Time for a close-up

Seed Blooms

During our workshop with Richard Bernabe, he took us a short distance into a wooded area. The point of the exercise was that during the mid-day, when the light is really harsh, is a good time to go into shaded areas to find other subjects. The area he took us too was a small area covered in ferns. While I tried to photograph the ferns, I just wasn't "feeling" it as they say. I couldn't really find a composition I liked, there was enough of a breeze through the trees to make every thing blurry. In other words, I was getting stumped. Heck, I even got stumped trying to photograph a stump.

However, I did find this one plant with these seed blooms that caught my attention. I still had a problem with the wind moving them and causing blurry shots. Then I remembered that I had my flash with me. I set my camera up in Commander mode to control the flash, and held the flash off to one side. The camera was on a tripod, there was an extension tube on the lens for macro-work, and I was using a cable release as well. Thankfully, the flash was able to freeze the seeds enough to get a nice, sharp image.

Lesson learned: A flash is a good thing to have even when photographing stuff out in the woods.


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A Post!

Quartz Crystal

It has been awhile since my last post. Sorry about that. I've been getting my son ready to go back to school and haven't had much of chance to do any photography. There is the photowalk this weekend though, and a professional bicycle championship on Labor Day weekend. So, the funk should break soon.

In the meantime, above is a macro shot of a quartz crystal I took last year after I got my extension tubes. The tubes are a relatively inexpensive way to try out macro photography without having to purchas an expensive macro lens.

Anyway, keep shooting.

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