Week 14 of 52 Theme: “Textures” Gifts of Spring

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Ah Spring! Nature shakes off the cold and awakens from her winter slumber to flood the earth with blossoms and vibrant color of new growth, it’s why so many love this time of year it’s also the time of year when copious amounts of allergy inducing pollen is spewn into the air causing everyone else to hate the season.

As I’ve aged I’ve begun to suffer the effects of seasonal allergies as well, but that will never prevent me from loving Spring for its beauty. And this weeks theme of “Textures” was just the thing to allow me to showcase some of the beautiful things that Spring brings to my backyard.

Gifts of Spring! 7 shot HDR 50mm f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube.

changing to the 20mm extension tube…

7 shot HDR

Using the 36mm extension tube

6 shot HDR

I hope you find the beauty of Spring wherever you are!

Happy Shooting!

Howard

Week 13 of 52 Theme: “Balloons” Not to Burst your Balloon…

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#LPTG13WK13, 70-300mm, action, available light action shot, back lit, backlight, Balloon, Benro, Benro A298M8 Tripod, blue, bubble, burst, camera, camera controls, Camera Mode, continuous high mode, D7000, D7000 Blog, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, explosion, focusing, freeze action, Grass, green, HDR, high speed, Howard Jackman, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LPTG, LPTG.com 52 week Challenge, LPTG52, needle, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Benro Tripod, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, outside, Photography, Photoshop, Pink, pop, Popped, red, Salt Lake City, shutter release cable, spray, Spring, Still Life, sumoetx, Sunset, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, Utah Photographer, Utah resident, Water, water Balloon, week 13, Zoom

Balloons? Really? Not a theme I was particularly enthused about shooting, but one that was going to at least give me a new shooting experience and that’s one of the reasons that I decided to do another 52 week challenge this year. My first idea was to capture a balloon bursting as it was shot by an airsoft BB and trigger it using my Nerotrigger. Unfortunately my sons airsoft gun as strong as it seems just couldn’t pop the balloon so plan B was to have him pop it by hand, so we decided to do it outside in the backyard and instead of using speedlights and a sound trigger I would use available light and hopefully a quick trigger finger on the shutter release cable.

Backlit from the setting Sun and triggered by hand. 1/2000 sec, f/8, iso 400, 70-300mm @300mm

That was our third try and I love how the water still holds the shape of the balloon while having that killer spray around the edges. Well that was so much fun lets do a few more…

The red balloon goes down! 1/2500 sec, f/8, iso400, 300mm

I love the whole bubble look that happened here.

Of course my daughter had to get in on it as well and of course it had to be a pink one.

This one was a hair slower than most of the others and the mass of water had fallen farther.

Look at the ripples of the balloon as it collapses!

I shot these using a 70-300mm lens at 300mm on Manual at 1/2000-1/2500 sec at f/8 and iso 400 which seemed to be fast enough to stop most of the droplets and with the bright setting sun behind it was plenty bright, although I think I would add a reflector to fill in a bit if I shot this again.

I was locked down on a tripod and shooting at continuous high mode with a shutter release cable, I would call out 3-2-1 and smash the trigger as the balloon was popped and surprisingly it worked most of the time.

The grizzly remains – 3 shot HDR

So despite my prior lack of enthusiasm for the subject it turned out to be quite a fun shoot that boosted my confidence in capturing high speed movement and as a bonus I got to stay dry and my kids got wet.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

Week 11 of 52 Theme: “Where You Live” Salt Lake City Sunset HDR Panorama!

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#LPTG13WK11, 12 brackets, 600 north, Ballhead, Benro, Benro A298M8 Tripod, camera controls, Camera Mode, Capitol Building, Capitol Hill, Church Office Building, city, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 HDR, D7000 Promote COntrol, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, focusing, foothill, Golden Hour, HDR, HDR Panorama, Howard Jackman, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LPTG, LPTG 52 challenge, LPTG.com 52 week Challenge, LPTG52, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nik Filter, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Benro Tripod, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Nikon HDR, overpass view, Panorama, Photography, Photomatix, Photoshop, Photoshop stitch, Promote Control, rail, Rocky mountains, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City Skyline, Shooting Mode, Skyline, SL Temple, spring view, stitch, sumoetx, Sunset, sunset panorama, train, Tripod, Urbex, urbex HDR, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, utah HDR, Utah Photographer, Utah resident, Wasatch Front, West side, Where You Live

This was quite the week for me as I was able to successfully photograph a comet next to the crescent moon and finally got a panorama of our beautiful city.

I’ll have more details about the comet shoot in an upcoming post, but for now lets concentrate on how I got this HDR panorama of Salt Lake City.

Denver’s got nothing on this! This is what it really means to be at the foot of the mountains!  -  12 horizontal frames each one an HDR bracket of 7 exp @1EV.

It was Sunday evening and as we got ready to eat dinner I noticed that the sunset was shaping up to possibly be a good one, by that I mean not too many clouds and hopefully some good color. So after inhaling the food and with my wife and daughter along we rushed out the door and headed downtown for this vantage point on the northwest side of Salt Lake City that is possible due to the fortunate placement of a freeway overpass. This was the first time I’ve ever shot from this location and because of that I think I might have missed a more optimum vantage point along the overpass, so I plan on re-shooting this sometime.

We parked east of the overpass itself to avoid any problems and made what was a surprisingly long walk over to the west side, where the fencing drops in height, as we did some clouds drifted in front of the sun and blocked out a good portion of the light and muting the colors that were promising to really pop.

Using my Promote Control I started blasting off 7 shot brackets @1EV spacing and made two separate passes in a Vertical orientation and one in Horizontal. I ended up choosing the horizontal pass as it had the best color on the buildings and clouds.

I tonemapped each of the 12 frames separately, and then stitched them together in Photoshop. On my old PC this would have caused a melt down, but on my new PC this was stitched in under two minutes! I’m loving this….

After the last warm light faded and a chilly evening breeze picked up we made the long walk back to the car and stopped for a minute to watch a long freight train rumble by underneath us (Another photo op I’ll have to explore!)

A freight train heads south through the west side of Salt Lake City. Canon Powershot SX260HS

I hope you enjoyed looking at this view of our fair city, I plan on shooting this again hopefully with better color,clouds, and angle.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

Week 10 of 52 Theme: “Cheese” Ooey Gooey Heaven!

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#LPTG13WK10, 2013, 3 shot bracket, 50mm, 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8 with extension tube, Benro, Benro A298M8 Tripod, bracket HDR, bread, camera, Cheese, Cheese HDR, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 HDR, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, Egg, Egg HDR, Extension tube, Food, Food HDR, Food Macro, gooey, Grilled cheese, Ham, HDR, Howard, Howard Jackman, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LPTG, LPTG.com 52 week Challenge, LPTG52, Macro, macro with extension tube, melted, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Benro Tripod, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Nikon HDR, Nikon Macro, Photography, Photomatix, Photoshop, Salt Lake City, sandwhich, Still Life, string, sumoetx, Sunday lunch, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, warm, Week 10 of 52

After church on Sundays can be a time of reflection, contemplation and rest, but after 3 hours of church services it’s also a time of hunger! As I was sitting down in the office attempting to update drivers for the new computer I heard my wife call down that lunch was ready and as I ran upstairs I smelled the mouth watering aroma of her amazing grilled ham,egg and cheese sandwiches, so I grabbed my camera and snapped a few macro shots while it was still warm until my survival instinct over ruled the creative instinct and I chowed down.

3 shot HDR with 50mm f/1.8 and 20mm extension tube

Seriously these are so good it’s probably sinful to eat them on the Sabbath!

Happy Shooting!

Howard