Week 7 of 52 Theme: “Love” Sweetheart!

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Sweethearts! Any mention of these sugary treats is enough to send me reeling back through time to my elementary school days of shoebox Valentines Day boxes, silly cards, cheap candy, and the worry that the messages printed on the sweetheart might give a classmate of the female persuasion the wrong impression of your feelings for her. This was back in the days when you would handpick the candy and put it in the small envelope with the valentine. The one’s marked “You’re Cool” were in high demand as they were the safest ones to include, others were “UR #1″ and “Be True” all obscure enough to be harmless.

I must have eaten thousands of the sappy ones to prevent accidental inclusion… Of course at home after class I had to open and read each valentine I received and try to interpret what it might mean, unless of course the disclaimer was given at time of deposit in the box that “My mom put the candy in”  in which case all was fair game and eaten without worry.

When Valentines week rolled around this year and the theme was “Love” I couldn’t resist blasting back to my past and photographing these little messages of heartfelt devotion and love.

Taken using the 50mm f/1.8 and the 20mm extension tube

I’m not scared of this one anymore…

50mm f/1.8 and the 12mm extension tube.

And just in case you were wondering – yes I did eat them!

I hope you had a great Valentines and more importantly that there is love in your life everyday!

Happy Shooting!

Howard

 

Week 3 of 52 Theme: “Think Small” – Sky Flower

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#LPTG13WK3, Cactus V5 trigger, Camera Mode, Cheap Macro, crystal, D7000, D7000 Blog, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, Extension tubes, focusing, fog, garage photography, Howard Jackman, ice, ice crystal, inversion, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LPTG, LPTG52, Macro, macro print sale, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, off camera flash, Photography, Photoshop, pollution, Salt Lake City, sky, smog, Snow, Snowflake, Still Life, strobist, sumoetx, Think Small, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, utah smog, Winter, YN-560

Think Small! Oh I was all over this one, my minds eye instantly saw the shot and I spent everyday of the week trying to make it happen, the only problem was that I had no control over one part of the shot – the Subject! I’ll explain, you see everyday as I drive to work I cross over a large railyard in Salt Lake City, and often they have lone engines or a few cars just sitting on the tracks. Using the Tilt Shift technique I wanted to turn those trains and the railyard into toys, add in the snow covering the ground and maybe even some steam rising from the engine and it would have been perfect!! Except that everyday I drove there it was empty!

So my back up plan was to shoot a macro of some small droplets hanging off a flower petal with what looked like the world suspended in the water. I’ve seen this before and it’s very impressive, and apparently also very difficult to pull off. Water droplets it turns out are about as hard to control as animals and children.

Enter the Backup to the Backup and this one also depended on factors well outside my realm of influence, however Mother Nature and pollution from an inversion layer co-operated enough to provide me with a few images.

These are not snowflakes in the sense that they did not fall out of storm clouds rather these are ice crystals formed when an inversion layer, cold air, and high humidity all mix together with a heavy dose of air pollution to create these small yet thick crystals.

Sky Crystal

The same stack from a different angle.

These were so much more condensed than snowflakes, but very interesting to see up close.

All shots were made using my two sets of extension tubes and the 50mm f/1.8 with two YN-560 flashes using Cactus V5 triggers (can’t wait to get a ring flash)

Thanks for looking! Next post will finally have some color in it I promise…

Happy Shooting!

Howard

 

Week 48 of 52 – Theme: “Winter” Fallen Jewels

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This theme nearly ruined my whole 52 week project! Not because it was too difficult to think of a shot, but rather because the shot I wanted had one element that I had absolutely no control over – the weather! So I had to wait, and wait, and wait meanwhile two weeks went by and I didn’t want to post my other shots before posting this one so I missed out on the weekly roundups and being able to say that I finished the challenge without missing a weekly posting, although I do have 52 themes shot and in the bag! (and posted to the challenge page) So expect a flurry of blog posts as I catch up!

Fallen Jewels 50mm f/1.8 + about 6 inches of extension tubes!

I’ve seen numerous macro shots of snowflakes, and I’ve always wanted to shoot them but thought that I’d have to wait until I had a proper macro lens to do so, until I saw a link on G+ to a photographer who shoots them in natural settings using only his 60mm macro lens and I thought I could at least match that with my 50mm f/1.8 and some extension tubes. So I took my Zeikos tubes and added a set of ‘El Cheapo Chinese tubes to them and the 50mm and found out I could get really close to the flakes although it required strobes to get enough light on the snowflake (technically I should be calling them Snow Crystals, but since when have I ever been a technical kind of guy?) Then once a flake landed on the plant I was able to shoot for about a minute before it melted away, here are some of my favorite shots of the three different weather events (hard to call them storms) I was able to capture flakes from.

Double crystals! This was a very close second place.

Same flake as the first but from a different angle

Fragile!

Same flakes – different backdrop

This was so tiny and fluffy!

And finally…

I used a blue oven mitt to catch this one, I’m not a fan of the textures and fibers it shows, but I love the color!

You will definitely be seeing more snowflakes on this blog!! I hope to get a focus rail soon so I can do some focus stacking and really show these beauties off right!

As always thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed the snowflakes. If you have any questions please feel free to ask and I’ll try my best to answer.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

 

 

 

 

 

Week 28 of 52 Theme: “Texture” Crunch Berry Razor Blades

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50mm f/1.8, Belt, Benro, Benro A298M8 Tripod, Breakfast, breakfast cereal, camera controls, Camera Mode, Cap'n Crunch, Cap'n Crunch Berry, Cereal, Cheap Macro, crunch berries, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 HDR, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, Extension tubes, Fabric, Fabric exture, focusing, Food closeup, Food Macro, Gorillapod, Gorillapod joint, HDR, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LPTG52, Macro, macro with extension tubes, 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, Photography, Photomatix, Photoshop, red eyes, Shooting Mode, Spider, spider closeup, spider macro, Still Life, Texture, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, Week 28 of 52

The theme for Week 28 of the 52 week challenge was “Texture” As soon as I saw the theme posted I wasn’t sure what I was going to shoot, but I knew that I wanted to avoid rocks, trees, and flowers not because I don’t like them, but because I wanted to challenge myself just a little bit more and hopefully have something a bit more unique to show. What to shoot then? It was pretty obvious to me that I’d be shooting Macro as I find getting close up to something really exaggerates any texture that may be there, and really opens up the abstractness of pretty much any object. It must have been in the morning as I was grabbing breakfast that I saw the Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries cereal sitting in the pantry and light bulbs went off, I don’t know about you but as a kid we only got to eat cereal on weekends and Christmas morning (until we got older and Mom got busier, becoming a single parent will do that) So any Cereal was a treat and Cap’n Crunch was a popular one for us to choose (Lucky Charms was probably #1).

The deceptively enticing colors and sugary goodness of Cap’n Crunch Berry cereal hides the truth that these are actually razor blades designed to tear your mouth apart! 50mm f/1.8 with a 36mm extension tube.

As any cereal connoisseur knows when it comes to eating cereal there is a sweet spot between not enough milk saturation and too much. For Cap’n Crunch it’s about 15 seconds long! Before that the things are razor blade sharp and hard as steel, any longer and it becomes a passable substitute for neon colored paste. Which made shooting these with milk impossible but that’s OK I didn’t want anything to soften the texture. I’m serious when I say these things can draw blood! Now that I’m no longer 8 years old I have to remind myself that eating these comes with a price I’d rather not pay.

A little closer still… 50mm f/1.8 + 36mm and 20mm extension tubes.

While shooting the cereal I was distracted by some nearby textures.

My camera strap! 50mm f/1.8 + 36mm and 20mm extension tubes

My camera strap head on. 50mm f/1.8 +36mm and 20mm extension tubes. (I liked the stray thread at the top)

 

A leg joint from the Gorillapod 50mm f/1.8 + 36mm and 20mm extension tubes. 3 shot HDR

As I was cleaning up the macro photo studio (aka the kitchen table) I happened to look out our screen door and saw this little guy scrambling around. I had the 50mm and extension tubes still on the camera so I just boosted the ISO up to 1600 and took a set of shots trying very hard to get something in focus at such a small depth of field (f/3.5 plus all those tubes = tiny DoF!) not easy under static conditions, it’s a thousand times harder when the spider and I are both moving, he was trying to get off that screen door and I was trying to keep up with him and find a good spot on him to focus, he was only maybe 1/4 inch long so that meant no room for error so I had the focus locked and I was just rocking back and forth to move the focus plane somewhere good ” Hold still you stupid spider” or something along those lines were muttered multiple times.

Here are two shots that I like.

50mm f/1.8 + 36mm and 20mm extension tubes

Are the eyes the window to the soul when you’re on a window? 50mm f/1.8 + 36mm and 20mm extension tubes.

I think he has enough texture to qualify being on this post.

That’s it for me this week (I’m all caught up for the moment – Yay!) Thanks so much for dropping by, I hope you’ve enjoyed the post.

Happy Shooting!

Howard