First Tulip

I finally dragged myself out of bed and decided to put some eye candy up. Better late than never. I swore I was going to take today off since I was forced to work yesterday when my mom made me do portraits of 3 babies and a family….all for free .

Here’s my little PSA: If you know a professional photographer, don’t ask them to shoot stuff for free, especially when they’re family and supposed to be relaxing. Also, if they’re nice enough to post the images on fb and tag you, don’t download the image, crop it, and upload it on your page with much lower image quality and a ruined composition haha.

Anyways, please enjoy this tulip. It was the first one to open up last week.

Shot with the default camera app. Edited with SimplyHDR.

Busy Bees

These 2 bees must have spent at least 15 minutes on this one flower. That gave me plenty of time to try and get a good pic with my iPhone. Luckily, my brother’s cat didn’t see them. I brought him outside with me to get some fresh air. Attacking bees is his favorite thing in the world, but he was busy doing other cat activities.

 

One Flower

Last year I took on the challenge of taking 500 photos of one subject with my old Nikon D60. This is the orange flower I chose out in the garden. It looked interesting and I thought it would be pretty easy to take a lot of pictures of it. It didn’t take too long before I was out of my comfort zone of taking my usual pictures. This is what a challenge is for, pushing you beyond your comfort zone and forcing you to try new things.

I shot from my normal distance and I also shot from as close as my lenses would allow.

I used the two lenses I had at the time, my 18-55 and 55-200. This one below was with the 55-200, shot through a chain link fence. This is probably my favorite shot from the whole shoot. Normally when I’m shooting a flower, I don’t think about moving away from it and shooting through something, but look at those results!

Heres a similar angle with a much different edit.

I also tried a kinetic shot. I had recently heard about kinetic photography and was experimenting with that technique. For this one in particular, I believe I was zooming in while pressing the shutter. It certainly adds some interesting motion to the image.

I felt like I was running out of ideas towards the end, so I switched to manual focus, just to try something different. At one point when I was adjusting, I went almost completely out of focus and saw something interesting happen. The photo turned into a painting.

Since I’d done a whole lot of shooting with the flower open, I wanted to call it a day and come back in the morning when the flower was wet and still not open.

Don’t be scared to try anything you can think of and don’t worry about how you look when you’re doing it. When I first got my Nikon a few years ago, I wasn’t comfortable being that guy that always had his camera around his neck. Eventually, we all have to get to a place where we’re ok with looking like a weirdo crawling on the ground with a camera.

The Mini Challenge

Alright, I’m going to post Nikon shots to this blog now. Its a lot easier than managing another blog and trying to get followers there too.

As you know, Shannon and I have a mini challenge going on right now. I came across my first subject yesterday when I found a praying mantis hanging out on a cosmo. I figured if I did a session early on, it would give me a chance to tell you about my process for one of these shoots.

Since this guy was on a cosmo that was in a little pot, that made it really easy to move him around and get different lighting conditions and backgrounds. I tried a few shots indoors with window light, but I wasn’t really into it, so I moved outdoors. I set the pot in a patch of light next to some shadows. It was a little tricky because the wind was blowing the eucalyptus all over the place and messing with my light.

I decided to move over to a bench to get some cool background patterns. The background was nice, but I didn’t really care for the lighting. Next, I put the mantis on an unopened Lilly. Unfortunately, the light was really harsh and the exposure was off because I forgot to switch to spot metering. Ooops! Yes, I still make mistakes when I’m not totally immersed in what I’m doing.

This shoot provided a few challenges. The subject was small and alive. I had to be in really close with a wide aperture, which means a small depth of field. The mantis seemed a bit on edge with a DSLR less than a foot from its face. Another problem was just one little breeze would throw the focus totally off when it was perched on the cosmo. I have lots of proof of that.

The good news is when you take around 150 photos, you’re going to get some that work. A few of them would have been awesome, but the composition was slightly off, or the legs were cropped out on accident because of movement.

Seeing these mistakes helps me to remember that next time I should be looking around the frame before I press the shutter. I need to be reminded to slow down sometimes and shoot with a purpose.

The final product required a little work on my part. I created a black and white version, but ended up setting it to soft light blending mode around 30% opacity. I also painted in some more detail on the face and arms because I’m a perfectionist…and cuz I can. =)

Keep an eye out later this week to see images of the flower I used for a 500 shot challenge last year.

Dahlias

For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.  -David Herbert Lawrence

What I like about this photo above is the way the flowers seemingly transition from perfection in the front to faded glory in the rear.

Yesterday was grey and ugly all day, which is great for garden pics. I decided to give 645 Pro another try after the recent update. These are a couple of the images I was happy with.

Both of these are unedited shots from 645 Pro. I’ve been putting off that review because I wasn’t happy with the app and the pictures I was getting with it weren’t very exciting. It looks like the update may have made a difference.

Another Fork

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Miller

There always seems to be a fork in the road. It would be nice if there were signs letting you know what was up ahead.

Shot with ProHDR. Edited with Snapseed.

Cosmo

Here is another pic I edited really quick with FilterMania 2.

Garden Glow

We added a bunch of plants to the garden this weekend. At least it seemed like a lot when the cart was full, but getting home and planting them in the half acre yard made it seem like we barely got anything.

I shot this with camera+ and edited with snapseed, filterstorm, and imageblender. There was a natural glow on the plant that I wanted to enhance with Filterstorm. To do that, I added blur and set the blending mode to soft light. Then I lowered the opacity to something like 40%. It was still a bit much after I’d saved, so I used imageblender to blend it with the original because its a hell of a lot faster than trying again in Filterstorm and waiting for the 5 minute save process.

If you don’t have filterstorm, you can add blur with another app and use something like imageblender or superimpose. Just set the blurred image to soft light blending mode and adjust the opacity til it looks good.

Slugs n Bugs

I turned over a piece of rotted wood yesterday and saw lots of slugs and sow bugs. The slugs kind of reminded me of the elephant seals I saw recently. Mainly because they’re fat and don’t do much. Sorry, if there are any slugs reading this.

I thought these two looked funny sleeping next to each other. It almost looks like the slug’s eyes are bugging out because I caught them doing something wrong….or had a bowl of salt next to me (I didn’t.)

Seashell Cosmo

I bought a bunch of flowers a few weeks ago for my moms garden as a mothers day gift. Its better than buying cut flowers right? You get way more flowers for a much more reasonable price. I grabbed a 6 pack of the biggest cosmos, but it turns out they are the seashell variety….oops. Still cool looking though.

Shot with Camera+ and edited with Snapseed (still free!)

 

Before I end this short post,I have to thank Heather (bitsnbooks) for being so sweet and giving both my blogs the reader appreciation award. I’ll make a proper post on my other blog later

Iris

We have a few opening up around the yard now.

I tried something different here by blending an NIR version with one I edited in Snapseed. I had like 7 different versions of this image, but this is my favorite.

Portrait of a Tulip

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.
-Minor White

I tend to avoid taking pictures when the sun is high in the sky, but yesterday when I went out in the yard around 1, there was some good light hitting the tulips. I took quite a few pictures before I really became present and observed what was going on. The tulips were dancing in the breeze and basking in the warm sun. After I became aware of what was going on I changed my approach and got some amazing images with my Nikon (see one below.)

I was using camera+ and the white balance was totally thrown off on all but one image because of the intense color. I’m surprised by how much detail there is in this one. All I did was add a little ambiance, a tiny amount of drama, and a little structure in Snapseed.

Here is the winning shot of the day from my Nikon.

Symmetrical Flower

Yesterday I bought an app that was on sale and had a lot of good reviews called FX Photo Studio. After a few minutes exploring it, I felt like a sucker because its filled with 20MB of fluff. There are a lot of filters, but I found like 7 that I might actually use. There are hardly any adjustment sliders to edit your photos, so I wouldn’t call this an editor. I’m not impressed at all to be honest and I’d save your dollar if its still on sale for that price. If, however, you are a teenage girl, you might like this app because of all the cheesy butterfly or flower frames.

This image was created with the Symmetry Vertical filter. It basically copies the left half of the image and flips it to make a symmetrical image. There are 3 symmetry filters that might make for some interesting creations, but I don’t know if I’m going to keep this 20MB app on my phone just in case I want to use one of them once a month.

Little Flowers

Just a little succulent blooming in the garden. It caught my eye in another part of the yard, but it was in shadows. I picked up the little bonsai planter its in and moved it into some more interesting light. Don’t be afraid to move your subjects to better light if you can!

 

Edited with Snapseed.

PhotoViva flower

Photograph:  a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

~Ambrose Bierce

I used PhotoViva to paint this myself using a few different brushes. I have to say it was a fun process. Its much more engaging than selecting a filter that can give you a similar effect. I’ll give it a proper review after I use it on another image in the next few days.

This is what the image looked like before. Its another macro shot of a daisy bush. The flowers can’t be more than 2-3 inches wide.