Dance of the Sufi

I was sitting on a bench looking at this little flower,  I’ve forgotten what it is called, and it seemed alive in a most joyous way.  I had the impression that it was dancing on a bright, sunny, beautiful day.  The weather right now is the payoff for the sweltering heat of July and August.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/125s at f/4, ISO200, Landscape Mode.  In Lightroom, adjusted White balance and light levels.  Decreased clarity and increased light tones to create a soft feel.  I used split toning to introduced blue-red to the light areas and sepia to the dark tones.

Clive

This is Clive.  He has hung around a lot lately and like any guest to my house, eventually he had to pose for photos.  He likes to perch on an old green and white umbrella.  This shot gives a pretty good idea about how narrow depth of field is with macro photography.

 

Clive the Grasshopper

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/160s at f/8, ISO160.  In Lightroom, cropped, adjust light levels, brought up the light on his eyes, increased contrast and decreased clarity, sharpened.

 

 

A private glimpse

Confessions of a voyeur.  Sometimes I feel I am intruding…

Nikon D50 with Tamron 90.  1/200s at f/4, ISO200.  I took this a while ago and I don’t remember what I did.

Opposite

In photographic terms, this is the opposite of yesterday’s flower photo.  The image is desaturated, toned and shot at f/2.  Being able to shoot at f/2 was the reason I was shooting with the 50 and the Leica Elpro closeup filter.  I had no idea what exactly would happen but I hoped it would be something like this.  I have one more photo tomorrow.

Nikon D90 with Nikkor 50mm, Leica Elpro 4 close-up filter, Nikkor ND +2 filter, on-camera SB600 with Gary Fong Lightsphere bounced off gold reflector.  Black reflector used to absorb some light.  1/800s at f/2, ISO100, Landscape mode.  In Lightroom, I cropped and desaturated.  I adjusted light levels, decreased clarity, increased yellow vibrance, increased black, added sepia through split toning and sharpened.

There are a number of good closeup filters.  Canon makes an excellent one.  I picked up the Leica years ago and it languished for a long time.  It is a heavy thing, beautifully made.  If you use it right, it will give you wonderful images.  Used, they are around $100.  I used Live View on my camera and increased the magnification to 100%.  I then selected my auto focus point and waited while the camera focused.  It is slow but it focuses about as well as if I used the viewfinder and focused manually.

Belonging

Sort of lonely to be the only one of your kind blooming, to pass your peak with no one to notice what you have become.

Nikon D90 with Nikkor 50mm, Leica Elpro 4 close-up filter, Nikkor ND +2 filter, on-camera SB600 with Gary Fong Lightsphere bounced off gold reflector.  Black reflector used to absorb some light..  1/200s at f/11, ISO100, Landscape mode.  In Lightroom, cropped square, increased clarity, increased highlights to make the droplets stand out better.  Sharpened.

One Green Dot

In the evening, after the rain, I saw that a hibiscus bloom had been blown off its bush and onto a small table.  The light was a little strange and I was struck by the green dot on the petal.  What strange bit of nature caused it to appear?  I don’t recall it being there when it was in bloom.  Anyway, as Ed says, a continuation of my dark flower mood.  Still, the colors are amazingly bright, aren’t they?

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/2s at f/11, ISO200, Landscape Mode.  In Lightroom, adusted light levels, increased vibrance and clarity, sharpened and cropped.

Little World

The toadstools lasted only for a few hours once the sun came up.  They are creatures of the night.  The pot that these were in is large and they were able to hide under the shade of the hibiscus for some time but they were never meant for the light.  In the prior post, Maggs asked what they smelled like.  That part of yard has many wonderful smells and it never occured to me that these might have their own earthy fragrance.  I bet they did.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/15s at f/11, ISO200, Landscape mode.  Landscape mode saturates the colors and makes the background a little darker.  To add to the dark background, I took the cover from the light reflector and draped it over the side of the pot so that the brown, terracotta was covered.  The silver reflector added white light to the image which made the toadstools pop out, almost as if I used flash.

In Lightroom, I adjusted lightlevels, cropped a bit, worked with the brown saturation and brought the green saturation down.

Toadstool 3611

It rained yesterday afternoon.  We’ve had one other rain in the last 70 days so this was an appreciated downpour.  This morning when I went out with the dog, there were toadstools.  Everywhere.  My favorite were these, inside a pot with other flowers.  I knew they would not last long so I have a few to share over the next day or two.

At a quick glance, these are hard to see; small, gray and in the shadows.  But with the macro lens and a silver reflector, they ceased being fungi; they became toadstools!

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/100s at f/4, ISO200, Landscape Mode.  In Lightroom, I cropped more tightly around my subject.  I adjusted light levels to bring out the white.  I desaturated blues slightly and saturated orange/yellow/red to bring out the color of the toadstool.  The silver reflector made the water caught in the toadstool blue.

Dance of the Veils

I love this hibiscus.  Unlike yesterday’s shot, I wanted more depth of fieldHibis so I stepped back rather than stop down the lens.  The camera was handheld still and a breeze had picked up.  It was noon, the hibiscus shaded by part of the house.  Hibiscus love the sun but a little noontime shade in Texas never hurts.

As I watched the flower, I was struck by how light and dark mingled like swirled chocolate.  I saw the image repeated when I poured half and half into my first cup of morning coffee (it is the only time I add half and half or sugar, the rest of my coffees are black).  Finally, a friend of mine showed me photos he took of ballerinas.  They were practicing in an old warehouse and his lighting was fabulous, the swirls of motion contrasting with frozen, perfect faces.  So, yesterday, it was back to Lightroom.

In Lightroom, I desaturated the image and brightened the light parts of the flower.  I darkened the dark parts.  Then, I went to split toning where I chose a sepia shade for the dark (it is 17 on the slider, if anyone uses LR).  For the highlights, I choose more of a deep reddish purple.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/320s at f/4, ISO160.

I think flower photography more than anything allows me the freedom to explore my imagination.  

In Nikon, the standard ISO is 200 so reducing this lowers noise but also reduces contrast, slightly.  I think it MIGHT give me a little more range of color.

Formless

I have managed to get back to the flowers.

Without form there is only light and color.  Without form and structure, we wander aimlessly, unconfined by boundries.  On the other hand, aimless wandering often leads no where.  So, how to strike a balance? I don’t know but here is to experimentation.

I look forward to getting back to other’s blogs.  I feel terribly out of touch.

Nikon D90 with Tamron 90.  1/320s at f/4, ISO160.  In Lightroom, used a graduated filter to adjust the color from upper left to lower right.  Cropped the image, luminance smoothing and added noise reduction to soften the image.