Rose

With Spring FINALLY arriving in the Tampa Bay area, I thought I'd post a sure sign of Spring in these parts.

This Rose was in the garden at Veterans' Memorial Garden at the Safety Harbor Marina a couple weeks ago when I went out for our regular Monday Night Meetup.

I love the smell, texture and color of Roses. The ones people buy from florists are beautiful, but they're too perfect. This is the kind of Rose most people plant in their gardens. Not only are they beautiful, but their fragrance can only be topped by Orange blossoms, as far as I'm concerned. The bees love them though, so I need to be careful around them because I'm allergic to bee stings.

I know, you're all thinking about how many bees I photograph--I do it with a very, long lens. Usually, bees aren't intimidated by lenses being poked in their faces. They're too busy going about their business. Just imagine without bees and butterflies, we wouldn't have such beautiful flowers in our gardens.

Paper Wasp

This image was made at my regular Monday Night meetup. While photographing Monarch caterpillars, I noticed this Paper Wasp on this Butterfly Weed bush. He appears to be eating aphids or some kind of larvae.

This bush is covered with aphids, caterpillars, eggs and various sorts of minute creatures that can't be easily seen with the naked eye.

Even with the wind by the water, I managed to hand hold my 90mm macro lens in one hand while holding onto the stem of the bush to keep it still with the other hand. It was no easy feat, but I got the job done. I'm pretty proud of myself for that one. :)

Paper Wasps are much more tolerant of people and minor disturbances than are hornets and yellow jackets, which means they're less apt to sting according to the Audubon Field Guide to Insects and Spiders. All I know is I was pretty close to this guy, and he completely ignored me.

Settings used for this image ISO 400 to help get a fast shutter speed and to stop any movement, flash to get more light on the insect, and also to arrest movement, aperture priority, partial metering on the wasp, 1/250 at F9 for better depth of field--especially with a macro lens at 90mm.

Safety Harbor Sunset

I'm a sucker for a nice sunset or sunrise and this one was no exception. This was shot from the Safety Harbor Marina a couple weeks ago, while I was at our regular Monday night Meetup.

I was just getting ready to leave for dinner, when I turned around and took another look. This is what I saw. I had just put my camera away, so I dug it back out of my backpack and quickly shot this scene.

I didn't take the time to change my previous settings, but I'll give them to you anyway. ISO 200, partial metering off the sky which is what produced the silhouette of the trees, 1/125 at F16 in aperture priority with my new 90mm Macro lens because that's what I had on the camera at the time.

The color of the sky was tweaked a bit in Lightroom 2.5. Other than that, no other adjustments.

Safety Harbor Pier

Yes, this is yet another photo of the Safety Harbor Pier taken from the Safety Harbor Marina on our regular Monday Meetup. When I saw this image import from my media card, I couldn't believe my eyes.

I remembered making these photos, but thought they were lost on the card. However, the other night my roommate asked me to take a couple pictures for him, and I used my Canon 20-D, instead of my usual 40-D. Now I know where the photos went! It really stinks getting old. :)

Most of the time at the Monday night meetups I don't shoot any photos. But this particular evening, I just had to capture these amazing clouds and reflections on the still water. This is one of the compositions I made.

Settings used for this shot were ISO 200, 1/80 at F9.0 to get a decent depth of field. If I had bumped up my ISO to 400, I would've been able to use F11, but that would've meant I'd have to deal with some digital noise in my shot. I'd rather not have to deal with it if it can be avoided. The camera was set in Aperture Priority mode and I used partial metering on the sky to be sure it wouldn't wash out. I used my Canon 18-55mm IS lens at 18mm, also to get a good depth of field and a nice wide angle of this scene.

Safety Harbor Marina

Monday nights at the Marina, my photography club has their weekly meetup. While some of us shoot photos, most of us don't; we just sit around trading tips and techniques.

This Monday night, I saw these amazing clouds and liked the way they formed a semi-circle with the reflections in the water. I knew this called for a wide-angle lens. I love the way this came out. Usually, I have to tweak stuff a little bit in Lightroom and/or Photoshop. I didn't touch this one, other than resizing.

Funny thing, I like it and it's not really my style at all. I hardly ever use a wide angle unless I have to. I'm beginning to think it's time to explore what I can do with this lens.

Settings used for this image were 1/250th at F10 using 200 ISO and +1/3 exposure compensation with partial metering off the water to be sure I'd capture the reflections of the clouds at 18mm with my 18-55mm lens. The shot was made at 5:15 pm.

Fountain at the Safety Harbor Marina

Safety Harbor, Florida has some of the most amazing fountains in so many areas of the city. This one is at the entrance to the Safety Harbor Marina and it's my attempt at HDR photography.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It is used mainly for contrasty scenes to be able to produce more range. A normally exposed photo would either blow out the highlights (turn them white with no detail) or burn the shadows (turn them black with no detail). In this case, detail is shown in both the highlights and in the shadows.

HDR is created by taking 3 or more photos of the same subject using different exposures. The first photo is exposed normally, the next photo is exposed to show detail in the highlights while letting the shadows burn out and another photo is exposed for the shadows allowing the highlights to loose all detail. The result is what you see here.

This particular photo was processed using Photomatix, a software used solely to create HDR images during post processing.

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Thanks for looking,
Loyce