Category: Nature

Day 4 – Morning Glory

MorningGlory

Today’s image was captured at North Mountain Park in Ashland using the Lensbaby Sol45 on the M3. I had to use an adaptor as the lens is designed to mount on EOS cameras such as my 7D.  The Sol 45 has much in common with the Sweet 50. It has a sweet spot of focus that fades off into blur.  Where it differs is in that it is a fixed aperture lens at f3.5. It does not have the optic swap out system of the Composer Pro which the Sweet 50 uses but it does have the ability to swivel so that the point of focus can be changed. The other thing it has is some little plastic blades that can be moved in front of the lens to create a texture in the background. In this case it feels almost like the flower is growing out of a stained glass window.

In post processing I added some clarity, vibrance, and saturation and took it into Nik CEP for some sharpening and a border.

Day 2 – Sunflower

Sunflower

Today I chose the Velvet85 for my camera walk and headed out to the Talent Pollinator garden, which is small but usually has something in bloom. I wasn’t too thrilled with my results and decided to walk around the block to where I had seen sunflowers in someone’s front yard. Right next to the Pollinator garden is a vacant lot and imagine my surprise and delight to find it filled with wild sunflowers.

The Velvet 85 and it’s sister lens, the Velvet 56 are designed to have a slightly soft velvety look with a hint of glow around the edges. With a minimum focusing distance of 9.5″ the short telephoto Velvet 85 can hold it’s own in macro situations and is well loved by portrait and wedding photographers. At 1.2lbs the Velvet 85 is a challenge to hand hold. Did I mention that all the Lensbaby lenses are manual focus? But with a maximum aperture of 1.8 you can get some pretty fast shutter speeds even at 100 ISO. I had the lens mounted on my EOS R which is the only full frame camera I own so maybe not the best choice for flowers as the crop sensors on my other cameras would maximize the telephoto effect for macro shooting.

In post processing I started by opening the shadows and added clarity, vibrance and saturation in Lightroom. Then I took it in to photoshop and did some color balance adjustment as being in shadow was making it appear too blue to me. Next I added a preset from 2 Lil Owls which helped to bring it out of the shadows a little more. Finally I added a texture which gives it a little bit of an old timey look.

 

100 Days of Lensbaby

WhiteonLavender2

Yes, I should probably have my head examined. Maybe I’m just a masochist. But I had a brilliant idea for a new 100 days project and I couldn’t come up with any good excuses not to run with it. So, starting today and (if I did the math right) continuing through November 9, I will post one new image a day to this blog. The image must be captured with a Lensbaby lens, it does not have to be captured on that day but must be captured within the 100 day period.

Lensbaby, for the uninitiated, is a company based in our own Portland, Oregon which manufactures special effects lenses for photography. In a world that loves sharp focus, Lensbaby goes for maximum blur, distorted backgrounds and soft velvety looks. I currently own 5 Lensbaby lenses, I’ll tell you all about them as I get into the project. I’ve already picked out a sixth lens for my birthday present but that is over a month away. I have a feeling a couple more may come home to roost during the course of the project. Thanks Mom.

If you can’t wait to learn more about Lensbaby , here is a link to a blog post by a photographer I follow which may give more insight into the options available and includes photos showing the results she has gotten.

https://lensbaby.com/lensbaby-magic-flower-photography-jamie-davidson/

Today’s image was captured using the Trio 28 mounted on my new Canon M100 which I bought as a light weight walking around camera. The Trio 28 is unique in a couple of respects. First it is designed to be used with Mirrorless cameras so does not require an adaptor thus playing into my lightweight strategy. The Trio is so named because it offers three distinct Lensbaby effects. With a simple rotation of the front of the lens you can select Twist, which offers a swirly background; Velvet which offers a smooth glowing effect; or Sweet, which offers an area of sweet sharp focus that then fades off in blur. For this image I had the camera set on Velvet (I’m pretty sure). One of my issues with the Trio is it is not always obvious to me where I had the lens set. I’m trying to be more consistent about the order in which I shoot but in the case of this butterfly, it was such a game of chase I wasn’t paying too much attention. The other issue I have with the Trio is it is wide angle at 28mm which is not my favorite mode to work in. The Trio also has a fixed aperture at 3.5 so shallow depth of field is a given.

In any case, when I got this image into the computer, I decided to give it a vertical crop. I tried taking it into Topaz Studio2 for a more painterly look but didn’t see anything I liked. Then I remembered it was new texture day at the 2 Lil Owls texture club so I downloaded this month’s textures and tried one of the new ones which gave me the look I finally settled on.

I’ll try not to be so verbose in future posts but I wanted to be sure and give you some background on the project and I want to introduce each lens as I use it for the first time.

Yellow Bumblebee

BumblebeeTx

I’m running late again with the image of the week. I’ve been thinking, as we enter July that we should have mid-year resolutions. One of mine is to get my image of the week out by Sunday. We’ll see how long that lasts.

I have to say I’d never seen an all yellow bumble bee until the last year or two. I’m not sure if that means they are new to our area or I am just seeing them now that I have been chasing pollinators around with my camera.

This one was shot at North Mountain Park hand held with the M3 and an 18-150 mm lens. I got a lot of out of focus bees but this one came out just right. At the last minute I thought why not add a texture. As usual I thought it looked a little better with than without.

Coastal Color

Splash3

I spent some time in Yachats this week trying to capture the quintessential waves crashing on rocks picture. I have others that do a better job of capturing the shear energy of the the crashing waves. But this one, shot close to sunset with a high powered neutral density filter to force a slow shutter speed, was one of my favorites for the colors and the water flowing over the rock at the end of the splash while some splashing is misting out in the background. This one I would hang on my wall, the high energy one, while a good enough picture, I would not.

Hydrangea

Hydrangea2

My Hydrangea is blooming in full glory again. This year it is more blue than purple, probably because I forgot to feed it this spring. Either way it takes my breath away. This was taken with the Lensbaby Velvet 85 lens on the new Mirroless Canon EOS R. I cropped it to a vertical and added a texture, some sharpening and a slight vignette. Oh, yes, and happy Nature Photography Day!

Harris Beach Sunset

HarrisBeachSunset

Between the weather, my schedule, and an arthritic hip I was afraid my Oregon Coast Project was going to fall apart in May. But, the stars aligned for a quick overnight trip to Brookings on the 30th and 31st and I was rewarded with a gorgeous sunset at Harris Beach.

I was experimenting with long exposures using a strong neutral density filter and got some great results.

Juney Whank Falls

JuneyWhankFalls

Having come back from the Great Smokey Mountains with nearly 1500 new images in my files it was pretty hard to choose and image of the week this week. This one may not be the best but it was hard won as I had to hike a ways up a steep hill to get to the falls. It was worth the trip, as you can see, and I even had them to myself for all of five minutes. Not bad for a national park.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms

The Oregon Coast project is still alive thanks to a brief window of halfway decent weather this weekend. As I am currently teaching a class in Macro photography I felt compelled to put my pixels where my mouth is. Though I had a very successful day shooting tulips at Shore Acres, it was these mushrooms from a patch of forest near the Oregon Dunes that stole the day. I shot it handheld but it took six tries to get one that was properly framed and focused. Well worth all the contortions I had to go through to get down to their level.