CalevPhoto

You know you’re a photographer when…

A few weeks ago while visiting friends during the end of the snow storm we received here, we were all quietly sitting and chatting and looking at the snow fall outside.  My wife mentioned how she was getting sick of this snow and hoped that it didn’t continue for long.

I was about to answer her when I noticed something interesting on the tree outside.  The drops on the tree seemed to be glistening and it looked like prime drop territory!  Luckily I had brought all of my equipment so I put on my macro lens and went outside to take some shots!

I could tell as I was taking the shots that I was mistaken.  I had thought there was potential for an award winning shot there but the situation wasn’t as good as I had hoped for.  Because the limbs were rather far apart, I got a black background instead of a lighter one.  It was not possible to use a tripod this close in so I finished taking some shots and went back inside.

I wasn’t too bummed though, as it was fun taking shots for a bit, and as long as I could take ice melting shots, I was fine with whatever amount of snow came our way.

Playing with drips and drops

While all of the snow we recently got was melting, I took the opportunity to take a number of drop pictures.  I’m happy with this latest attempt.  Sure, there are faults such as the reflection in the drop itself being blurry – but that is mainly because I found these shots in nature rather than setting something up.

In the future I may try different setups and studio water drop pictures, but for now I do like the lighting effects and I think my technique has improved – though there is still a ways to go.

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Critiquing my own ice pictures

This weekend I had the chance to take a few ice pictures during a brief period when the snow was melting.  As an interesting exercise, I thought I would critique some of the better shots from that shoot.  I didn’t get any award winners, but perhaps a critique of why they are not award winners may help me correct this in the future.

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Not your ordinary car exhaust

One of the great things I love about snow is that it has to melt at some time or another.  When in melts, I try to be there.  Unfortunately, the weather was a bit cold today so not much melted, but I did get the chance to find a few drippies.

Today wasn’t a great day as far as drippies go.  Most of the ones I found were either too difficult to get at or weren’t dropping at a quick and predictable rate.  I did find this one in a rather unusual place though.

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Masterpiece or delete key?

Some time ago I took this picture.

To be honest, the only reason I kept this shot was because I took a number of shots that day of drops on a Japanese maple.  None of them turned out as I had hoped so I kept a few of the half decent ones and deleted the rest.  This shot was taken on October of last year.  Had I taken this shot today, I am not sure that it would have survived the delete key (it would have depended on how the others turned out).

A few days ago, a friend of ours – who is also a photographer – was looking through my pictures and noticed this one.  She said she was blown away by it and it should be framed and is one of the most impressive pictures she ever saw.

After looking at the picture a bit longer, I still must say that I’m not sure it should have survived the delete key.  The shot is out of focus and the lighting is bad.  In particular the big white spot just underneath the drop is rather annoying.

So what are your opinions on it?  Is it a nice shot or a recycle bin candidate?

It’s freezing here!

OK, perhaps I have lived in the Pacific Northwest too long, because I should not be surprised at snow in April, which was very common in upstate New York where I grew up.  However, here it is a very strange phenomenon to be so cold and receive snow that actually sticks to the ground close to April!  Last week it was cold and rainy almost every day, which has made insect photography much more difficult.  On Thursday I spend an hour by the pond near my office and for the first time that I can remember I couldn’t find a single interesting thing to take a photograph of.  Other than a few pill bugs there wasn’t much that I could find interesting.  I had hoped to find a spider web with dew drops on it, but the majority of ground spiders (the larger orb weavers aren’t out yet) decided to not show up.

However, I felt the need to be stubborn and spent some time on Friday in my backyard, where I have a better sense of where to find certain insects.  Still, I found it very difficult to find much of interest to photograph.  I eventually decided to cool looking for insects and photographed a dandelion that was ready to burst.

Generally I have found that when I have difficulty finding something, turn to a different subject and your original subject will eventually capture your eye.  Shortly after playing with the dandelion, this turned out to be true once again.

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It’s freezing here!

OK, perhaps I have lived in the Pacific Northwest too long, because I should not be surprised at snow in April, which was very common in upstate New York where I grew up.  However, here it is a very strange phenomenon to be so cold and receive snow that actually sticks to the ground close to April!  Last week it was cold and rainy almost every day, which has made insect photography much more difficult.  On Thursday I spend an hour by the pond near my office and for the first time that I can remember I couldn’t find a single interesting thing to take a photograph of.  Other than a few pill bugs there wasn’t much that I could find interesting.  I had hoped to find a spider web with dew drops on it, but the majority of ground spiders (the larger orb weavers aren’t out yet) decided to not show up.

However, I felt the need to be stubborn and spent some time on Friday in my backyard, where I have a better sense of where to find certain insects.  Still, I found it very difficult to find much of interest to photograph.  I eventually decided to cool looking for insects and photographed a dandelion that was ready to burst.

Generally I have found that when I have difficulty finding something, turn to a different subject and your original subject will eventually capture your eye.  Shortly after playing with the dandelion, this turned out to be true once again.

Continue Reading…

Futility in drops…almost…

As many of you likely know, recently we had a decent amount of snow here. It rarely snows here around Seattle and when it does, it’s even rarer for it to stick. Normally the nice thing is we can take a short trip to the mountains and enjoy several feet of snow, then drive back home and not have to worry about plowing the driveway. Recently though, it not only snowed but the snow stuck.

I noticed the sun came out and I decided to see if I can get a good ‘melting drop’ picture. I previously took this shot during another snow melt.

I think this is a nice picture, but I wanted to see if I could top it. My goal was to get a drop in the process of falling. As I’m not much for suspense, here’s the shot that I wound up with.

This shot proved much tougher than I originally anticipated and I wound up taking 200 frames trying to get this shot. There are several problems when photographing drops.

1. They are very difficult to predict. I have no idea when the drop will truly fall.
2. When the drop falls, it falls very fast. This makes it tough to get the drop in the viewfinder.
3. You have to be absolutely still to make sure the fall is in focus. I actually succeeded in getting two other drops during the day, but the others were out of focus.

It seemed every time the drop fell I would be just a bit too slow. The trick is to get the shot the instant the drop is ready to fall. If you wait for the drop to actually fall you will always be too late. I have two regrets with this shot.

1. The lighting is a bit too harsh. This is because my flashes were aligned in parallel to the drop, which in retrospect I should not have done. I did this in order to fit the flash in between the branches so as to not hit any of the icicles with the flashes. In the drop above, I had the flashes side by side and the lighting effect is better. It also probably didn’t help that the more powerful flash (I always set them to 80%-20% to make the light less flat) was on top. Next time if I need to put my flashes this way I should switch the power ratio on them.
2. It would be nice to have a prettier reflection. The easy way to do this is to put a small flower behind the icicle and prop it up somehow. Of course, this is easier said than done and I did not have a small flower at the time.

Still, I am very proud of my shot and I plan to print it out and add it to the wall of my office soon.