CalevPhoto

Who said aphids can’t be funny?

I must admit that among the more hilarious pictures in the world, insects are rarely mentioned.  However, once in awhile I do find a rather amusing shot and more often than not it occurs with aphids.  I do not believe that aphids consider themselves to be amusing, but once in awhile I catch an aphid in a pose that does look a bit strange.

Although aphids stay rather still for most shots, they are not one of the easier insects to photograph.  For one, they are extremely small and often require a magnification of 5x for a good shot.  This means that the viewfinder is extremely dark and the lens is shaky.  The also do move, so tracking can be slightly tricky at times.

Here is an aphid family portrait.

Amazingly, an adult ladybug can eat up to sixty of these a day!  I am currently looking for some lady bugs, as Nelya prefers that the aphids stay away from her roses, but I won’t let her use insecticides on them.

While they certainly aren’t a beneficial insect, they do provide some amusement!

New lessons in real estate

While I haven’t discussed real estate photography here much during the last several weeks, I have been extremely busy photographing houses.  The market has definitely picked up and I now photograph at least one or two houses a week – even though I currently only work with two agents!

While I am happy that I made the switch to HDR, I have still been working on getting the colors right and improving my photos.  In this post, I will discuss some things I have learned during the last few weeks.

Lesson 1 Windows do not always need to be the correct temperature

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Time for some bees

During the recent warm weather, I figured it would be nice to get out there and take some bee shots.  This also gave me a chance to work with my 180mm macro, which has lately been ignored in favor of the MP-E 65.  While the MP-E 65 is an amazing lens, for things like bees the 180L is far more appropriate.

I had hoped to catch a bee in flight, but alas the only shots I got were too OOF.  I could have probably made my life easier by not trying to get the shot at 1:1, but then it wouldn’t have looked as interesting!  From past experience, I have found it’s better to try to take an amazing shot and fail than to take several mediocre shots.

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Time for some ducklings!

I have the great fortune that right next to the building where I work in, there are some interesting ponds with a great number of things to photograph.  In particular, ducks are very common there.

I have learned quite a bit about ducks just from watching them each week.  Several months ago, I noticed the ducks pairing together and suspected that eventually I would see some ducklings.  I looked online and noted that the males usually leave the females when the eggs are laid.  When I noticed that the males were no longer with the females, I suspected that ducklings would soon be there.

Sure enough, several weeks later there were ducklings!

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The release of the queens

Several weekends ago, my wife asked me to weed in our backyard.  I obliged, but on my way to get some equipment, I noticed something very unusual in the backyard.  The carpenter ant colony was releasing their queens and males.

First, I am not a myrmecologist and my knowledge of ants and carpenter ants comes from reading several books and observing them in my backyard.  Therefore, some of the information below may be incorrect.  If you know some of it to be false, please let me know and I will gladly correct it.

To be honest, I’m not sure if all of them were queens, all were males, or if there was a mix, but I suspect the latter.  Their clearly were smaller winged ants and larger ones.  I watched and photographed the phenomenon for a good hour.  While in my opinion none of the shots are great on their own, altogether the tell a very interesting story.

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Progression in macro insect photography

For a fun post, I thought I would cover the progression that a macro photography typically makes.  This covers both where I have started as well as where I hope to go.

Stage 1

In this stage, you can recognize what insect the photo is of.  With these shots, you feel it is extremely cool that you caught the insect on camera.  What you miss is that the framing may be awful, the insect is out of focus, and the lighting may be poor.

Here is a good example from when I first bought my camera.  You can see that this is a fly, but it is looking the wrong way, is too small for this shot, and should not be centered in the viewfinder.  The focus could also be improved.

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Tips for focusing in macro

One of the single biggest problems new macro photographers have is the issue of focusing.  This is particularly evident in insect shots, where most of them are a bit out of focus.  In this post, I will provide some tips for focusing.

First, if you are using autofocus at all when shooting macro, turn it off.  In macro, when you change the focus using the focus ring, you are actually changing the magnification.  Generally, you care what the magnification is on a given shot. The camera, on the other hand, has no idea. Therefore, do not let the camera do this for you.  Set the magnification yourself (most macro lenses have it printed on the barrel) and focus by moving towards and away from the subject.

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How to take travel shots without people

I am a self professed introvert.  I am very close with my wife and kids and have several close friends, but if you are not in that list I am not a very chatty person. I do not want to smile and have a fake conversation with you, and most of all I do not want your picture.

I also do not want your picture because if you are in my shot and I want to sell it, I either must figure out how to clone you out of the shot or I cannot sell the shot.  So it is in my best interest to take steps to assure that you (and by “you” I mean any one of the other six billion odd people out there) are not in my photograph.

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Let’s Chase Some Pigeons!

Kids get different things out of a vacation than we adults do.  While Nelya and I marveled at the Blue Mosque and Haghia Sofia in Istanbul, Eitan and Nathan marveled at a square with thousands of pigeons they could chase.  To them, this was heaven and they spent ample time there chasing said pigeons.  Of course, I couldn’t resist getting my camera out to get some shots.

I am certainly no expert in pigeon shots – these being my first attempts – but the following is what I did learn.

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The Rule of Three Colors

I’m sure most of you have heard of the Rule of Thirds – which states that if you divide a picture up into thirds, the subject generally works best when it is not in the middle third.  I think this rule works quite well, though as with everything in photography there are times when it should be broken.

There are a number of other “Rules” in photography, but one of those I like most is what I call “The Rule of Colors”.  I’m sure it is not new – and there may be a more widely known name for it, but I did notice it myself before anyone mentioned it to me.

To illustrate this rule, what do these two pictures have in common?

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