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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

Related posts:

1. Playing with some new toys Although we do not celebrate Christmas, that doesn’t mean I...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This shot has received the warmest reception of the bunch from my wife and some of her relatives.  What I think helps the shot is the reflection in the drop.  It kind of looks like a palm tree and thus has an interesting balance of ‘cold vs. warm’.  I also like the lower background of this shot – in particular the play of green vs. brown on the bottom.  Also helping the shot is the slight diagonal of the icicle.

Things that I do not like about this shot are.

1. There are several blown highlights.  I don’t think any of these are so severe that I could not get rid of them in Photoshop though.
2. The icicle itself is OOF and only the drop has some focus.  However, it too is slightly OOF.
3. The green at the top right needs to be toned down a bit.
4. The top of the icicle, which is OOF, is a bit distracting.
5. Ultimately I don’t think this is a very powerful shot.  It is one that when going through pictures may receive a comment, but that’s about all.

This shot corrects some of the problems of the earlier shot.  The focus on the icicle is much better and there is only one annoying part of the background in the upper right corner that can easily be removed in Photoshop.  There are some blown out areas but they are also easily fixable.

Ultimately though I think this shot is even less interesting than the first one.  It has a reflection in it, but the reflection isn’t that interesting.  It doesn’t really seem to tell a story, though I don’t think it’s a bad shot.

Initially, I almost pressed the delete key when I got to this shot.  After all, though I managed to get the drop in the shot it is clearly OOF.  What made me keep it are the interesting patterns in the background, the decent lighting, and the fact that the icicle above is in focus.

I’m still not sure what to make of this shot.  It shows an effect of a drop in motion with a reflection of its background, but does the motion inferred add to or subtract from the photo?

Right now I’m still undecided whether this is an ‘accidental great shot’ or a ‘near miss’.  I would appreciate opinions on this one.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

This shot was actually taken by our car exhaust.  I found a good drippie there that was dropping at a good rate.  Due to its location under my car, I was unable to hold the camera vertically.  However, this is a 21 Megapixel image, so if I cut it in half it still wouldn’t be that bad.

Although I caught the drop in the above shot, I like this shot a bit better.

This was the first time I used my Wimberley macro brackets when photographing drops and I like the lighting effect much better.  It took a bit of time to get the lights into a position I liked, but once I did I avoided blowing out the drop as I have in past attempts.

I normally use the Wimberley brackets all of the time when I shoot with my 180L – unless I am shooting flowers with a tripod.  However, I almost never use them with my MP-E 65 – where they just get in the way.  This was the exception though, as I found the lighting effect a strong improvement.  Here’s an example of a drop I took last year without the Wimberley brackets.

I like this shot, but the blown out area on the top of the drop is very annoying.  As you can see, the Wimberley macro brackets made a big improvement.

Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to find some good drippies and improve on this shot.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

The first thing I came across was this small spider.

From the arrangement of the eyes, this appears to be a ground spider of family Gnaphosidae.  I found it on a piece of wood that I turned over.  The picture is nothing extraordinary, but I find it amazing the number of species of spider that live in my backyard.  At first look this seemed like one of the sac spiders that are very common in my backyard, but the eyes are obviously different.

When the going gets tough, go looking for springtails is what I always say.  These are by far the easiest insects to find if you know what to look for.  There are myriad species of them, but in general the easiest way to find them is to either dig through relatively dry soil (wet soil is much harder) or look on the leaves of plants such as camellia or rhododendrons.  The ground was wet, so I didn’t bother to look there but after looking for a few minutes on my camellia I found this globular springtail.

When my wife saw this shot, she remarked “what a cute little spider!”.  Nope, not a spider but a springtail.  For more information about these little guys, see my previous post on them. 

I then gave up looking for insects and played with some of the drops on my Japanese maple bushes, which are great drop generators.  I picked a small flower and played with the reflection of the flower in the drop.

Like the other shots that day it was nothing much to write home about, but it was still nevertheless fun getting some shots.  However at this point my hands – holding a camera with a metal L bracket attached – were getting rather cold and it had started to rain again, so I went back inside glad that I had the chance to take some pictures.  Luckily, over the weekend nature gave me a much better chance to get some shots.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

The first thing I came across was this small spider.

From the arrangement of the eyes, this appears to be a ground spider of family Gnaphosidae.  I found it on a piece of wood that I turned over.  The picture is nothing extraordinary, but I find it amazing the number of species of spider that live in my backyard.  At first look this seemed like one of the sac spiders that are very common in my backyard, but the eyes are obviously different.

When the going gets tough, go looking for springtails is what I always say.  These are by far the easiest insects to find if you know what to look for.  There are myriad species of them, but in general the easiest way to find them is to either dig through relatively dry soil (wet soil is much harder) or look on the leaves of plants such as camellia or rhododendrons.  The ground was wet, so I didn’t bother to look there but after looking for a few minutes on my camellia I found this globular springtail.

When my wife saw this shot, she remarked “what a cute little spider!”.  Nope, not a spider but a springtail.  For more information about these little guys, see my previous post on them. 

I then gave up looking for insects and played with some of the drops on my Japanese maple bushes, which are great drop generators.  I picked a small flower and played with the reflection of the flower in the drop.

Like the other shots that day it was nothing much to write home about, but it was still nevertheless fun getting some shots.  However at this point my hands – holding a camera with a metal L bracket attached – were getting rather cold and it had started to rain again, so I went back inside glad that I had the chance to take some pictures.  Luckily, over the weekend nature gave me a much better chance to get some shots.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.