Buds

Buds

More flowers from Hatcher Gardens. It really is a nice place to spend an hour or two during the day. I'm glad to have a place like it so close to the house.

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Lines

Lines

This is another photograph I took at Hatcher Gardens the other day while testing my extension tubes. It was taken with my longest zoom lens and I was standing about six feet away. That should be quite helpful when we are at the butterfly garden as I wouldn't scare the little guys by putting my camera right in their face.

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Testing

Daisies

I wanted to test my extension tubes with a couple of my lenses before we go on vacation later this month. So, we headed to Hatcher Gardens again for a few minutes. One of the places we plan on visiting has a butterfly garden. That means that I would need a macro lens of some kind. However, all I have are a set of extension tubes that fit between the lens and camera. I haven't used them in a while, and realized that I needed to use them again to refamiliarize myself with the extension tubes. Hatcher Gardens is a great place for me to try new stuff out and to practice. It is close to the house and always has something to photograph. Due to an approaching thunderstorm, we only had about thirty minutes at the park. It was enough time to test a couple of lenses with the extension tubes though. Now I have a better idea how they will affect the lenses that I will have with me on the trip.

The moral of the story: Never use new equipment for the first time when you are photographing something important. Always try it out first to give yourself some time to understand the equipment.

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First Photo Outing of '09

Character

Well, I finally took my camera out for the first time this year. I spent about an hour at Hatcher Gardens again while waiting for my son to get out of school for the day. Even though it is a small park, I usually find something to photograph. I noticed this one log that seemed to have a lot of character to it.

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On the Edge

On the Edge

Yesterday I spent an hour at a local nature park called Hatcher Gardens. It was a beautiful afternoon: clear, cool, a good breeze. My favorite kind of weather. I ended up playing around with my 50mm lens again and got some interesting shots of the small waterfall in the park as well as some flower images. The waterfall was in a dark, shaded spot and I was using slow shutter speeds to blur the water. They are kind of abstract, but that was the effect I was going for. Sometime I will take a tripod and try to capture them the "correct" way.

He's a photograph of some of the flowers. There was some interesting contrasts between lighted and shadowed areas. Notice how the flower in the foreground is nicely backlit.

Pink Glow

That's it for today. There is a Revolutionary War re-enactment tomorrow that I hope to go to. I hope the weather is as nice tomorrow as it has been the past couple of days.

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