPhoto

Playing around with dandelion seeds

Dandelions have always been one of my favorite subjects – in particular the seeds as they fall.  Sure, they’re weeds – but they’re graceful weeds.

This particular image is a focus stack from two images.  I have been working a bit more with focus stacking using Zerene stacker and find it very useful – in particular for someone like me who does not have a lot of time.

Dandelion seeds can actually be rather tricky to photograph.  I usually find that more than 1:1 magnification is required so I use my MP-E 65 anywhere from 1:1 to 2:1.  Generally the seeds do not stay still so a flash is required.  It can be quite tricky though getting the seed in your viewfinder and in focus as they tend to sway quite a bit in the wind – causing the seed to come in and out of my viewfinder.

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Playing with flowers

OK, I promise that I’ll get back to some good old fashioned bugs soon, but I thought I would post some more flowers.  Last weekend at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens I played around with daisies.  I took all of these shots with my 180L but without a tripod.  Instead I used my MT-24EX mounted on a Wimberley macro flash bracket.  I would like to say that a great deal of creative thought went into this decision – but the truth is I was too lazy to get the tripod out and spend a lot of time getting the position right.

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Experimenting with Photoshop and flowers

Recently I have started listening to the photo critiques at RadiantVista.  For those of you not familiar with this site, it is an excellent source of information and composition and Photoshop and on top of that it is free.  Currently my use of Photoshop is limited to changing contrast/shadows and converting from RAW to JPG.  Recently I took one of my flower shots and tried to see what I could do with it.  Here’s the original shot – unmodified from the camera.

This is clearly only an average shot, but the main purpose was to play around with Photoshop and see how I could improve it.

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Trying my hand at flowers

While taking pictures of insects yesterday at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens, I noticed that they had lots of pretty things on the plants that sometimes the bugs would crawl on.  As most of you know, I spend most of my macro efforts taking pictures of insects, but the major reason for that until recently has been the fact that the MP-E 65 isn’t the greatest lens for flowers.  Many flowers do not need 1:1 magnification so the MP-E 65 was often too close.  This is not the case with the 180L.  Therefore I put away my flash and took out my tripod and attempted a few flower shots.

This is a cranesbill flower, related to geraniums.  The interesting thing when taking this picture was I had the opportunity to use a rather shallow depth of field.  I kind of like the effect here.  One can still make out the leaves but the stem is not visible.  I could blur the leaves more in Photoshop, but I rather like the effect out of the camera.  I took this at f/5 – which I wouldn’t dare think of for most insects.

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