The Cormorant, the Dragonfly, and the Bee: sky

Showing posts with label sky. Show all posts

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Icicles

This has been a particularly snowy and cold winter so far, and icicles are a commonly seen result.

When the morning sun hits the icicles hanging off our roof just outside an upstairs window, we get brilliant flashes of light coming through the glass. And I get to open the window and take pictures of the icicles!

There's a lot more going on "inside" icicles than the naked eye normally discerns. The sun glinting off them can be so bright that some of the nearby internal icicle "magic" is hard to see. The camera does a good job capturing all the details of icicles so that we can better appreciate the simple artistry of water slowly changing from one phase to another.

Enjoy!

Dog Looks On

Scratches

Icicles Aglow

Sky Portal

Icicle Udders

Very Pointy

Icicle Phalanx

Climbing Creature

Ice Knee

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Tranquility Base

For those regular readers of this blog, you know that I walk around "the res" a lot. I've gone around it several hundred times. Now you might wonder what is the attraction. I enjoy the exercise, and also a walking meditation. Sometimes I use the time to work through problems that kept me up the night before. Other times I use it as a true meditation break, keeping in the moment, concentrating on my steps and what I see, not trying to judge or analyze but just to accept the beauty of my surroundings, and the changing views as I make my way around. And then there is something soothing about water. While I love a walk in the woods, a walk in the woods where one is always in sight of water is even better.

The reservoir surface is never really the same every time. Sometimes it is choppy, other times quiet, still, and smooth. Sometimes reflecting the clouds above, sometimes almost black with few reflections. The wind, the sun, the clouds, the time of day all affect these observations.

I'm just going to share a single photo in this post. It isn't even taken with my beloved Olympus camera, but rather with my cell phone. Often it's more about the moment than about resolution or sensor size or any other specs. Sometimes it's just about seeing what's in front of you.

I call this "Peace and Tranquility", because that's how I feel when I look at it, and that's the feeling I had when I took it.

Peace and Tranquility

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Fireworks!

After reading up online about "how to photograph fireworks" - there are several sites that claim to have the recipe - I decided to give it a try. This was a new adventure for me. Photographing fireworks provided a good opportunity to go outside my current photographer comfort zone. It turns out that almost every setting on the camera is completely different to photograph fireworks: manual mode, fixed ISO and f-stop, focus fixed at infinity, tripod required, and *really long* exposures.

Nearby Milford was one of many local towns with a fireworks display last night, and so off I went, to "fight the crowds" and get some fireworks photos. Turns out the crowds weren't too bad. The hardest part was realizing as I got close to the venue that the police had closed the street from cars, and so I had to park about a 15 minute walk away. Not a big issue, though I do have an older kind of heavy tripod, which made the walk a tad more challenging.

My Olympus camera has three different long exposure modes: bulb, "live time", and "live composite." Also, it's got a built-in fireworks scene mode. I tried 'em all except for bulb, which requires one to hold the shutter button down for the entire shot. Live time is the same as bulb, except one pushes the shutter button once to start the exposure and once again to end it, which is a lot easier. Live composite mode is a unique special mode Olympus makes available in some of their cameras. I'm pretty sure no other major camera manufacturer offers it. In live composite mode, one first sets a time, which is the time of each picture. I tried 1, 2.5, and 4 seconds, which are all recommended values for fireworks. When the user first presses the shutter the initial "background" shot is taken. Then when pressed again, the composite sequence begins with each shot adding to the image, but only where pixels are brighter than the existing. This is equivalent to the Photoshop "lighten" blend mode. The nice thing about this approach, is that the background doesn't get over-exposed. I can check the progress of the image on the camera's LCD screen and watch as each fireworks explosion "adds" to the image, stopping the composite exposure when it looks about right.

Alien Invasion
25 1 sec exposures at f/11

Echo Burst
13 x 1 sec.

Special Orb
3 x 1 sec.

Las Vegas Neon
12 x 1 sec.

Double Fountain
17 x 1 sec.

Burst
19 x 1 sec.

Stacked
18.7 sec.

Sky Filler
11 x 2.5 sec.

Puffs
8 x 4 sec.

Green Ghost
6.8 sec.

Red Feet
Fireworks Scene Mode, 4 sec.

Crowd Pleaser
23.7 sec.

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Life is a Tree Full of Cherries

By some wonderful quirk of fate, we happen to have the most enjoyable cherry tree in our very own front yard. Not only is it pleasing to behold, it serves up massive amounts of delicious tart cherries this time of year.

Photographing the tree and its cherries is an annual challenge of mine. While prior years have yielded some okay photos, I've not been overly pleased with the results. This year, I chose to make an extra effort to see if I can display the cherries in a way which really shows off their "cherriness." You be the judge, but I think at last I've succeeded.

Note that the cherries are not quite fully ripe in these photos, and that is why their color leans toward orange, rather than true red. Even in the two days or so since these photos were taken prior to this post, they have turned just a bit more red, and less orange. I think the deep orange color shown here gives them a kind of translucency in the sun and gives them more "pop."

Take a look. They are as yummy as they appear. Go nature!

Portal to Cherries

Sun Drenched Cherries

Cherries Up Close and Personal

Cherry Burst in the Sky

Semi-hidden Cherries

Sky-backed Cherries

Cherries Coming At You

Points of light becoming round diffuse blobs is sometimes referred to as "bokeh" in a photograph. This is a side effect of the background of the image being beyond the current depth of field (area of the picture which is in focus.) The quality of an image's bokeh refers to the smoothness or harshness of the out of focus background blur. It doesn't need to contain smooth round blobs, but if there are any bright lit areas in the background, that is how good "bokeh" typically makes them look. Often this renders photos more pleasing to the eye, and is usually preferred to having everything in sharp focus. However, having the entire frame in focus can be perfectly desired for, say, a wide landscape/scenery shot.

I don't really know who's reading this blog, so I occasionally describe such nerdy photography details as this. If you already know about "bokeh", or don't really care, and just want to look at the pictures, my apologies for the interruption:) After checking out the overall image, look at the bokeh in this next photo.

Dancing Cherries

Cherries Above

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Cell Phone Landscapes

Sometimes - shockingly - I don't bring my Olympus camera along for a Res. walk. In those situations, my cell phone, a Nexus 5x, is usually handy for that occasional shot.

As mentioned in an earlier post, many cell phones have great cameras and can take excellent photographs, especially with good available light. Cell phone cameras are generally very wide angle, which is quite handy for landscapes. Here are a few samples.

Sky Design

The water in this next photo is not the reservoir, but a different body of water nearby that feeds the res.

Log Perspective

Up High

At the res. again:

Surface

Not the res., but nearby:

Slide Zone

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Macro Mardi

Macro Tuesday is not so alliterative, so I thought I'd throw in a little French to keep the theme going from yesterday's blog post. The Spanish "Martes" would have worked nicely as well. Thanks to Deb for the idea. Yes, though not a common event, we discussed the title of this blog post during breakfast this morning.

Bottom line is I have many more macro photos of spring buds and blossoms to share.

How about a lime green background! This is the way the "bokeh-ized" grass in the background came out of the camera. I understand lime green is this year's favorite designer color!

Purple Leaf Sand Cherry

Sand Cherry Blossoms

It has been fascinating to watch the progression of the Redbud buds: from red, to red and magenta, to red and magenta with white blossoms. Also, they are sparse no more.

Redbud Minnie Mouse Ears

Since deer love to eat tulips, Deb cut a few from outside and brought them in. This way we can enjoy them before they're suddenly gone. Turns out they grow and last just about as long inside as outside!
This next shot is indoors with regular room lighting at ISO 1600.

Tulip Colors

Back outside again...

Tulip Sex

Normally, I prefer a nice blue sky, but this day was completely cloud covered. These are cherry blossoms from a different cherry tree than the one appearing in my recent "Cherry Blossoms" post. I used an exposure compensation of plus 3 f-stops! This forces the sky to be solid white and brings in the shadow detail of the cherry blossoms.