Daily Image - Sep 2011 Archive

01 Sep 11. It is about that time of the year when I make the announcement of the 2 Christmas offerings for 2011 and I thought I'd make a comment about same in this mailing. In last year's DVD I incorporated a few transitions from natural to creative or the reverse and it seemed to resonate well with the recipients, so much so, that I'm planning on incorporating a lot of them in this year's offering. The image for either today or tomorrow was supposed to be something from a Mt Rainier alpine flower shoot, but a chat on Wednesday afternoon with none other than "Range Rick" informed me that the flowers were barely poking their little heads out of the snow and that all the trails were still covered in snow. Another 7 - 10 days minimum to get what I want. So obviously no alpine flowers for a while, but, since there are lots of lovely yellow alpine flowers, the image for today is of a lovely yellow flower, except that it is not of the alpine variety and it has been manipulated. In fact, it is but one of four manipulations of the same original image, all 5 of which will make their way into the Christmas DVD. This year's offering will be quite different from all those in the past, and will be closer to a multiple projector type of presentation as opposed to what could easily be classified as a two projector approach in the past. So keep your eyes out for the announcement that will ask that your "reply" specifically to it if you are interested in either offering. Once again it will be a free DVD Christmas show - the annual offering - and a choice of calendars. For those of you who like the calendars, NOW is the time to let me know of any particular image sent this past 12 months you would like to see on a calendar. ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f /11.

02 Sep 11. With my graduate work in Biomedical Science /Engineering centering around vascular physiology, and in particular the flow of blood to the brain under high g (accelerative) profiles, I found that my interest on how certain plants move fluids around began to really concentrate on how trees do it, especially very tall ones. While I've never found a formal answer, I have some ideas as to how it might be accomplished. The engineering design allowing for such a feat has to evoke definite appreciation for the intelligence behind it. Of course, there is more than just one way in which a plant acquires the water it needs, and sometimes, if you have a critical eye, you can easily spot at least one of them. The "summer" rains about which I've complained a time or two this year offered opportunity for me to capture a least one obvious way, but one that is probably overlooked because it requires that you be either out in the rain or outside shortly thereafter. This shot was taken in between "rain showers" of the type that might remind you of standing under a shower running full bore, and which were prone to smash the plants flat which they did on more than one occasion. The light level was very low, the wind was blowing, and it was one of those shots you attempt to get of a moving subject with reasonable detail. To get sufficient speed for a marginally sharp image it was a compromise all the way with shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. The other option was flash but the results I was getting with flash tended to destroy the "focus" of the image. ISO 400; 1/160 sec @ f / 8.

05 Sep 11. If there is one thing that being in the military teaches you, it is to be flexible. Three of us from one of my camera clubs, and friends to boot, had decided to go visit the property on Saturday to see the house progress and then to continue on to visit Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains. That got changed on Friday evening, based on a couple of wild flower reports, to shift the trip to Sunrise side of Mt Rainier to photograph sub-alpine wildflowers. When we got there the flowers were "not quite" as reported, the wind was a major detractor, and it was quite cold at 44 F on a day that was supposed to be in the 80s. But we made the best of the situation, then moved on to Tipsoo Lake only to find that the flowers were 7 -10 days sub prime. After a walk around the lake we moved once again this time to the other side of the mountain and did some evening work at Reflection Lakes, sans mountain reflections, and completed the day with some sunset shots of Paradise Valley. I had two goals for the day: 1) to do a lot of close up and macro work with the sub-alpine flowers and 2) work with a wide angle approach to get the flowers up close, large, and out of perspective with the mountain in the background. As there were virtually no flowers in position with the mountain that were reachable, goal two was next to impossible and the wind did its best to prevent goal number one. So we worked with what we had. Walking along the Silver Forest Trail at Sunrise I was treated to a nice little show by a couple of chipmunks. Their behavior reminded me of a Captain and Tennille song called "Muskrat Love" that some of you may recall from the 70s. I spent abut 10 minutes with the pair and thoroughly enjoyed the show. And then it was time to move on to engage the wind. ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f /11

06 Sep 11. As I mentioned yesterday, one of my goals was to get some extreme closeups of the flowers with the mountain in the background. I got one successful shot out of 5, and that was the limits of the opportunity on the Saturday trip. I still need to work on this approach but I did like the way the one shot turned out. I'm rather confident all of you have seen examples of extreme closeups made with very wide angle lenses, frequently of something like the nose of a cow or something similar. The approach here is not much different, save for the difficulty of either getting a flower close enough to "legally" reach with the appropriate background or just getting away with breaking the rules a "bit", as was the case for this image. A very wide angle lens is fundamental in creating an image such as this one, and I would have like to have been about a foot closer, but I did my best to keep my feet off all the plants stepping only in the dirt which resulted in my being about 18 inches from the plant. As this was the first time I've seen False Hellebore in full bloom, the opportunity was one I just couldn't pass by, and besides, for about 5 minutes, the wind was nil. So with Mt Rainier in the background, plus a couple of trees I couldn't work around, and the Hellebore in the foreground, we have today's submission. ISO 200; 1/100 sec @ f / 20, 12-24 Nikkor lens at 18 mm.

07 Sep 11. If you spend sufficient time in any location, before long you have a feel for where to be when a specific type of shot is needed. That of course is basically what any photo tour leader is being paid to do, generally far too well, and something I must admit I'd love to do, say to Alaska to shoot big game and LARGE mountains. Maybe in the future. Meanwhile, I'm getting enough time at Mt Rainier to begin getting a feel for where I'd like to be at different times of the day. Still don't have the seasonal thing perfected, no thanks to Mother Nature and her "interesting" weather patterns, but little by little getting there. Of course it helps significantly to have the phone numbers of the appropriate ranger stations to provide on-site assistance. Last Saturday's excursion concluded in a small parking lot providing a nice but limited view of Paradise Valley, not far from the Paradise Visitor's Center. Some (me included) might consider it walking distance; others would call me crazy. Regardless of how you arrive there, it is a perfect spot to work the sunset lighting on into twilight and finally night light. It takes patience, and some persistence, to remain there as the sun sets and things look like the show is over, but your patience will be rewarded. We didn't stay all that long, but still, long enough to get several shots I'll be sharing starting with that for today. This shot is an HDR compilation which has been severely cropped to achieve the effect I wanted. If you look closely, you should be able to discern 7 layers of "hills" or mountains, depending upon your definition of the words. Early on in my military career, while stationed in PA, I got into a friendly "discussion" with a couple of young ladies regarding the fact that there were only hills and no mountains in PA; they didn't agree. We finally concluded the "discussion" be referencing Webster who clearly defined the difference as: Mountain - higher than a hill; Hill - lower than a mountain. Couldn't be much clearer, wouldn't you agree. ISO 200; 1 250 sec (middle of three) @ f /10.

08 Sep 11. Driving around what might be considered the base of Mt Rainier from the NE side (Sunrise) to the SW side (Paradise) one has multiple opportunities to view the mountain from differing aspects. Several of the better views are marked and feature pull outs where, depending on the time of the year, you may find yourself fighting for a parking place or simply be the only one there. Saturday was more of the former and we were fortunate to find an open slot not far from where we wanted to shoot. The challenge of course is to get the shot that hasn't been taken before, perhaps thousands of times. This is a 3 frame HDR composite that has been further manipulated by a series of masked curve layers to selectively lighten and darken specific areas so as to hold detail in both the shadows and highlights beyond what the HDR process could satisfactorily achieve. In the process the river took a bit of a beating but I doubt that anyone would have noticed had I not brought it to your attention. The mid afternoon light being a bit of a challenge, the manipulations were required to provide what the eye could see but the equipment could not capture. For those of you who like to play with these images, you might consider either darkening somewhat or playing with some of the creative filters. ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /10.

09 Sep 11. Departing Sunrise you travel back to the main highway portion of the drive known as either 410 or the Mather Memorial Parkway (no, not a toll road as those of you on the right coast might imagine) and follow it to the intersection of 410 and 123. The 123 leg takes you to the SW side and Paradise Visitors Center. Staying on 410 will take you to Yakima but along the way you will come to Tipsoo Lake, the second of our destinations for the day. Immediately upon making the turn to the left which was to keep us on 410 and the lake, we encountered a plethora of wild flowers just alongside the highway in what might be described as a ditch. Pulling off a few yards past the area we walked back and shot for perhaps 20 minutes. In the process, I found the only Tiger Lilies I've seen there in several years. A real treat. They were nestled amongst a lot of other plants, and trying to get them isolated was a bit difficult, so I used several different approaches. One worked fairly well, although not quite as well as bringing the flowers into the studio and shooting a controlled still life. Still, I think the results of the field shot are reasonably acceptable. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /13.

12 Sep 11. The submission for today is an HDR composite of three shots. The camera was pointed directly into the sun which generally makes for a less than satisfactory image, but by incorporating a couple of tricks you can make such a scene more than acceptable. The first is to place the sun directly behind an object, such as in this instance, a tree, and the other is to take multiple exposures (bracketing in the jargon of film) incorporating just the best exposure of each frame into a single image. Of course the HDR software makes that really easy, allowing me to become lazy, and getting the sun directly behind something just takes a little positioning assuming there is something available to put between you and 'ol Sol. This shot was taken while working on the sunset shot I sent earlier, and I sandwiched a series of these in-between the shots of the mountains. Now the original set had a very light, almost white, area at the top which I could have left in for teaching purposes, but I figured it would make a much better image without and I could simple indicate that it was there originally. The discerning eye may notice what looks like a lot of vertical noise mid photo; it is how this compositing rendered the trees in the distance. I thought about smoothing it out but decided that as it is a bit of a creative type image that I would just leave it in; you can always do that part if you desire. Now as you all know I really like working with back lighting, and this image should help to demonstrate why. Without the back lighting you would miss both the cobwebs and the fine structure of the needles, both of which are tending to glow with this type of lighting. If you haven't done a bit of work using this approach, I strongly encourage you to give it a try. ISO 200; 1/400 sec (middle of three) @ f / 7.1.

13 Sep 11. After setting a record number of days of temps over 80 for September, it couldn't stand it any longer and Monday turned to overcast for most of the day with fog and finally some limited sunshine in the late afternoon, but it brought the temps back into the 60s which those of us in the PNW call normal. The trip across the sound Monday a.m. in that gloomy overcast brought back memories of a shot captured a year ago which I've dug out for today's submission. It was taken on a similar gloomy morning but with a momentary breakout of the sun, causing a passing freighter to be nicely silhouetted. Of course the topic for today is obviously that of creating silhouettes, an easy way to show your subject without having to worry much about critical lighting, noise, and to a lesser degree sharpness (silhouettes are, after all, totally black). Of course all detail is lost, but detail is often not needed; the outline conveys all the necessary information. You might compare it with your peripheral vision which doesn't give you sharp detail but causes you to bring your eye directly to the object such that you do get the necessary detail, a topic we could explore in detail later if anyone is interested. It is the sunlight that is producing both the silhouettes (pilings, birds, and ship) and the entire image for that matter, without which there would just be a very dark seascape, but it is the silhouettes that make the image interesting. Without them one would give the image a cursory look and move on, but with them the eye stops to inquire as to what is there and as such keeps it in the image. It may want to look at everything there, but it will keep coming back to those silhouettes. See if that isn't the case. ISO 250; 1/400 sec @ f /11.

14 Sep 11. No NWCCC sponsored trip to Mt Baker this year, but another is planned for the last week of September next year. One can only pray for weather next year making the last weekend of September a good color time. So for this year I either have to work off last year's trip or make a trip of my own up there in a few weeks. Chances are I'll do both. Meanwhile I got autumn color stuff on the brain, and I do believe this weekend will be my second trip to Mt Rainier, this time to visit the southwest side to try my luck there. I'm hoping it will prove to be an even better trip than that to the northeast side. Now, since I've got this mountain thing running through my head, lets go with a mountain image for today. But this one has been passed through a filter to convert it into something akin to an oil painting. The closest I've ever come to doing an oil painting was in my youth and the paintings were called paint-by-number, came in a box, and didn't look all that great even when I tried to work on them meticulously. Now to be fair, this is not all that different except that the original base image is mine, the numbers I played with were numbered sliders in a piece of software, and the results are somewhat better, at least to my eye. The original was taken at Artist's Point at the terminal end of the Mt Baker Scenic Highway in WA State, which is about as hard to get to as walking across the street. I did do a wee bit of climbing along a trail with perhaps a 150 elevation at best, but even Grandma could easily make the trek. So without further fanfare, here is my rendition of Mt Shuksan and surrounding landscape in oil. ISO 400; 1/200 sec @ f / 9.

15 Sep 11. As I was looking for something for today, it dawned on me that it was about time I clean out the collection of ready to go images and get the set to something consisting primarily of images less than 4 months old, and in the process I came across a group of 2 two year old images that more than anything else, were images with a nostalgic character about them. I've selected one of them for today's offering. Just before going on active duty as an officer in 1977, there appeared on the book market the first of a series of books called Gnome, all of which my bride just had to have. I believe that those volumes are still in our collection, although I would be hard pressed to quickly put my hands on any of them. The "fad,' as I called it, for things "Gnome" lasted until the early 80s, and has apparently returned to some small degree if the 30th anniversary edition of one of the books means anything. Now I think they are rather cute, and having one book about them is fine, but every book about them is a bit much. That said, it may be that it is me who is in the minority, as it happens that a local farmer on Fir Island has painted a gigantic Gnome on the side of his building. The painting is one you can't miss, assuming you are traveling east on Fir Island Road which takes you to I-5. I've passed it many times, but on one occasion it got the better of me, and I was forced to stop and take a few frames of it. They turned out O.K., but I would say a bit boring, that is, until I ran them through one of my filters. Now we have a truly whimsical Gnome, one in fact that might have even been employed in his youth in Tumwater, WA making Olympia Beer. ISO 320; 1/320 sec @ f / 8.

16 Sep 11. As I sit here trying to arrange a trip this Saturday to Mt Rainier for multiple folks I find myself getting more and more frustrated with a participant who is not coordinating with us any further than to say I want to go. It may well end up being just that, a desire. Thinking back to the trip we took in 2007 to Grand Tetons & Yellowstone National Parks with the Gaithersburg Camera Club in MD I am amazed now, as I was then, at how well it was totally coordinated and how smoothly everything went, and that was with almost 20 folks, with some from WA and CA in addition to those from MD. While I thought I appreciated all the leaders did then, this little exercise is making me all the more appreciative for what they accomplished! It was a good trip, and although the weather overall was roughly equal parts rain and sunshine, we still got lots of great material and opportunities. Along our travel route from Seattle we passed through Swan Valley and the Targhee National Forest in Idaho, a place we'd never before been or even knew about. Stopped at a pullout to shoot some fall foliage, another photographer asked if I had seen the Beartooth Maples, which I hadn't, and when I said no his comment was "you've got to see them," and he then gave us directions. Fortunately the directions he gave us were the route we were already taking, so it was easy to go find them. Except that once we were there, it was such a spectacular sight that it was hard to press onward to our destination. A member of the NWCCC was telling me last Saturday he was headed in that same direction and I asked him if he knew of them, which he didn't, so I passed on the info and suggested he try his luck at getting them in full display. I'll be interested to see what he gets upon his return. Our visit was just a bit after prime time, but the display was sufficient that I've not yet forgotten it. ISO 100; 1/640 sec @ f / 5; D200.

19 Sep 11. This is another image from the first trip to Mt Rainier taken around 1900 shortly before the sun was to settle behind the hills for the evening. I was somewhat interested in the old log that was projecting out from a bit of land and looking, at least to my eye, as though it were projecting out of the landscape towards me. My initial thoughts were not of viewing it as a 3-D object, but rather as an interesting piece of contrasting material, but after getting the image out of the camera and looking at it critically on screen, I began to see it as a pseudo 3-D object, and as such tried to adjust the overall lighting (contrast) such as to make it "appear" to be coming right out at you from the screen. Depending on both your screen's resolution and your own perspective, you may, or may not, see what I'm describing. The entire illusion, to the degree that there is such, is the result of the light hitting the log plus the change in color from bright to dark at the proximal end. This was truly a lucky encounter as I was primarily working the lakes for reflections when I just happened to notice the light striking the log and decided to see what I could do with it. ISO 320; 1/200 sec @ f / 8.

20 Sep 11. Last May the NWCCC sponsored a photo shoot in Seattle called "A Day in Seattle." I had the privilege of co-chairing and generally setting up the specifics of the event. It was a fun day, but one that was a wee bit on both the cold and cloudy side. But cloudy can make for some very nicely saturated colors and I chose to work primarily with colorful things, like signs and large pieces of artwork in the form of statues and totem poles, or similar objects. Downtown Seattle has a lot of outdoor artwork from which to select and so it was sorta fun to just wander around and shoot various things as they stuck my imagination. In the center of Pioneer Square there is a memorial to our Seattle firefighters, and even though I've worked the subject prior, I thought it would be fun to see what I could come up with in an HDR composite. This image is just that, made from a set of five shots and one in which I've attempted to keep it looking as realistic as I could while still giving it a bit of stylization. I have exaggerated the details just a tad (that which is primarily responsible for the HDR "look") and given it a very slight color shift to emphasize the bronze tones of the statuary. Other than that it is pretty much straight from the camera. ISO 200; 1/125 sec (middle of 5) @ f / 9.

21 Sep 11. I thought that I had shared an image of Seattle's Smith Tower a while back, but in looking through the collection of images sent from the beginning I can't find such, so I guess all I did was talk about it. To save repeating all the info about it, you can just click the link in blue if you are curious (and you certainly should be). While wandering around the Pioneer Square area of the city on the NWCCC outing, I decided that I'd try capturing a shot of it with little to no interference from traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. That took the better part of 15 minutes and even then I wasn't totally successful, although I limited the damage to just 2 cars, one of which appears twice, and will give you a hint as to what kind of image this is.Of course, getting the actual building to look like it really does is a real challenge without the use of a view camera or a very expensive shift and tilt lens, neither of which I have available, so I had to resort to some software trickery to make the building appear straight up and down without rendering the rest of the buildings into something grotesque. To do this I employed an old friend, the free transform tool, and carefully "adjusted" the image to render the main subject straight and tall, then further manipulated it to bring the remaining fixtures into a proper perspective. The slanting building in the lower left of the frame actually is level, but as you are viewing it from the bottom of a relatively steep hill, it looks to be going downhill even to your naked eye. It being a rather stormy and gray day, I chose to convert the original color image to B&W which I feel gives the entire setting both character and strength. ISO 200; 1/641 sec (middle of 5 exposures) @ f / 9.

22 Sep 11. If architectural photography is something in which you are interested, Seattle ought to be on your list of places to visit. There is likely no city in the U.S. with a more varied set of building styles and designs, period. A marvelous mixture of the very old is complimented by some very interesting and daring modern designs. Perhaps the most photographed building in the city, aside from the Space Needle and now the Experience Music building(s) in the Seattle Center, home of the '62 World's Fair, would be the Seattle Public Library main branch building. This bold design combining metal lattice work and glass with color offers a different face throughout the day literally changing as the sun makes its orbit across the sky, clouds or otherwise. The design is continued within making the interior a lessor representation of the exterior, although for my taste it is not nearly as interesting save for a couple of isolated spots. Still one could literally spend an entire day working the subject and not tire of the myriad of possibilities provided between sunrise and sunset. This May shot was taken at roughly 1300 PDT which equates to the noon sun time, the time of day when you hear that you should never be taking photos; however, I rather like the effect that the noon light was providing giving everything a pastel feel. I could of course have increased the contrast but for this image but I felt that the more subtle color was more effective. Those of you who are puzzle fans may find this a fun image to use for a puzzle. ISO 200; 1/641 sec (middle of 5) @ f / 6.3.

23 Sep 11. Another image from the Day in Seattle outing for today and one which serves to illustrate, hopefully well, the concept of the vanishing point. Seattle has relatively "recently" added a passenger only (foot ferry) service to its vehicular service for those wanting to commute across Puget Sound. The outing was my first time to see it, and in truth, didn't actually even realize what it was I was photographing until I got around to working on the images shot that day. Vanishing points serve to give us size relationships, distance, scale, and most obviously, draw our eyes to a specific location.There are multiple sets of vanishing points working in this image, of which my favorite are the arching light poles. Added to those are the superstructure, the railing, the decking, and, to a lesser degree, the clouds, all of which should make you focus on the ferry, small though it may be. I spotted the vessel a ways out and then got into position such that the boat had to come directly under the curved light poles. It could have been a better shot had I caught the boat just a few seconds later requiring some considerable editing, but it was getting larger quite rapidly and I was quickly loosing my desired result. I tried some shots with the boat further back and thus smaller but it rendered the vessel so small as to totally loose the effect. I gave some thought about cloning out the last two "offending" light poles which would have made a more perfect composition, but decided against it primarily because I don't have a good example of a very small ferry to use to fill in the removed portions correctly. As it was, the original required a fair amount of straightening to get this "correct" look ISO 200; 1/500 sec (middle of 5) @ f/11.

24 Sep 11. While subbing on Thur & Fri of this week I noticed a rather nice retaining wall outside this newly remodeled school which was "crawling" with some lovely vines. Portions were turning a vivid red and most of the rest were a vibrant green. I thought the wall with the vines would make a nice image, but I didn't have the camera with me and, even if I had, the crowds of students would have made the shot all but impossible. So Jan and I went there this afternoon, and with NO kiddies anywhere near, I was able to get several nice images. The wall runs in two portions along the entire length of a city block, with a break in the middle for the steps to the school. As it turned out, each of the images I took would stand on their own quite nicely, but I thought that putting them together to show off 1/2 of the wall would make for a much nicer presentation, so that's just what I've done. This is the western half of the retaining wall that fronts Hamilton International 6-8. ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 5 for each of the 5 images that make up the panel.

26 Sep 11. In all the years I've been visiting Mt Rainier, I've never stopped at a small little river with associated falls called Paradise River that is literally just yards from where the road from Reflection Lakes joins the main route to Paradise. I've passed by it every time I've visited the lakes, but never took the time to look it over, until last week when we visited in the rainy weather. It was just beginning to go south, weather wise, when we stopped, and upon looking over the little bridge area separating the road from the water, I was simply amazed at what I was seeing. Not exactly sure what I was looking at, but raven black rocks with veins of what looks like gold to me running through them! I tried to get a good representation of what I was seeing but in the end, even though I tried several different approaches, failed to capture exactly what I was "seeing." Of course a lot of that can be attributed to one's personal experience, which often is hard to convey, so here is the best representation I can share with you of that sight. The water coursing over the rocks wasn't more than 6 inches deep, and in some places not that, so large portions of the rock bed were just slightly wet. I'm sure the situation changes with the time of year, but last week there wasn't much water flowing, at least in Paradise River. Next trip I have some ideas I want to incorporate when I try my hand at it again. ISO 400; 1/20 sec hand held @ f / 5.

27 Sep 11. Whether it be the weed in the sidewalk, the tree in the side of a rock cliff, or any such similar activity, I have always been amazed at the ability of plant life to break down those things in the world that seem impenetrable. I know I'm not alone in this area as I can think of a few songs where this activity has been central to the theme of the story being told by the singer. It is a reassuring thing to know that eventually, no matter what we construct, nature will eventually render it back to its original beginnings. Of course we won't be around to see it happen fully, but it will happen with time as has been wonderfully documented in the book 1491. The image for today is of a stone retaining wall supporting the road near Paradise in Mt Rainier and shows the very early beginnings of the process. How these plants ever get their initial foothold on a shear wall like this is just amazing, but you can see it happening all over the park. I rather assume that it can be seen as either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on personal perspective, but I see it mostly as reminder that nothing man made will endure for long in the big picture. ISO 320; 1/250 sec @ f / 8.

28 Sep 11. About the time I started house sitting this past summer I noticed a pond that I have to pass to get there was beginning to sport a nice crop of water lilies, and as I like to photograph these lovely plants I kept a close watch on the progression of the flowering. At what I thought was their peak I took a\ couple evenings and spent some time trying to shoot them. Not the easiest task as the pond is on the side of a very busy road. To further complicate things there is little parking and once parked you are very close to both the road and the fence surrounding the property containing the pond. So you have to shoot at road's edge, through a fence, and with considerable competing vegetation between you and your subject. But that just made it a good challenge and over the course of a about three attempts I came up with a couple of shots I rather liked, especially so due to a few of the blossoms being considerably more red that the more typical yellow, pink, purple, or white. A couple of dragon flies would have been really been a nice addition but as none were present I would have had to fake then and that I didn't want to do. ISO 200; 1/200 sec @ f / 6.3.

29 Sep 11. Those of you who keep track of the images I send will likely recognize this shot as being very similar to one I shared a couple of months back. It is in fact another from a series of shots taken of the same insect on the same piece of clover. This time I've zoomed in a bit closer and done significantly more cropping out of the green background. The initial impact will be that the bee and clover are much larger when in fact they are only slightly larger, the effect being attained by forcing the clover head with bee to full fill the frame. If your original image is sharp enough to withstand a large amount of cropping, this is a cheap trick for simulating the use of a long telephoto. You won't get quite the distance compression that is a tell tail sign of a long tele, but for images of this type it doesn't really matter. This approach is best accomplished on a tripod with a subject that is not moving else the incorporation of a very fast shutter speed to ensure critical sharpness in at least one plane of the image. ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f /10.

30 Sep 11. As I was scrolling through the files for sharing, I noticed for the first time, although I've done this many times prior, that one set of originals and modified demonstrated very nicely, albeit in an exaggerated form, the texture and contours of the plant. I was actually a bit surprised as I'd never really noticed it before even though I've looked at the images many times. Sorta suggesting to me, at least, that there may be far more to see than what we observe in a casual look After spending a few minutes going over the creative image (I'm sharing both this time), I went back and studied the original more carefully. When I did I was amazed at how much more I saw in the plant. See if you find the same thing. ISO 400; 1/500 sec @ f / 6.3.