My Amateur Art & Photo Blog

Dandelion Macro Sticking with the macro theme today and in what little time I could bear to be outside in the sun and humidity I think this garden weed now past its prime sums up how I feel in the Boston summer temperatures lately ;) I am a little disappointed that I couldn't get the sweetspot of focus to cover more of the frame, however hand holding the Pentax and a little bit of a cross breeze were probably working against me today. Taken with the Pentax K200d with its kit lens mounted to a Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AL lens and using the +10 closeup filter, lighted only by blistering mid morning sun.

100 Days In The title says it all, I'm now 100 days in to my 365 photo project, oh my where does the time go. It certainly didn't feel like 100 days in to the year today, still quite chilly as shown by the feathers ruffled of this robin waiting warmer days. Taken with the Canon PowerShot SX230HS , color corrected slightly in post processing.

Spring Blossoms Today's 50F temps may not be quite as spring like as the last few days but the trees sure think Spring is in the air. I like the bokeh effect but wish it was a little more, well, effective here. Taken with the Canon PowerShot SX230HS in macro focusing mode, tone corrected in post processing .

Water Droplet Macro Inspired by some of the wonderful reflections in water droplets I've seen on G+ lately I thought I would give it a go. Some dried flowers provided the leaf and a drop of water from a teaspoon provided the droplet, lit only here by the natural light of the window which was probably my biggest mistake. The more light the more detail and greater the reflection, next time I will use artificial light and go for a bigger droplet. Taken with the Pentax K200d in Macro using the Sigma 70mm F/2.8 EX DG Macro Lens I held the camera supported against my knee. I cropped and corrected for tone in post processing but besides that what you see here is what came out of the camera.

Bokeh Bulbs? Today's photo proved to be a lot more complicated than I first thought. The goal was to capture the flowering bulbs (indoors) using a small aperture to ensure that background dining room furniture was suitably blurred out to not distract. Some 30 attempts later and I feel I accomplished only 66% of what I wanted to, I was hoping for a closing zoom with more of the flower petals in focus than they were. The problem I encountered with selecting such a small aperture (in Av mode turning the dial to f2.8) is that only a minimum amount of light is being allowed in to hit the camera's senser. So a compromise was needed and I unintuitively switched off the camera's inbody camera shake compensation, upped the aperture to f4.5 and turned up the dimmer on the dining room light as far as it would go and decided on camera flash was needed. The result is above. Taken with the Pentax K200d in Av mode, aperture set to f4.5 and the Sigma 70mm F/2.8 EX DG Macro Lens with MF se...