Flower – Redmond

23. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

So once again I took my camera out at lunch and went for a walk.  I had no idea what I was looking for but I needed a picture for tonight’s posting.  I didn’t take the car so this really was a photo-walk and I should point out I work on Microsoft’s west campus, so it’s pretty much all office buildings and gardens.

We have a few (really) nice cafeteria’s (they’re full on restaurants really I guess) and I thought maybe I could photograph some food.  But in truth I didn’t really want to walk into a restaurant and pull out my camera and have a hundred people stare at me.

Outside the restaurants were groups of people sitting around at tables having lunch and again I thought of a street photography type of shot, imagine the outside of a small bistro in a city.  But again I didn’t think that would go down well – some of those Microsofties can be a little difficult.

So it was back to the gardens.  There were a few flower beds, and a large number of grasses.  I tried photographing the grasses from inside the bushes but it looked terrible (well you gotta try).  Then I found these yellow flowers.  I thought they looked daisy-ish (again like yesterday’s purple flowers), but I looked up daisy’s on the internet and these aren’t daisy’s.

I took loads of pictures of these flowers, from all angles.  Because the petals were so yellow I found that pictures from above just came across as a sea of yellow.  I tried shooting the flowers from below so I had yellow petals against a blue sky, but the underside of the flowers just didn’t look that good so that didn’t work either.  In the end I found the composition below, one flower standing tall above the others against a green backdrop.

I really liked the shallow depth of field I got in this picture, the way some of the petals on the primary subject are out of focus and the center of the flower is sharp worked really well.  Hope you like it too.

Today the Halo dudes decided to volunteer at the local elementary school, I’m not sure what they plan to do but they seemed very excited.

Bee on Flower – Redmond

22. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

I don’t know about you but I’m not really a fan of insect pictures.  Why is that I hear you ask?  Well firstly they are really hard to get, those little dudes don’t stand still and getting them in focus is a total bitch.  You stand there like an idiot, the “bug” moves to the right point and you focus, and he’s gone!  And there is nothing worse than an out of focus insect – horrible.

Then there is the subject matter, have you seen insects blown up big in a picture?  They are major disgusting, all hair and eyes <insert you own great joke here about hot girls walking into a Hell’s Angels bar…>.  Bottom line is there is nothing worse than an in focus insect – horrible.

So what the heck did I post my bee picture below for?

Well here’s the thing.  I don’t have any pictures in my back log that I like.  Work right now is very very busy – I can’t tell you why as it’s all top secret and I’d have to kill you etc., so when I do get some time off I’m too exhausted to actually go out with the camera.

So I had this idea.  If I walk around with my camera everywhere I go, I’m bound to see something interesting that I can shoot.  Guess what?  I don’t see anything!  Either all the fun stuff is happening around the corner or I live in the most boring city in North America (quite possible by the way).

Anyway (I’m starting to ramble), I walked over to one of our big cafeteria’s this afternoon to get some lunch and walked past these – I’m gonna call them flowers as there was no sign telling me what they are (they look daisy’ish to me), and I thought, ooooh purple flowers.  I grabbed the camera and started shooting.

Then along comes this bee and I go, ooooh bee, and start shooting that.  When I get back to my desk I looked at the images and I thought this one looked quite nice (for a dirty great big insect anyway).  The quite nice bit is the purple flower, the ooooh that’s the interesting bit is supposed to be the bee.

Trust me when I say this is a better picture than the 120 I have in my back log hence it gets posted tonight.  Hope you don’t get creeped out by the scary insect.

Master Chief’s sweet tooth got him in trouble today, and Cater wouldn’t help him out!

Blackberry – Bainbridge Island

02. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: ,

Today is my birthday and despite requests for a birthday cake picture, I decided to post this shot of some blackberries.  I took this picture on Bainbridge Island by the water in Fort Ward State Park.  There were blackberry bushes all along the waterfront and the berries were just starting to come through (as you can see).

I have a really nice lens that I take out with me that I used here (for the technical amongst you it’s a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR II) and it can capture images with really nice bokeh.  Bokeh is the creamy out of focus background you see in the image below and usually appears as circular highlights.  What the lens really does is take a picture with a very narrow or shallow depth of field, this means only a small part of the subject I’m shooting is in focus and everything in front and behind is out of focus.  It’s nice for taking pictures that concentrate on the subject without having distracting backgrounds – very big in portrait photography.  As I take a lot of landscape pictures I don’t do this very often as for landscape you want everything in focus.  Here it’s really great at capturing the blackberries.

When I got home and looked at the images my first reaction was, Oh no, there are cob webs all over the bush, but after a while I decided I actually liked that about the image, it gave it for me a rustic, wild look.

Anyway I hope you like my image.

So anyway, back to the birthday, what did I get?  Well Lisa got me a fantastic color printer that prints out professional 17″ x 22″ photographs (again in case your interested it was an Epson Stylus Pro 3880).  Over the coming weeks I’m planning on printing out and displaying some of my images around the house (and maybe at work too).  I’m quite excited about this as creating really good prints is something I know little about.

The kids got me some great books on photographing locations around Washington State and Oregon.  The books are brilliant and have some wonderful locations just a drive away.  I actually wish I had these at the beginning of the year, but they will help me capture some really cool images for the rest of this year’s picture a day resolution.

I should point out that Lisa also made me a fantastic birthday card.  She’s really into the craft thing and makes cards for everyone but mine was something she has never created before, a DSLR Camera.  I think it’s brilliant and will be pinning it on my wall at work. (You can see the card below in the Halo picture).

Here we have Carter and Master Chief posing by my cool birthday card (of a camera) – made by Lisa, and a birthday balloon.

Bromeliad – Maui

27. July 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , , ,

I was walking around the some of the fresh water ponds in Maui trying to get some pictures of water lilies.  I wanted a picture of the lily as in Maui they are just so perfect.  They flower and sit on the lily pad in the water and just look beautiful.  However all the lilies I could find had floated to the waters edge and didn’t look as nice – you can probably imagine the shot I wanted, that perfect flowered stem on a number of lily pads floating in the middle of a pond.  I did take some pictures but didn’t get the shot I was looking for.

To be honest I was just shooting other plants out of frustration, I mean I came out with the camera I didn’t want to go back with nothing.  But I didn’t think I would post anything.

When I got home I was going through my pictures and came across tonight’s image.  I had to look this plant up, it’s called a Bromeliad, or at least is from that family, as is the pineapple.

What caught my eye was the fact that this plant caught and held water and had small blooms in it’s center.  I looked up on the internet about these plants and it’s all incredibly boring so I won’t bore you here, but I think they look really interesting.  They do say that you shouldn’t shoot plants and flowers and add them to your portfolio as plants are expected to look beautiful, so if you do shoot one, it needs to be especially stunning or very different.  For me this plant falls into that second category.

I took a few pictures of the plant, some with the plant entirely in the shot and others like this one where I just catch part of the plant.  I really liked this composition, your eyes are drawn to the bottom right corner and I think it makes the plant interesting as you spend a couple of seconds looking at it asking yourself “what the heck is that”?

So definitely not a typical picture, but one I really liked.  Hope you like it too.

Here we can see Master Chief and Carter clearly not following the “rules” as laid down by the hotel pool!

Gecko – Maui

26. July 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Image a Day · Tags: , ,

You can’t come to Maui to shoot a picture every day and not post a picture of a gecko.  I mean, they’re everywhere aren’t they?  What I learned was that they are everywhere when you don’t have a camera in your hand.  But if you go out and want to shoot one, well you had better bring some patience.

I posted a picture yesterday of the gardens in the Wailea Grand Resort and Hotel and would go there every day looking for one of these guys to shoot.  The first time I found one I got all excited and pushed my lens too close and the little guy bolted!  I couldn’t believe it, it took me three days to find a gecko on a leaf for a picture and the bloody thing ran off.  So I waited, and waited and, well you get the idea, I waited a long time – unfortunately without any luck.

Next time I was in the gardens I got my opportunity again, only this time I went slower.  I started taking shots from some distance away and slowly moved in.  I guess once I got a few pictures under my belt I got a little more adventurous and got closer still.  Eventually the gecko moved but he went up the leaf and I got this shot today.

When I got back to my room, I found that photographing a gecko and photographing an “in focus” gecko were two entirely different things.  Most of my images had a nice blurry gecko but the one below came out really well.

I actually had a different picture in my mind that I wanted.  Shooting these leaves into the sun captured really beautiful colors and having a gecko on the other side of the leaf poking his head around would produce a great leaf with a gecko’s face appearing around the leaf and the silhouette of the gecko’s body through the leaf.  I even got one of these and if it had been in focus I would have posted it tonight.  That said, I’m pleased with this one.

Carter enjoyed a go on the water slide, here he is hitting the water at the bottom.

« Older articles
Newer articles »