I love doing the back yard photo walk, mainly because you really don’t have to go anywhere to shoot. Every time you go out in your yard you will be surprised at how many new things there are to shoot each time you try it. It doesn’t seem that way at first, especially since you look at the same setting every day, but if you look hard, everything changes as the seasons move on, and there is always something new to shoot. Yesterday I went to test out this Nikon 35mm f/1.8 DX and this is what I came back with. Years ago when I was shooting Nikon’s FX (Full Frame sensor) I loved to shoot specifically at 50mm using a fast 50mm lens. Over the last few years I have been shooting with a crop sensor (or DX), which makes my 35mm lens a 52mm. All that to say this is about the same as something like this but with a different lens.
Have a great rest of the weekend everyone.
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My wife and I in days past were quite active paddlers. We spent about 5 or so years kayaking all around the country in between conventions (our work), and because we were always traveling we were able to kayak in some really neat places. Just to name a few, we went out to the caves in Lake Superior near the Apostle Islands, the slot canyons at Lake Powell in Arizona, coastal surf in the North Carolina Outer Banks, rivers and lakes from Ohio to New York, and out to the great Columbia river in Oregon. Only problem, for me, was I never did like my particular kayak (the Dagger Cortez 16.5), for various reasons, but I never could get comfortable on a long paddle.
Since then we have tried to find different outdoor activities that we could both enjoy together, but never really found anything we both equally liked (other than sailing, which we might do again some day), so we decided to go back to kayaking, but with shorter, lighter, smaller, less expensive, kayaks we can just throw in the back of the truck and take to the nearest body of water (like Chewacla which is only a few miles away). Anyway, below are some of our previous paddling trips, wish we had time to go back to some of these great places.
These below were all shot with film so they are a little grainy, HDR high res images are in order soon.
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A little local flavor for Friday. I drive by this waterfall all the time and have never in all my years of looking at it stopped to take a photo. There are a few small waterfalls in Lee County and this is one of them, privately owned of course, but still quite beautiful and visible from the road. I was trying to work on a little HDR with the Nikon D90 but this didn’t turn out how I was hoping it would so I offer up this single shot image.
I am still testing the HDR on the iPhone but so far the results have been fantastic. I just love the HDR look but haven’t really been able to find a result I like myself, so I will just continue to experiment. Now that HDR is available on the iOS 4.1 I am going to at least try to get a decent HDR image with my iPhone at the Clemson game in about 10 days, especially since technically speaking you aren’t allowed to take in your DSLR, even though I was able to take it in at the Arkansas State game.
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Ok, well maybe not here in Auburn, but right now, the Aspen groves of the Rockies are ablaze with color. After flipping back over some fall photos of the last few years I came across this one, taken at this exact time of year, but at the 11,000 foot range in the Rockies. You can’t see the glorious fall colors that surround these tall pines from the photo, but at the time, it was about 40*F outside and the entire surrounding area was full of yellow aspen trees, like the one shown below. Fall has to be one of my favorite times of year, almost as much color in the fall (if you look closely) as there is in Spring.
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This morning just when I opened my eyes this is what I saw above. My face just happens to face east right out a window, and this morning these low clouds turned into a beautiful sunrise. The colors fade so quickly but the brilliance produced in a matter of five minutes is just amazing. As I write this there are virtually no colors in the sky and the sun has retreated behind the thick clouds but what a great surprise to wake up and see the colors of a sunrise.
I was only able to take a few shots and by the time I got over to the pond (last photo) the colors were already just about gone, (time sequence of the shots was about 2-3 minutes). You can click on each photo to see a larger image, hope you enjoy them as much as I did when I ran out in the grass in my bare feet.
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This past weekend Deb and I went to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain Georgia to go for a bike ride and do a little photo and video shooting at the Butterfly Day Center (see my Callaway Gardens Butterflies // Friday Feet). Generally when you are shooting butterflies in an enclosed area you will need some type of flash, and to get a nice even smooth light across your subject, you need to diffuse the light source. It is all in how you want the end result to turn out, you can shoot with a more harsh light (no diffuser) and get a nice solid black background with a brightly lit subject, or use a diffuser for a little softer look.
You can buy several very expensive diffusers and there are some very good ones on the market, but if you are looking for a cheap and quick fix when you don’t have any diffuser, or any money to buy one, try a milk carton. They are cheap, and quite effective, and can you make one in about 5 minutes. I started cutting up this milk carton on Friday and realized some video would be a good idea.
How to Make a Milk Carton Flash Diffuser from Scott Fillmer on Vimeo.
The tools you will need are a semi-transparent milk carton (not a white one), a razor blade, some tape, and that’s about it. The equipment I used in this photo shoot was a Nikon D90 and a Nikon SB-800 flash (borrowed from Jak Blount) a flash braket and flash extender cable. The video is about 4 minutes long and includes some images from the shoot as well. Hope you enjoy.
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What a difference just a few days makes in the fall. This is what our tree (and swing) looked like this afternoon. Compare that to this Fall Has Finally Arrived in Alabama, and My Swing Loves It, taken just a few days ago.
It was a totally different time of day of course, but the colors have changed dramatically, and many of the leaves have started to fall off the trees. I don’t remember this tree turning colors like this last year but as the years click off each fall probably looks more colorful to me. How were your fall colors this year?
