Around The Yard Macro

Since there is a possibility of heavy rain, thunderstorms and flash flooding today, exactly where right now is unknown.  If there are thunderstorms in the area, I will try to track them down and do some photography.  Meanwhile, I decided just to do a little bit of macro photography around my condo area.  My thought was rather than creating images with a lot of depth of field, that I would use a large ISO which would give me a very shallow depth of field and see what I could create.  I utilized Nikon D7100, Nikkor 105mm micro lens, handholding, with an f-stop 3.5 and a shutter speed of 1/4000, hopefully this should freeze the very slight motion that there was in the flowers.  The ox-eye daisy had a number of different flies on them.  There was a green bottle fly and a thick legged hover fly.  I processed one of the daisy photos in the style of the impressionistic painters.  So go out, think out-of-the-box and see what you can create.

Ox-Eye Daisy Processed in the Impressionistic Mode

Ox-eye Daisy With Green Bottle Fly

Thick Thigh Hover Fly

daylily

Hey Hawk Surprise

Red-shouldered Hawk

It is another winter day here in Southeastern Massachusetts from a very cold morning to first of the snowstorms before the blizzard starts late tonight and into tomorrow.  I have spent the day photographing the birds coming to the feeder.  Watching the interactions between the different species and among the species.  At 4:00 PM, I came back down to capture the end of the day images.  Suddenly, out of the conifer a covey of at least 12 Council at more mourning doves came flying out headed in all directions.  I said to myself.  There has to be a hawk  nearby.  I thought initially that it would been a Cooper's Hawk, but out of the conifer flew a red-shouldered hawk which landed a nearby tree and gave me a chance to photograph it.  After the hawk took off, the juncos, titmouse is and house sparrows came in and started feeding.

Red-shouldered Hawk

Red-shouldered Hawk

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More Images from My Back Porch during the Snowstorms

Northern Cardinal

Finally, thanks to Dell, my computer is back working.  Between Microsoft and Dell.  It took over four days get the computer back online.  Because of all the snow we've been having, which is still continuing today.  I've missed going out and photographing.  However, again, my feet are on the back porch has kept me entertained.  Like I have written in previous blogs, observing the interactions between the birds is very interesting.  There is definitely a hierarchy among each species.  I've seen juncos feeding when another jungle will just fly in and the juncos that were feeding leave.  The mourning doves are somewhat better, although I have seen a number of fights, where one mourning Dove will even pick feathers out of another morning, dove head.  Although I did not see it.  I believe I had a hawk capture a bird because they were bloodstains on the deck.  This is nature and how the world turns.

Black-capped Chickadee

Blue Jay

Black-capped Chickadee

Eastern Gray Squirrel

Northern Cardinal in the Snow

Mourning Dove

Mourning Dove With Its Wings Raised

Mourning Dove Flying in the Snow

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Snow And Birds Feeding

Mourning Dove on the Feeder

It was a snow day, and the birds came to visit the feeder.  When the mourning doves were at the feeder they were messy and scattered seed all around, which allowed the juncos and other birds to eat the seed that fell on the floor of the porch.  At one point we had 10 mourning doves, another point a half a dozen juncos plus a pair of cardinals.

Northern Cardinal

Dark-eyed Junco

What also happened today is my brand-new Nikon D810 arrived and after I had set it up.  I did take a few pictures of the mourning dove and was very impressed.  I shot my other photos with my Nikon D7100 in the snow and utilized an ISO of 1000, and a shutter speed of 1000 to freeze the birds.  With my new Nikon, although the snow stopped, I used an ISO of 200 and a shutter speed of 500 which froze the bird and gave me a sharp shot.  F-stop for all was 2.8.

Also, the nicest part of today was that I was photographing through my back deck slider window and I kept warm.

Mourning Dove photograph with the D810

I am going to join my friend John tomorrow photographing plum island up to Rye New Hampshire and I am going to see how the new camera performs.

Using the coupon code mborn you will receive a 15% discount on any or all of the Topaz plug-ins.



Help Support my blog by purchasing from Amazon. Clicking on this link and utilizing the link does not cost you anything.
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Saturday's Lightning Storm

Saturday, after I arrived home from the White Shark and Whales Trip, I sat down to supper that my grandson and great-granddaughter prepared for me.  After which I had a delicious carrot cake birthday cake.

I went outside to get something that I had left in the car and to my North were clouds with intermittent glow from lightning and some lightning flashes.  I set up my tripod, camera and lens, and since it was dark out, I experimented with various settings and ended up, utilizing an ISO of 400, f-stop of F/5.6 and 10 seconds, which gave me the picture I wanted.  I set my interval timer in the camera for one picture every 11 seconds to make sure that the previous picture would be written to the card.  I started the timer and as the clouds started moving more toward the north east.  I did change the location of the tripod and camera.  I ended up finally move in the camera from the parking lot to my back porch hopefully to catch some more lightning bolts as the storm was moving away.  During this whole time we did not have any rain until the storm moved completely away, then the rains came.

After importing the pictures into Lightroom, I adjusted the color balance then selected a baseline photo and then a number of photos which had lightning bolts in it.  Utilizing the same technique as I did, making firefly composite pictures, I exported the pictures as layers into Photoshop.  Then I auto-aligned the images, made sure the base image was on the bottom, took the rest of the images and change the mode from normal to lighten and created a composite of lightning bolts over my condo complex.

I then took the complete initial set of pictures and made a short video.  I also took all pictures to make a video showing the passage of the storm.

A Foggy Morning in Taunton Town

There was a nice fog this morning and my grandson and I went out to take some pictures of landscapes and other subjects in the fog.

Fog acts as a natural soft box and diffuses the light and if you shoot without adding some plus exposure compensation, the picture will come out dark.  When I have the scene focused in my camera, I take one shot and look at the histogram.  I want to expose to the right to give me the greatest amount of information, so that I can adjust the picture in post-processing.  In shootings scenic, I use the lowest ISO, a sturdy tripod with a good head, single shot mode, mirror up and a shutter release.  If I am doing single pictures of the scene, I utilize Aperture Priority.  But, if I am doing a panorama, in order to keep the same settings I would use Manual Mode.

This screen capture is of the first picture at the top of the blog before I did any postprocessing and shows the histogram exposed to the right.

Vegetation at the edge of the lake in the fog

A marsh in the fog

Panoramic of the marsh in the fog

A different marsh in the fog

Spider Webs

Snow Again, Day 2

View from the front

It is now 6 AM on the 2nd day of the storm.  Because we were above freezing.  Most of the day yesterday we did not get a large amount of accumulation, since the snow was mixed with rain.  Overnight, the snow became heavy and now everything is covered with snow, it looks at least 6 inches and it is still snowing.  The weather forecast is for the snow to continue into later today, so have no idea exactly how much snow we will get.  In fact, the snow was blowing so much that my windows that have screens in front of him, you cannot see out of because the screens are covered with snow.  Here are pictures of the front and back of my condo complex looks like this morning.

View from the back

Conifer covered with snow

Snow Again

View from my front door

It is now 6 o'clock on Thursday morning, here in southern New England in the another snowstorm is starting.  I I woke up just before 5 AM, and it wasn't snowing in the grounds and roads were clear and wet from overnight rain.  However, looking outside right now the grounds and roads are are covered with a light coating of snow.  This storm is supposed to last until Friday, and also is including high winds.  So what high winds and wet snow will see what happens.  Keep tuned.

View of the backyard

Winter Storm Warning

We have progressed from a winter weather advisory to a winter storm warning.  Right now, at 9 PM.  It is not snowing, but the forecast could be up to 11 to 12 inches of snow depending on how the storm tracks.  What my plan is hopefully to be up at midnight and take some pictures of what is happening at that point.  The temperature is falling and is now getting below freezing, so let's see what the night will bring.  Here are the pictures from right now

Snowy Morning in Southeastern Massachusetts

Before I went to sleep yesterday, the weather forecast was just for some light snow. This morning when I woke up, there was a winter weather advisory in place and looking out the window it was snowing. So soon as it became light, my grandson and I set up our cameras, he used a storm-jacket on his and I used the LensCoat RS medium Raincoat on mine to protect them from the weather. We then went and cleaned off the car and drove slowly first to Lake Rico where we took our first set of pictures of the snow falling and then as it stopped how the scenery looked with snow cover. We then drove to Oliver Mills Park in Middleborough (very slowly, the roads were still tough and there was a lot of traffic) where we composed our next set of photographs.

I converted some of my pictures to black and white and left the rest in color.

Grandson in the snow photographing Lake Rico with a flock of geese approaching

Lake Rico, in this picture I decrease the highlights are hundred percent and pushed the vibrance up to 76%

Lake Rico, same picture as above but converted to a selective black and white, I wanted the red bench to stand out.

Remnants of the old mill at Oliver Mill Park

Water flowing over the dam at Oliver Mill Park after the snow

A different view of the remnants of the old mill with the water flowing down over a small dam

Overview at Oliver Mill Park after the snow