Explore with macro photography. It’s another world!
06 Mar 2012 4 Comments
in photography, photography technique Tags: camera, flowers, imagery, photo, photograph, photography, photography technique, Photoshop, pictures
I’ve had time to experiment today. Macro photography is another world to explore, and I like exploring. Here are some photos from todays batch. The fine tuning in macro is time consuming and eye-tiring, I have to say.What looks absolutely perfect when focusing doesn’t always come out as clear as I’d like. So many shots are taken to get just one or two. As I’m often asked, I’m using a Nikon D90 with a Tamron 70-300mm macro lens and extension tubes.
I don’t always focus on wildlife and flowers. There are objects around the home that make interesting experimental pictures, too. Here’s a candle pot I gave the macro treatment.
Candle Pot. Height 3"
Candle Pot Macro attempt 1
candle pot macro attempt 2
Pretty, interesting and pretty interesting, don’t you think?
Then there’s the glass ball that is part of another ornament. It’s about 2″ in circumference and has a pattern on it that intrigued me, so here we are. I’ve played with the temperature and tint settings in Adobe Photoshop RAW to get the colours.
Glass Ball macro 1
Glass Ball Macro 2
But I couldn’t resist totally the lovely colours and light on some flowers and plants today, so here they are.
Muscari macro
Leaf Macro
African Violet Macro
See, told you! It’s another world.
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Have You Had Your Daily Dose Of Beauty?
28 Apr 2011 9 Comments
in conservation, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, thoughts, Uncategorized Tags: beauty, floral, flowers, imagery, images, inspiration, nature, passions, people, photograph, photography, picture, pictures, random, reflections
beauty abounds
It’s about time. There is so much horrible stuff going on in the world I thought a timely reminder that there is free beauty out there we can all share just might be welcome. It’s easy to get caught up in all the war and nastiness, the economic doom and gloom and walk around with clouds around our heads. But if we blow the cobwebs away, perhaps with a short walk or drive into the countryside, perhaps just a stroll round the garden and open our eyes, beauty is all around us. My garden has been adopted by a baby blackbird who obviously left the nest a few days early. He sits listening to me when I go out to throw him some mealworms and apple to feed him up, then dives straight onto the food. He is gorgeous! I can’t show you, because the danger of me taking the camera out there is that he’ll panic and end up food for a local cat.
Calendula beauty. Pure sunshine in a flower
But flowers don’t get frightened! So today’s pictures are here as testimonial to the wonderful world we live in, even if us humans do make a mess of it, the beauty still abounds, and we should hang onto it with all our might. Some of these shots were taken before I bought my trusty Nikon, but nonetheless remind me of lovely times of gorgeousness that helped me switch my brain into a more positive mode. I hope they do the same for you.
Mint. Beautiful flavour, beautiful flowers
Spring has brought me inspiration. I’ve been taking photos, seeing friends (it was a long, lonely winter) and working on new projects. I discovered a couple of weeks ago a site called Squidoo. What fun! And it’s somewhere I can showcase my work with photography and with Zazzle. Having started with WordPress last year as a reluctant technophobe, I appear to be well and truly hooked on computer wizardry. I’ve been so wrapped up in all of this I hadn’t realised I’d been neglecting my blog. oops! Finding the time to do everything is getting more difficult, but I can’t complain. At least all of this keeps me busy and making lots of new cyberfriends. In case you’re interested, Squidoo is a great site for doing very tightly focussed ‘lenses’ that deal with one subject and really go into detail about it, usually with accompanying links to relevant sites and helpful hints and tips, plus where to buy relevant stuff. It’s quite easy to get lost in it for hours – much like on WordPress. I’ve so far made eight of these lenses, some of which are photography and flower ones. It gives me the opportunity to write about subjects that wouldn’t really fit under a general photography blog like this one, so I feel the two compliment each other. You might want to take a peek at my Grow Hellebores in Your Garden lens or Spirals or even wild flower garden one.
Happy Spring!
Photographer Spreading the Word. Work is For Sale
16 Apr 2011 1 Comment
in agencies, art, business, image, imagery, musings, photo, photography Tags: flowers, hellebores, images, photo, photographs for sale, photography, photography business, photos, pictures, random, work
It’s been a busy old week. Having spent three glorious sunny days last weekend catching up with the gardening, when the weather turned cool I came indoors and began working on actually being found on the wonderful web. As we no longer have effective agencies to sell our work, us creatives have had to find creative solutions to the question ‘how do I get seen?’ Of course a WordPress blog and a website is a start, but experience has shown me it’s not enough to get you off the ‘starving artist’ income I’d like to avoid.
So I investigated Squidoo. The first day was a nightmare. This none techy person was alsmot driven to the point of baldness and rescued by advice from Zazzle people and my partner. The second day I mastered some of the technique need to build a Squidoo lens. Now I’ve got something to tell you about! I’ve made three lenses so far. (go on, cheer!).
Lenses are very specific. Apparently, the more focussed they are, the more successful they are. So I have one on Digital flower art, one on Photographic Flower Art and one all about hellebores, which I featured in a recent WordPress post. They are quite good fun to do, once you learn the system.
I’ve not stopped taking photos, needless to say! So todays offering is an arum lily. My partner brought them for me (yes, he’s a sweetie, though that might ruin his street cred). It’s not an easy flower to photograph, I’ve found. But I’m fairly satisfied with the result. What do you think?
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My Photos on Products
03 Apr 2011 2 Comments
in business, image, imagery, photo, photography Tags: business, camera, imagery, images, photo, photographs, photography equipment, photos, picture, pictures, prints, random, zazzle
Just a quick post today to show off the products from Zazzle we ordered as gifts. I’m really pleased with them and can now vouch for the quality Zazzle produce. The mousemat is thick durable, and comfortable under the wrist. The mugs are great! I’m glad I decided to use some of my photos this way, as well as offering others as prints on my freshly updated website.
Here are photos of them, modelled by my partner Jon.
Shell Mug
Houseleek mugs
Pride Mousemat
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Magic Macro Moments-What’s in a Raindrop?
01 Apr 2011 6 Comments
in art, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, photography technique, Uncategorized Tags: image, inspiration, light, macro, nature, Nikon D90, photo, photography, photography technique, picture, pictures, prints, random
I’ve been playing again. I’m finding macro both fascintating and frustrating. Here’s what happens. I spot gorgeous raindrops on a plant. Then I rush outside, camera in hand. Set up the tripod, switch off image stabilisation, focus with all my concentration, camera on delay shutter release. The raindrop is in perfect focus. Then…whooosh. One tiny bit of breeze makes the leaf shudder and my shot useless. Try again! And again, and again. Then there’s the light, changing by the second, changing the reflections, the brightness of the shot, the sparkle appearing and disappearing. I think you need almost as much patience to take macro shots as you do to shoot wildlife. But the results are both as rewarding and fascinating as wildlife. A whole world in a raindrop! I’ve had a lot of people asking me about macro, and how to go about it. Here’s what I do.
The biggest problem, you’ll quickly realise with macro, is that you have a long lens, possibly with extension tubes, as I do. The minutest movement will be magnified, cause camera shake and blur the shot.
Use a good tripod making your camera as still and stable as possible.
If you have delayed shutter release on your camera, use it. It locks the mirror up before the shutter is released, thereby reducing any camera shake from the mirror movement.
If not, use a remote or wired cable to press the shutter, as this will also reduce any camera shake.
Spend time getting the focus as you want it. Increasing depth of field will enable more in the shot to be in focus, but increase shutter speed. Only you can decide how much time you can allow the shutter, given your lighting and weather conditions. If it is the slightest bit breezy you’ll need the highest shutter speed you can obtain, therefore the smallest depth of field. Be creative and position your main focus of interest well in the frame, allowing the blur of out of focus items to frame the shot. I sometimes underexposed slightly to allow a faster shutter speed. I can correct this under exposure in Photoshop, as I shoot in RAW.
After shot processing usually means a simple exposure adjustment, a little colour and contrast boosting and cropping to improve the framing if necessary.
Macro can be taken to different levels. In the first two shots I’ve used all my extension tubes on my Nikon D90 with a 70-300mm Tamron lens, but didn’t switch it to macro, just zoomed in as much as I could.
Macro water 1
Macro water 2
The next few are full-on maximum, with my current equipment, macro. All extension tubes, lens on full zoom and maximum macro, focussed as carefully as humanly possible. It’s another world in those raindrops! Oh, of course you can cheat. No rain? Get the watering can out and give that plant a sprinkle. This works really well on alchemilla mollis (ladies mantle), which naturally hold rainrops like jewels, due to the tiny hairs on its surface.
Marco water3
Macro water 4
Macro water 5
Macro water 6
Macro water 7
This last shot is full on macro, but I put the tripod a little further away as I liked the jewel like quality of the smaller water droplets.
Have fun with macro and investigate another world!
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My Parent’s Garden. Photos at last
06 Mar 2011 2 Comments
in imagery, nature, photo, photography, thoughts Tags: camera, floral, flowers, gardening, gardens, nature, Nikon D90, photography equipment, photos, pictures, plants, random, random thoughts
Well, my sister has done me proud. I asked her to capture some shots of my parent’s garden having spent three days in the rain working on it for them, only to finish as it was going dark. Today was lovely up in northern England, as it was here, so she popped down and has emailed me some shots I’m sure she won’t mind sharing with you. She is a singer and singing teacher, but has talent with photography too! Thanks, Pam.
Parent's garden in February. Photo by Pamela James
Parents Garden in Feb. Photo by Pamela James
In addition, I’d like to thank everyone for being so supportive with all your lovely comments and congratulations this week. It was exciting to be on Freshly Pressed, as well as an honour, and I hope the people I’ve been visited by continue to visit and communicate with me. Your views and perspectives are always welcome.
Macro Extension Tubes. A New World
25 Feb 2011 60 Comments
in image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, photography technique, thoughts, travel, Uncategorized, wildlife Tags: close-up, floral, flowers, gardening, image, lenses, macro, nature, Nikon D90, photo, photography, pictures, rqandom, travel
I’ve been very busy for the past week. My elderly parents who live 130 miles away needed their garden sorting out. So I spent two days travelling there and back, slept in my camper for four nights and worked with my son on their garden, in the rain. I believe it looks great now, but I didn’t get to see the finished results as it was dark when we were finishing up. The sun only came out the day I was driving home. So I haven’t one single photo and I was so caught up with family there was no time to blog. We (my son Richard and I) fell into bed after midnight every night absolutely shattered! I’ve asked my sister to send me some pictures. I returned home to flowers from Valentines day that were still looking good and some fresh flowers from my partner to welcome me home. So today I had a less strenuous time doing some macro shots with my new extension tubes, and as I’ve had some practice with them this set seem to have come out pretty well. Alstromerias are stunning. I didn’t realise how stunning until I saw these shots, though!
Alstromeria macro1
alstro_macro2
alstromeria macro3
alstromeria macro4
It’s worth clicking into these shots and seeing them full size. Proof that extension tubes really can do the business.
snowdrop_macro1
Snowdrops were a little more tricky. As my lens is a zoom macro, I need a distance of about 2ft. To see up into the flower I would need to be led on my back on the floor or have the flower dangling from the ceiling. So I severed its head and used blu-tack to fix it to a background canvas just to get a close-up peek of the inside. Amazing detail!
snowdrop_macro2
I will get photos of my parents garden, but it will be May. So the early flowers will have gone and the later spring stars will be on the stage. I’ll post them when I get them. For now, happy early spring and sorry for neglecting my blog. My parents are thrilled that their garden is now tidy, the casualties of winter removed and the power washing of the walkways all done. They are now safe to go out there and are no longer in danger of slipping on the moss and sludge winter left behind.
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Catching Up…Making the Photos Work
14 Feb 2011 11 Comments
in conservation, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, travel Tags: business, camera, conservation, digital art, flowers, images, LGBT, nature, Nikon D90, photo, photography, pictures, random, reflections
Well, after catching up with all of you yesterday after my week of yuk, I’m now trying to catch up on some work. I’ve got images coming out my ears (not a pretty sight), so I’ve been putting a few of them to work for me on Zazzle and keeping my fingers crossed. I’ve decided to do my own bit of campaigning on behalf of nature, so here’s one I did earlier, from Saturdays visit to Lilltle Ponton with my trusty Nikon D90.
This next shot is from a while ago, but I think deserves a poster for those who will enjoy it?
But I’ve also been playing with special effects for some products. I’ve not used any of these pictures on here before (I think) so it’s time you saw the results of my playing around.
The above shot of a shell was taken in macro then, well I played with special Photoshop effects and I’m really pleased with this one. what do you think?
I’ve lots more ideas, so little time…see you soon.
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Photoshop Tutorial Resources for Photographers
22 Jan 2011 3 Comments
in art, business, image, imagery, musings, photo, photography, photography technique Tags: art, business, education, image, Nikon D90, photography, photos, Photoshop, Photoshop tutorials, pictures, random, workflow
Watermead Country Park
Hi everyone. I hope you’re having a good weekend. As promised, I’ve been investigating some resources that could be useful if you wish to learn more about Photoshop and how to manipulate your images once downloaded. I’ve found some very interesting sites. Although it would take me weeks to work through all the information available on these sites, the tutorials I’ve read and watched seem very comprehensive and fairly straightforward to follow. So I’ll pass them onto you and you browse away to your heart’s content. The images I’ve posted today are from our walk yesterday at Watermead Country Park. For those of you who are interested, I’ve used a couple of waterfall shots from yesterdays post to create new products on Zazzle. I’m having fun building my shop there. Once I’ve finished photoshopping I enjoy seeing what products some of my shots would be suitable for then going and creating them. Now I just need more people to see them and like them. If you do pop into zazzle please let me know what you think.
Watermead Country Park
OK, here are the sites for your reference and a little about what each one has to offer.
http://www.russellbrown.com lots of video tutorials including creative masking without masking, green screen removal and clone painting. An interesting site with several sections. I’ve found the most useful stuff in ‘Tips and techniques’ and ‘Dr Brown Scripts’.
http://3rdelement.com/photoshop/a-letter-from-florence/ Very easy to watch video tutorials on all sorts of stuff including extracting an object from its background, masking and applying adjustment layers.
http://www.dpbestflow.org/ Find information on here about workflow, colour space, image editing, copyright registration, metadata and more. This is a very technical site but well laid out and with explanations that are easy to read an follow.
http://photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/pen/pen.htm loads of written tutorials, images are not very clear but info is good and directions easy to follow. CD/dvd tutorials available from author. Topics range from creating water drops on an image to using the pen tool.
http://designshack.co.uk/articles/css/create-seamless-web-background-textures-in-minutes written tutorials on subjects like creating seamless background textures in minutes and making reflections in Photoshop. There are weekly freebies inc free textured papers. A designers website with useful stuff for photographers. You’ll also find information about marketing and CSS. This site is well worth a look, although only some of the information relates to Photoshop and photography.
That’s it for now. If I find any more I’ll mention them in a later post. Of course, for those of you with full versions of Photoshop there is also the Adobe site itself. Happy Photoshopping! If anyone wants to add a cool resource they’ve found, please leave a comment. We’d all be more than grateful.
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Birthday Wanderings into Beauty
21 Jan 2011 11 Comments
in conservation, image, imagery, musings, nature, photo, photography, photography technique, travel, wildlife Tags: conservation, image, musings, nature, Nikon D90, photo, photograph, photography technique, Photoshop, picture, pictures, random, wildlife, Winter
Weir 1
It is my partners birthday today. We decided to take time out from computers and visit a previously unexplored local haven, Watermead Country Park near Leicester. What a gorgeous afternoon! The first thing we saw when entering the park was a weir, and I had to play. So I’ve given you three of the shots taken each with a different effect in mind. They are abstract shots, and all I changed between each was the shutter speed, then a little curve readjustments to get the effects I have done. On the last shot of the three, you can see the swirling water in front of the weir.
Weir 2
Weir 3
We watched herons fly overhead and glide down onto a lake, saw cormorants (I think) roosting in the trees and a beautiful sunset. We had to wrap up warm, but just look at the colour for this time of year! Imagine my delight, too when we found catkins. Looking up at them the contrast with the sky was stunning, so I had to show you. So today is all about winter wonder and my partners birthday.
Catkins
Gorgeous sunset
Watermead Country Park
Sunset at Watermead
We came home and had a lovely meal, candlelit of course. He’s now busy blogging, so I’m taking a moment to get this post out to you. I’m investigating some nifty websites with Photoshop tutorials. When I’ve finished going through them I’ll pass them on to you. Photoshop is and amazing programme that seems to have endless possibilities, and for those of you who, like me, want to do more with their photos than just shoot and post, I’m hoping to find some new ways of using Photoshop to enhance or even transform the humble photo.
