Week 12 of 52 Theme: “Planted” Too Soon…?

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50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8 with extension tube, close up, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 HDR, D7000 Macro, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, Extension tube, flower, green, Handheld HDR, HDR, Howard Jackman, Leaf, leaves, LensProToGo.com, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LPTG, LPTG13WK12, LPTG52, LPTG52.com, LPTG52weekchallenge, Macro, Macro HDR, Macro Snowflake, Nature HDR, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Nikon HDR, Orange, Photography, Photomatix, Photoshop, Planted, Primrose, Snow, Snowfall, Snowflake, Spring, spring storm, Still Life, sumoetx, tog, togs, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, utah HDR, yellow, Zeiko Extension Tube

I love Spring! It’s a truly magical time of year and here in Utah it’s even more magical in that one day it can be sunny and 70 degrees and literally 24 hours later there’s 8 inches of new snow on the ground… Yep gotta love Spring.

I wasn’t quite sure what to use for the theme of “Planted” but as soon as it started to snow I knew I had to grab a shot of the flower outside because I love how it shows the collision of two seasons with Spring triumphing over Winter as the snow began to melt. I hope you enjoy it as well!

Primrose and Snow 3 shot HDR Handheld 50mm f/1.8 + 20mm extension tube

Taken before the Sun really started to shine again, 3 shot HDR Handheld 50mm f/1.8 +20mm extension tube.

3 shot HDR handheld 50mm f/1.8 + 36mm extension tube

Melting quick! 3 shot HDR Handheld 50mm f/1.8 + 36mm extension tube

Do you see that one flake upper right that’s reflecting the light just right? I love it! 3 shot HDR Handheld 50mm f/1.8 + 36mm extension tube

It was a real quick photo shoot, as soon as the Sun came out it was game over for the snow so I wasn’t able to get those real close up shots of the snowflakes that I would have liked, but shooting wider meant I could include the green of the leaves for some nice color contrast.

I hope you have a great day and thanks so much for stopping by.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

 

 

 

 

 

Week 9 of 52 Theme” Two Colors” Soft Contrast

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#LPTG13WK9, 52 week challenge, camera, camera controls, Closeup, Colors, contrast, D7000, D7000 Blog, daisy, Daisy Macro, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, Extension tubes, Howard Jackman, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, LensProToGo.com, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LPTG52, LPTG52weekchallenge, Macro, Micro, 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 Macro, Photography, Photoshop, Pink, Shooting Mode, soft, Still Life, sumoetx, Texture, Two Color, two tone, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, Utah Photographer, Week 9

Well it’s been way too long since I wrote up a new blog post and it’s been for a very good reason, after over 10 years I’ve finally been able to upgrade my old Pentium 2 based win XP PC to a brand new shiny i7 Win7 based photo processing monster PC that I was silly enough to build myself. As you can imagine that took some time and I was limited in my on line time so I’ve got some catching up to do so expect some quick postings this week as I get back on my (very arbitrary) schedule.

Week 9′s theme was “Two Colors”, easy enough I guess so how to make it interesting? I’ve made it a goal of mine this year to try and be more minimal and consolidated in my composing/imaging so that the viewer isn’t left wondering what the subject of my picture is supposed to be.

A great way to cut out unnecessary things is to get close and that’s just what I did with these daisy petals.

Made with my 50mm f/1.8 plus 36mm and 20mm extension tubes.

I actually shot brackets, but the images looked better processed alone than tonemapped as the dynamic range really wasn’t that great since the light coming through the window was soft and diffused.

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

 

I love taking pictures of flowers, the colors and textures are always so much fun to explore.

Thanks so much for your patience and for sticking with me, come back soon and I’ll have a tasty treat for you…

 

Happy Shooting!

Howard

Week 5 of 52 Theme: “Up” You look so small from up here…

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Nikon D7000, Nikon, D7000, New D7000 user, Nikon Blog, D7000 Blog, new DSLR, Digital Camera, Using a Nikon D7000, Digital Photography, Photography, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Nikon D7000 Controls, DSLR Modes, D7000 HDR, Utah, Photowalking, HDR, Nikon HDR, Handheld HDR, Salt Lake City, Urbex, utah HDR, Utah Photography, Downtown, Photoshop, Photomatix, Sunset, Sigma 10-20mm, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, LensProToGo.com, Ice skating, Gallivan Center, sumoetx, SLC, Ice Skate, Rink, Party, Walker Center Tower, Chase Building, Marriot City Center, group.tilt shift.miniaturize, mini, miniature, city, #LPTG13WK5, Theme:UP, Week 5 of 52, Howard, Jackman, Wide angle

The theme of “Up” leaves quite a bit open to the imagination so in these types of instances I try to look for opportunities that will give me a unique, or at the very least an off the wall take on the theme. It just so happens that I was able to gain access to a building overlooking the Gallivan Center Ice Rink in downtown Salt Lake City around sunset so I could grab this shot in some nice light.

We were here for my wifes work party, they had reserved the ice rink for a few hours for family and friends with plenty of warm food and hot chocolate on hand to keep you cozy and fueled up for the wobbly, sometimes bruising laps around the ice.

I wanted to make the skaters look like toy figures so I used photoshop to simulate a “Tilt Shift” type of effect making them look even smaller than they actually are.

Here’s another angle…

I also couldn’t resist walking around the plaza and took a few other shots this time in HDR to accommodate the wider dynamic range of light as the sun set behind the buildings.

Kazuo Matsubayashi’s Asteroid Landed Softly Sundial 3 exp HDR Handheld I liked the reflection of the US Flag on top of the Walker Center Tower in the monument.

And here’s the Walker Center Tower itself 3 exp HDR handheld

Thanks for coming along on this little adventure with me once again. Next post will be all about “Down” so look for that soon as I catch up on blog posts.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

PS: Hey this is my 100th post! Yay for me…I feel like I should have a giveaway or something, maybe a free print…Any ideas?

Week 15 of 52 – Theme: “Paper Airplane” Paper Airplane Dreams

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Airport #2, Cactus V5, camera, camera controls, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 HDR, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, HDR, Landing mistakes, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, Lego diorama, Lego Flight line, Lego Paper Plane, Lego Pilot, LensProToGo.com, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Nikon HDR, Papaer plane crash, Paper Airplane, Photography, Photomatix, Photoshop, Plane HDR, Salt Lake City, SLC Airport 2, South Valley Regional Airport, strobist, Strobist set up, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, YN-560 flash

Week 15 brought a unique and off the wall theme to the LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge; “Paper Airplane”, meaning that the shot had to include a paper airplane.

Okay…Well that opens things up a bit doesn’t it, I had formed an idea around the thought of “what would a paper airplane want to be?” Well the logical answer seems to me to be a real plane so I took along a bunch of paper airplanes and my (mostly) willing assistants aka: my family to the South Valley Regional Airport affectionately known in these parts as Airport #2 (no points for creativity there I know..) Which just happens to be a hop, skip, and jump from our home. I had wanted to take these at the Salt Lake International airport but due to the insane paranoia surrounding airports these days I thought better of it. As a regional airfield with only privately owned aircraft this airfield is much easier to photograph, so a few minutes, a few different set ups and angles and this is what I got:

"When Paper Airplanes Dream" - 3 exp HDR

I had wanted to catch the sunset lighting up the clouds (this shot faces East and the Wasatch mountains) but was foiled by some last minute clouds on the horizon behind me so the clouds didn’t light up like I wanted, but instead took on a moody look.

Another angle:

3 exp HDR

A different idea I had tried the day before was no good as it was just too windy to get the plane to fly right. I had wanted a “landing” shot like you often see where the plane is just feet away from touchdown, I wanted the same kind of view point so we found an empty street next to a school and I laid down in the road (I mentioned it was empty right? It was also a side road to the school so there was no traffic at all it being a Saturday and all)

Here are the two “best” shots, meaning the plane was actually in frame:

"Your approach is a little steep there Captain"

Bottoms up!

Not the kind of landings I wanted…

My last idea was a flight line using lego figures so I set up the shot in our basement and using my Cactus V5 wireless triggers and one YN-560 flash that I snooted to concentrate the light into more of a spotlight I made this shot:

Lego flight line

I’m having so much fun experimenting with off camera flash! The set up for this was much less glamorous than the final result would lead you to believe. I used my 18-200mm  racked all the way out to 200mm to give a nice shallow depth of field and I set up a black backed comforter on a chair about 4 feet behind the planes to give a solid black background (and to hide the TV I was watching) the flash was to camera right and up a little higher at about 1/16 power, the planes were set up on a small table on some black paper board and I took the shot. Simple and fun!

The next theme is “Getting from Point A to B” I’m loving the randomness of these themes!

Happy Shooting!

Howard