My first attempt at combining macro shots

Recently I have been thinking a bit about combining shots to achieve a greater depth of field.  When I noticed that some of the shots I took today of a spider with its prey were similar but had different parts in focus, I decided to give it a try.  The following is the end result.

Continue for more on how I did this.

Congratulations Jason Turner!

A lot of attention has been paid both to the amazing accomplishments of Michael Phelps and to the wins by the USA basketball team, but there has been a lot of hard work that has gone unnoticed.  A prime example of this is one of my best friends from childhood – Jason Turner.

Ironically I believe we both started shooting around the same age – somewhere around 11 or 12 years old.  While I only shot for a few weeks each summer, reached a few rungs on the NRA Sharpshooter classification, then gave up, Jason took it far more seriously.  He would shoot during the evening multiple times each week and later on moved to Colorado so he can practice all of the time with some of the top trainers in the world.  Sadly, we did not maintain contact after high school but I still did keep track of his accomplishments – from the Pan American games to the Olympics.

This year all of the effort finally paid off with a bronze medal in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  At first I was sad for him because he came in 4th place by only a single point.  However, the North Korean shooter ahead of him was stripped of his medal due to doping and the medal was then given to Jason.

Of course, I’m sure very few Americans have heard of him, but he has put the same amount of effort into his sport as the other more well known names there.  Here’s a list of some of his other accomplishments.  So again, congratulations that all of that hard work finally paid off with an accomplishment you will be proud of for the rest of your life.

Here come the coatis!

At our resort in Mexico along the pathways to the beach it was quite common to find wild coatis.  Though wild, they are obviously habituated to humans and will often scrounge the tables after people have eaten or, more simply, beg for food from those who have it.

The full name of this mammal is “Coatimundi” and they are relatives of the raccoon.  Unlike raccoons, though, they travel in large packs – as many as 40 coatis in a pack.  The baby coatis travel with the parents – as you can see in the picture above.

Hello Dolly!

On the last day of our trip to the Riviera Maya area of Mexico, we were hit with a tropical storm called “Dolly”.  After hitting the Yucatan, this tropical storm then turned into Hurricane Dolly and hit the Texas coast.  At the time, there was a lot of conflicting information about the storm.  The hotel began by removing all of the beach and pool chairs and canceling events.  They then told us that the storm would hit overnight and would not be a problem.

In the morning I woke up early and headed to the beach to see if I could find some good photos.  Winds were noticeable but nothing that would cause alarm.

Finally back!

Hello everyone!  Yes, this is still an active blog!  Things have been extremely busy lately, but the good news is I now have the material for quite a few new blogs.  The most exciting thing that occurred since my last post was we took a vacation in the Riviera Maya area of Mexico.  For those not familiar with this area, it is south of Cancun.  Cancun itself is located on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, close to its southern border with Belize. 

We stayed at an all inclusive hotel that had a good deal of wildlife so I had a number of photo subjects.  I also took several day trips and have photos from them.  In the next few days I will begin posting blogs about the different types of wildlife I saw there.  In the meantime I will share this picture I took early in the morning at the beach by our hotel.

Crabs and butterflies – a great combo

This weekend we took quick runs through two of Seattle’s sights.  First, we decided to spend some time at Discovery Park.  This park is well known for a remote beach that contains lots of interesting marine life when the tides are down.  To get there, you need to either walk a few miles, take a shuttle, or drive there.  With small kids, walking was not an option and the shuttle wasn’t running that day.  In order to drive there you need a permit, of which there are a limited number.  The administrator was nice enough to give us a pass for an hour when we should have reserved one beforehand.  We spent the hour looking for crabs under rocks.

Tips on photographing fireworks from a fireworks professional

Since it is getting to be that time of year again, I thought I would repost a short article I did for a private forum on photographing fireworks. 

 

While I have rarely taken professional fireworks photos myself, I grew up in the fireworks industry and have worked on numerous professional fireworks shows in the past.  Both of my parents work in the fireworks industry – my mother (who has sold fine art prints of fireworks for some time) full time and my father part time.  I am also a member of the Pyrotechnics Guild International, where my father has won several international competitions. 

 

1)     Use bulb – no one shutter speed will work for all shots

2)     Use a tripod – should be obvious

3)     Place the tripod on stable ground – bleachers do not work

4)     Photograph away from any lights – particularly street lights.  Often they turn them out just before the show but sometimes they do not.

5)     If you are photographing from a popular place, get there early because you don’t want people in front of you and the best spots will be taken quickly.

6)     Don’t try to get too much in one shot.  You want to be able to recognize the shells – this is especially relevant during the finale.

7)  You can get more fireworks in a shot by putting a piece of black paper in between shots while using bulb mode.  In my opinion the effect looks a bit fake and you can tell it was done by the smoke patterns, but a number of people do prefer the photos.

 

Finally calibrated my monitor!

For a long time, I felt that buying a monitor calibrator was something that I should do, but it wasn’t crucial.  When I made my recent decision to focus more on print photography than on stock, I decided that it was now necessary to get a monitor calibrator.  I decided to go with the Spyder 3 Elite  I felt that right now the ColorVision S3P100 Spyder3 pro would do what I needed, but I wanted to leave room for growth open in the future. I’ll have a more in depth review of the Spyder 3 Elite in the future, though I must say that it took some work to get it running.

When I first installed it I received an error – spyder3.cpp 297 65550 (0×10004).  I am currently running Windows Vista 64 bit and I figured they probably didn’t test against that.  However their web site states that it is compatible, so I downloaded the 3.0.4 version of the software (3.0.1 is in the box) and I still had some problems.  Then I realized that the older version was still running, so I made sure that I was running the new version and the error went away.  I then had problems getting the suction cup to stay but like the software says if you wet the suction cup slightly it sticks much better.  Finally, the software had a hard time recognizing the device.  To fix this, I just unplugged the USB cable and plugged it back in and then it recognized it.

After all that, the monitor calibrator did make a difference with my monitor.  The before and after shots definitely showed and improvement.  More important, I opened a shot that I created before I calibrated my monitor and I fixed it.

Playing with flowers

OK, I promise that I’ll get back to some good old fashioned bugs soon, but I thought I would post some more flowers.  Last weekend at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens I played around with daisies.  I took all of these shots with my 180L but without a tripod.  Instead I used my MT-24EX mounted on a Wimberley macro flash bracket.  I would like to say that a great deal of creative thought went into this decision – but the truth is I was too lazy to get the tripod out and spend a lot of time getting the position right.

Harvestman portrait

Today while looking through some of my recent pictures I came across this portrait I took of a harvestman.

I spent not too much time improving this shot from the original.  Mainly, I just strengthened the shadows, increased the contrast, removed some dust spots and used the burn tool around the right eye.  I took a number of shots of this harvestman but I think I like this one the best.  I like how the harvestman is positioned diagonally in the shot on the balance of light and shadows.  I also like how its two front legs go towards the viewer – almost like it is grabbing you.

What do you think?  How would you improve this shot?