When will I be able to look at a flower and not want to take a picture?

We bought that Memorial Day standby: Mums, and delivered some last weekend. Monday I had a few spare moments and decided it was time to see what my Screwmount 200mm Vivitar f3.5 could do with a 2x teleconverter at closest focus. This is what I got, not half bad for a free lens set up dontcha think?

Now to something a little closer to a Macro lens, my Sigma 17-70, this shot is stopped down quite a bit for DOF, I like it quite a bit.

This is nearly wide open, also a fun effect.

I know that these are not necessarially the best flower shots ever taken, but I enjoyed taking them.

Two from this morning

3 shot HDR taken while waiting for the next shot to develop. Sigma 17-70 and Pentax K200D


Got up early and decided to try for a shot I have been wanting to get for awhile. Before someone builds a house in my way... Taken as the first rays of sunshine hit the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. Tours are going on now through August, (The reason for the tents you see around it) when it will be dedicated. I am super thrilled to have a temple this close to my home. For those of you not of my faith, temples are the most important buildings we have.

This is a 5 shot HDR, not because I needed to, but I liked the way it enhanced the colors from the sunrise. I wish that there had been less haze but not much I can do about that at this stage of the game. Shot with my Vivitar 200mm f3.5 screwmount lens @ f8 and various exposures. I hope to catch this on both a clearer day and as a sunset in the winter, I should be able to get a good sunset from this angle if I keep my eyes open and get lucky.

Unsuccessful Underlit Lightbox Shots

Decided to try some underlighting after seeing an on-line acquaintance play with it. Don't think my rube goldberg set up was really up to the task but it was fun to play with it. I basically used a piece of 8x12 glass laid between two Xerox Boxes. With various amounts of paper and tissue in strategic places to adjust how much light came through. I think I really need to do it in a soft box type setting with some side lighting too. Hmmm...

Here is my set up from the shooting side. There is a optical slave trigger on the flash triggered by the flash on my camera reflected away from the subject by tinfoil.

And from the back side.

A non manipulated shot, no post processing done at all, note the crooked camera!

Non HDR with a hand held flash off to the side triggering the underflash.

HDR processed shot similar to above and straightened and the glass edge cloned out.

This is a Caithness Glass Paperweight, I decided to shoot at the same time.

And the HDR version, I don't think HDR works as well for this as I would have liked.