I am so delighted with my new camera system, the Olympus OM-D EM-1. Half the weight of my Nikon D300 with an equivalent lens (purchased 7 years ago), it alleviates a shoulder problem that developed from hefting it so many, many times a day to take pictures.
I found these flowers on my birthday walk. The images are unedited in JPEG format, except for resizing.
For three days I watched this flock gather each morning on the same set of poles and wires, and stay into the afternoon. (The overflow crowd spilled onto the next set of poles down the road.)
A cashier in the local drugstore said they’d been doing that for a couple of days before I arrived in Asheville to visit family for the holidays.
On the fourth day the birds were gone.
What you can’t hear through this image was the noise of their constant chatter. It was an astonishing, wondrous experience!
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I’m testing a new layout and some WordPress plugins which will (hopefully) make it easier for me to post more often. “Simplify, simplify, simplify” is my current mantra. I’d love to hear if you run into any issues or have other feedback as I change things up.
Spring has finally arrived in Chicago, after a long and unusually harsh winter.
Yes, these are “flowers”—so difficult to see and photograph in a way that is fresh, that’s not similar to the thousands of images already housed in the data banks of our mind’s eye. Their abundant beauty is so welcome, however, that I can’t help but try to express that experience.
Click on any image above to view large as slide show (with 5 second pause between each.)
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Crabapple Tree
Panasonic DMC-FZ40; 1/25 sec @ f7.1, ISO 100 (handheld);
Focal length: 8.5mm (47mm EFL)
Crabapple Flowers
Nikon D300 ; 1/125 sec (handheld);
AF-S Nikkor 18-200 mm f/3.5–5.6 G ED plus
Canon 500D Close-Up Lens
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Nikon D300; 1/145 sec @ f11, ISO 250 (handheld);
18-200 mm f/3.5–5.6 @ 105mm (157mm EFL); focus distance 33.5m
This wasn’t exactly what I “expected” to see on a foggy morning in spring. Once I let go of those ideas and realized what I was seeing, however, I had great fun on this walk.
Click on any image below to start a slide show:
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Stepping outside to run errands, I discovered this present on our front steps. Except for a very light touch of contrast and sharpening in post-processing, this image is as seen.
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Panasonic DMC-FZ40; 1/15 sec @ f4.4, ISO 100 (handheld);
Focal length: 82mm (460mm EFL)
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Chicago has officially topped the 5 foot mark for snowfall this winter…so far. We’ve also “enjoyed” 19 days of sub-zero temperatures, with more just ahead and high temperatures running 30°(F) below normal.
Even so, when I do decide to bundle up and venture out, this winter is quite striking and beautiful.
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Nikon D300; 1/500 sec @ f11, ISO 200 (handheld);
18-200 mm f/3.5–5.6 @ 200mm (300mm EFL); focus distance 3.76m
Frost №4 (January 23, 2014 @ 10:11 AM)
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A handheld series photographed one morning in changing light. During the (first) incursion of the Polar Vortex this January, Chicago’s daytime temperatures were -14F. Though we “should” insulate a few windows, I did enjoy their frost patterns from indoors.
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Nikon D300 with 18-200 mm f/3.5–5.6 lens;
1/45–1/125 sec @ f11 to f16, ISO 200–640 (handheld)
Referring to her nineteen month old toddler, Alexandra Horowitz writes: “He was blessed with the ability to admire the unlovely. Or, I should say, he was blessed with the inability to feel that there is a difference between lovely and un-.”—On Looking, Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes
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Nikon D300; 1/45 sec @ f11, ISO 2500 (handheld);
18-200 mm f/3.5–5.6 @ 75mm (112mm EFL)
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Just the other day, shortly after sunrise, the waves of Lake Michigan were washing high over beaches near my home. Storm clouds reflected briefly in the backwash, before disappearing into the sand.
My first inclination, with so many beautiful images right in front of me, was to dive in and start shooting with the hope of capturing as many as possible. It soon became clear, however, that a scattershot approach wasn’t going to work. I was only getting frustrated.
Stop; breathe. What am I really seeing? Where? What shutter speed and aperture would best express that? Will I be satisfied with the ISO required to do so?
In landscape or nature photography, I always feel the pressure of time because conditions change so quickly. The scenes in this case were especially fleeting, never to recur in quite the same way again. Once I took a little time to just look and think about the technical questions, then I was able to slow down and perceive what was happening—ready to shoot when it did.
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Nikon D300; 1/180 sec @ f16, ISO 720 (handheld);
18-200 mm f/3.5–5.6 @ 26mm (39mm EFL); focus distance 3.76m