Tag Archives: Nature Photography

Spider

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For October, the Heart of Texas Professional Photographer’s Guild’s image competition subject was a black and white photograph of something in nature.  One morning while getting the newspaper, I saw there was a spider web on the front porch.  I thought maybe I could get a good macro image of it and convert that to black and white.  I tried a couple times during the day, but was never really happy with it. So, I decided to try at night.  When I went out to try, the spider was there. It was a pretty large orb-weaving spider and I started taking pictures of it.  I took several with my 90mm macro lens, but they weren’t what I was hoping for.  So, I used my 180mm macro lens and got some that were much better.  This was one of those.

Spider

I tried converting it to black and white, but I was never really happy with it. I entered another image instead and it didn’t do as well as I had hoped.  So, I wondered if I would have been better off with this one.

Sunflowers

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Friday, Debbie drove her mother up to Iowa.  When she got there, she texted me that there was a field of sunflowers on I35 in Itasca that were amazing.  So, Saturday morning I drove up there.  There were actually several fields on both sides of the highway.

Itasca Sunflowers

Oak Leaf

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While looking out the window, I noticed how the sun was shining on an oak leaf and thought it might make an interesting picture.

SONY DSCI used an 85mm f/1.4 lens to control depth of field so I could throw everything but the leaf out of focus.

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Rainy Day

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It rained pretty much all morning, and at times the rain got rather heavy.  I looked out the back and saw water running off the oak tree and thought there might be a possible picture in it.

SONY DSCFor this picture, I cropped the original, adjusted exposure and black levels, added contrast, sharpened it and added a vignette.  Those are pretty much standard adjustments I make for any image. This fairly accurately represents the scene.  Water can be seen dripping from the limb.

SONY DSCI took that image and converted it to black and white. This helped remove distracting areas of color, but almost seemed too sterile.

SONY DSCI went back to the original image and started by removing color saturation.  That helped remove distracting areas of color.  To give it a little more interest, I added a very light sepia tone to it.

 

 

 

Shooting in the yard

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It’s been kind of gloomy the last couple days.  I have found a couple things to shoot around the house.  This grasshopper was  on one of the hibiscus.

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This morning when I took the trash out, I saw a couple Wild Petunias next to the trash cans.

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Roatan Honduras

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The first stop on our cruise was the island of Roatan.  We took a tour to the Carambola Botanical Gardens.  It was an absolutely terrible day.  It was raining and humid.  I wanted to get some good flower pictures, but it was almost impossible.  I did get a really good shot of an orchid.

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Following that, our bus toured the west side of the island, stopping in a small village. From there, we went to a resort area.  I got this picture at the resort.  It took some manipulation to better balance the details and the contrast, but it was worth it.

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Bird of Paradise

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We went to the pool.  Behind the rock waterfall is a Bird of Paradise plant.  I have looked at it for quite a while, and thought it would be interesting to take some shots of it.  This time, the blossoms were perfect.  I used my 90mm Tamron macro.  I like that lens, but it was a little difficult under these circumstances.  The plants were between the rocks by the pool and an iron fence.  So, I had to get the picture by shooting between the bars of the fence.  But, it still came out nicely.

Bird of Paradise

Tamron 180 mm Macro Lens

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For a very long time, I have been wanting a longer focal length true macro lens.  I finally ordered a Tamron 180mm 1:1 macro.  I was somewhat concerned because a friend said he had a similar lens and rarely used it because the long focal length meant too much movement to handhold it.  I did some shots holding it by hand, and it worked fine.

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Although not super close, this one is certainly sharp for a hand held photo.  I noticed a ladybug on what was left of my dill plant and took some shots of it.  When looking at them, I could see the reason it was there – aphids.

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