The First Flowers of the Year!!!

I have been watching these guys for a few weeks, just waiting for them to open up. Finally when we went over to my parents on Sunday they were blooming... well one of them was! I set up my new tripod (more about that in a sec) and tried for a few shots. Not wanting the kids to be running amok without me for too long I didn't linger but was impressed at the versatility of my tripod.

These first two have had my standard post processing done.

This one I believe is an untouched original... I think....

Here is my tripod, it is really really cool, the center column can tip over and get really really close to the ground. I could have gone lower and shot up into this flower if it had been taller and the light was co-operating. For those that care it is an Induro AX 213 6M Alloy tripod with a Vanguard SBH-300 Ball head.

Two slightly different takes on B&W

OK, an hour and a half later here is what I was able to do in Black and White... which I rather like! Though the first a little more than the second.

4 Shots of the Utah State Capitol

Alrighty, time for a story.

I had the opportunity to attend a course last Friday and Saturday at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. As I often do, I went early to take some photos, because... well... I am a photographer as well as a Physical Therapist! So Friday I went to the inside of the Capitol Building as I have once before. Except this time I had my handy dandy new Tripod which with a L-Bracket allows me to shoot Panoramas with the nodal point of my lens approximately in the same place as the center of rotation of the tripod. More about that in some other post... So, there I was all by myself at 7:00am in the Capitol rotunda getting prepared to shoot. Once I started shooting I found that the lighting was very tough and I was going to have to shoot 3 bracketed shots and process them as HDR then stitch them. So I spent the next 30 minutes shooting at 25 degree slices until I had covered the whole 360 degree angle of view. Finally on Sunday I got the opportunity to process the HDR's and loaded all 15 shots into The panorama creator in Photoshop Elements 7 and off I went... with one small problem... it locked up my poor creaky old computer. Crashed and burned!!! So you don't get to see those yet, hopefully my brothers rocking machine can handle that load.

On Saturday it was not snowing and I was able to shoot outside. I had no idea that there was a reflecting pool behind the State Capitol, seriously, no idea. Well I discovered it at my usual early hour on a cloudy Saturday and this series is about that.

My main disappointment with this shot was the massive flare from the lights. Not unexpected due to using a 10mm lens with that large and bright of light sources, but disappointing nonetheless. I may use my 17-70 in a vertical position the next time and stitch a few shots together, it has a much better flare characteristic.

This the first of two quick and dirty treatments of these shots, you see a slight haloing of the building, that is due to my quick layer cutting rather than the processing. If I thought that this had promise as a saleable shot I would definitely go back and do a much tighter mask.

Despite being a little wild and crazy (OK a LOT wild and crazy!) I like this version much better. There is just a certain drama to it. I wonder if the Capitol Police would get after me if I waded into the fountain to get closer? Hmmmm......

This lovely piece is a 180 degree panorama shot with my Sigma 10-20, it is 5 HDR shots stitched together (15 exposures total) This I am tempted to try to sell, though I may repeat the shot with a better sky and try that. I dunno....

One more just for grins!

A Break in the Storm

Snowed this morning, I kinda hate that this time of year... fortunately there was a bit of beauty. I had this brought to my attention thanks to my wife. Hope you enjoy the "Break in the Storm" of your life to look at these.

These are three of my favorite things........

Sunrises (Even if I got the exposure a little light and lost some of the detail)

AND Roses with chocolate, have to say that shooting something that light and dark together was really tough!

Saturday Morning BEFORE the snow!

Got woken up early by the kiddos so I decided to try and catch some of the early morning light, up where I had seen some buds coming up the other day. Sadly the sun went behind clouds before I got up there, but I did have a little fun.

These first 3 shots were taken with my Lens Reversing Ring and an old Canon FD 50mm f1.8, yikes a canon lens on a Pentax Camera..... The 4th was taken with my Pentax SMC K-28mm f3.5 reversed.

I'm still figuring out the extreme shallow depth of field thing. I think it will take awhile, though I bet it will help to have no wind!

The rest of this series was with my new Pentax SMC DA 55-300 f4-5.8. I pushed the ISO to 400 and cropped a couple for composition only. I must say that this lens is impressing me more and more every day! Considering it was fairly early in the day and overcast it was able to gather enough light to be quite reasonably sharp.

This guy did need a little shadow compensation.

I Just Love Sunrises

I just LOVE Sunrises of course some are more exotic than others, this morning was less than exotic but still beautiful in it's own way.

As those of you who have been following my blog know I recently bought a telephoto lens, which is not my usual type of lens for landscapes. That said, I have been using it for landscape work and it has been performing well for me.

On my way to work today I stopped to take a few shots of the impending sunrise and a shot of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple from a familiar vantage point but during the day not at night.

This peak is the aptly named "Storm Mountain", at least that is what I always have heard it called since I was a kid.

I loved the contrast of the flag against the snowy mountain, I had to flip it horizontally though to get the flag in the correct orientation. Still thinking of a square crop and then add the vignette but not sure if it would be hokey or not.

Dawn's first light.

A Few From Monday Night

Ran away at sunset to try to get some nice photos, the sunset didn't co-operate but the light was sure interesting. Here are the ones I liked.

Similar to one I took last June with my Pentax K-135 f2.5, would have to do a lot of clean up to get this looking that good. The 55-300 is not quite as sharp but does a good job!

Racked out to 300mm, I lowered the tripod to make it more stable, which helped tremendously. Though I think there is a little more sharpness to be wrung out of the lens with my newer tripod I am expecting.

Sunset over the lake. Really liked this shot!

I think I will need to try this later in the summer when the sun sets behind the bridge. May not get that smooth of water but I will definitely try!

I tried this with varying amounts of fill flash to bring me out, but I found that it just looked kinda fakey. This more accurately captures what I saw as I sat and watched the light fade. this is one of my favorite times of the day.

Lens Reversing Ring=FUN!

I am just getting to know this fun new accessory, it is a Bower 52mm Lens Reversing Ring from www.adorama.com for Pentax mount. I have mounted my Pentax K 50mm f1.4 and K 28mm f3.5 lenses.

The first shot is from the 28mm wide open I believe it is about a 2:1 reproduction ratio meaning that the image on my sensor is 2x the size of the object in real life.

This is from my 50mm stopped down a little, it has an impossibly thin depth of field wide open. It is close to 1:1.

This is a shot with my Sigma 17-70 at about 1:3 it works great as a macro lens but the working distance is almost touching the front element at really close focus which makes lighting hard. It will go to 1:2.3.

These were taken in a south facing window on a hazy saturday afternoon. I could get a deeper depth of field but it would take stopping down more and that entailed shutter speeds too slow for handholding. I will probably end up needing a Macro Rail should I get more into this.

This is closest focus with the K 28mm @ f5.6 ish (Can't remember) the slightest shake makes for motion blur. Definitely a case for using a tripod.

Back to the 50mm @ f8