Daily Image - Jul 2013 Archive

01 Jul 13. Three weeks ago on the visit to Sequim where we saw the mother Bald Eagle feeding her chick, we also had the pleasure of driving around enjoying the view of both the Straights of Juan deFuca on our north and some lovely homes on our south. As we were passing by one home I couldn't help but be reminded of a 70s CSN&Y song titled "Our House" which I'm certain all of you in my age group will immediately remember. The lyrics that popped into my head were ".. .with two cats in the yard . . ." although in this particular situation it wasn't a cat or cats that caught my eye but a lovely Black Tail Doe that was sitting very stately about 15 feet from the road alongside a nice hedge. She was having an enjoyable time just resting there watching all the cars go by which reminded me of yet another song (. . .standing on a corner watching all the . . . .) released by both Dean Martin and then later by the Four Lads, a Canadian group. I stopped the SUV and backed up a bit to get a few images of her watching us. It seemed as though she understood what I was trying to accomplish as she gave me several different poses from which to select for today's image. Other than some tight cropping, this shot is basically straight from the camera. Zoom in and take a close look at those lashes; she could be the envy of many a cover girl. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/160 sec @ f 8.

02 Jul 13. With 6 major low tides (lower than -2.0) in a 4 week period, it should not have been surprising that the beach at Golden Gardens was relatively picked over when we visited last Monday for the -3.7 tide. The normal complement of a dozen or more feeding Great Blue Herons was down to about 5, and even they didn't stick around all that long. We spent about two hours walking among the rocks looking for something we haven't seen multiple times prior and were completely skunked. Still, it is always nice to be communicating with nature, even if you have to, reluctantly, share it with multiple dozens of others. When we initially arrived there was a small gathering of herons that allowed us to approach quite close, perhaps within 20 feet if we wanted to get wet, and more like 40 if we didn't; we didn't. But from that distance it was easy to simply stand still and watch them hunt. Now, if you've never seen one hunt, you have little appreciation for how fast they go from a striking position to the actual strike, with it requiring either video or a lucky press of the shutter to capture that very fleeting moment. Pressing the shutter at the moment of strike generally results in sufficient camera movement to render the capture useless if handheld due to the simple movement associated with pressing the shutter, plus the fatigue of keeping one's eye glued against the eyepiece. If using a tripod mounted camera you have a slightly better chance since you can be watching without having to manipulate the camera, just the cable release. Still, it is a chancy thing to get the ideal shot. Although this isn't ideal, it is the best one of the day shooting hand held on a not too productive morning for the hunters. This is a cropped image onto which I've added a single duped layer in which I've "painted" in some amount of texture enhancement to the splash, but nothing else. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f /10.

03 Jul 13. The 15th century's attributes for the ideal surgeon went something like "The eyes of an eagle, the heart of a lion, and the hands of a woman." The T.V. drama, Dr. Kildare, that ran from 1961 - 66, began each episode with something similar, but somehow I think that they had four attributes as a logo displayed in a 2x2 matrix. The eye of an eagle part always intrigued me, and has to this day from the perspective of how a bird flying a few hundred to a thousand feet or more in the air can spot some small prey moving across the ground. In the last couple of years, playing around with digital software as I have, I've come to the conclusion that one way the birds could do it is by having the ability to see things with increased micro contrast. To make this concept a bit more obvious, think about the images I've been sharing with you in which I've stated that I've enhanced the micro contrast (detail) somewhat. In particular, consider the cloud images. Whenever I adjust the micro contrast even a small bit, you can see far greater detail in the subject. Being able to do this real time with the eye/brain combo would allow for far better identification of what was being observed. Any of you having a background in ophthalmology feel welcome to comment. Having messed up and missed sharing a B&W image for Tue, I'm going with one for today, albeit a day late. Lacking the distraction of color, you are forced to look at variations in contrast only - in this case the different hues of gray from black to white - to make out the detail in the subject. As such, I'm wagering you will see far more detail in this chunk of petrified ginko than you would had I presented it to you in full color. Further, since I've tweaked the detail some, you can see far more structure than you would had I left it as shot. With that in mind, I think you may perhaps find some credence in the idea of contrast enhancement as an aid to improved vision. This image was created by first cropping to remove unnecessary elements, then given some contrast enhancement, next converted to B&W, and finally had some selective noise reduction applied to control the enhancement. Four layers total; each rather easy to do. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /11.

04 Jul 13. Happy 4th of July everyone; I hope you celebrate it well while we still can. I had given some considerable thought to going with a flag image of some kind for today, but decided instead that I would go with something else as it is both the 4th as well as Theatrical Thursday, and I didn't want to mess with the flag. While demonstrating how I do these creative images on Wed afternoon, I created this one as an example of how easy it is to do. It obviously doesn't contain the traditional red, white, and blue colors as our flag, but I thought the hues of blue and red close enough to suffice and that the soft portions could represent the movement of a flag waving in the breeze. Hopefully symbolic in its own way, even if one that is purely creative. Three layers: background or base, a second for the creative effect, and the third one I used for cropping. That was all there was to it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f /6.3 with fill flash.

05 Jul 13. Eglon Road is a very short run traversing barely 1.5 miles in total. The first mile travels east off of Hansville Road and makes a 90 degree turn heading south at what was known at one time as Johanson's corner. It then travels less than a half mile before once again turning east and having a name change. It is a bit unique in that for almost its entire length it divides land that has been used for farming since it was built. While there is farming activities along the neighboring and adjoining roads, none have the farm density as does Eglon Road. At the 90 degree bend was my grandparents home which now is occupied by a family that seems to be either raising or boarding horses. At the end where it changes name resides the farm you are viewing today, still owned by members of the original family that homesteaded here at the turn of the last century. Assuming that the smoke from all the fireworks last night has blown somewhere else, this is the view you should be able to see today. It is still used for raising beef, and if you look closely you will see a lone beast a bit right of dead center in the image, its meadow mates somewhere off up in the trees. I've done a small amount of cloud enhancement to this shot but otherwise straight out of the camera. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; 1/640 sec @ f/10.

08 Jul 13. Our local dahlia growers association annually plants a large garden of dahlias in front of and at the northern end of the Silverdale Post Office parking lot and another small garden in front of the Port Gamble Post Office. Both gardens are there to promote the association and encourage folks to grow these lovely large insect attracting flowers. Last year I had a great time shooting the flowers with their busy pollinators steadily at work. While we were attending a medieval program earlier this spring at Port Gamble, we purchased a couple dozen of the tubers in hopes that I could have my own shooting gallery next to the house sometime this summer. So far about half the tubers have sprouted so I'm hoping that I actually may have such an opportunity later in the summer. Meanwhile, I still have the two gardens to go visit and neither is very far away. This is a shot from last year at the Silverdale garden of a busy bee working to ensure that there would be another crop to shoot. I masked out the flower, then inverted the mask to allow for desired blurring of the background, and added just a bit of grain to the blurred background for improved contrast. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 9.

09 Jul 13. Although it being B&W Tuesday, I thought I'd go with something just a tiny bit different but which still qualifies for the category. My cousin, the one who has the farm I frequently photograph and who graciously lets me play farmer every haying season, even though I'm certain I'm more of a pest than anything else, is married to a lady who loves all things blue, and apparently from her collection of things blue, the bluer the better, and even more so if made of glass. This past 4th of July she was presented with a six pack of Bud Light Platinum, five empties and one still unopened. In the empties were stuffed some flowers and the carton presented as a center piece for one of the tables. I took the centerpiece and removed the six bottles arranging then on the seawall in front of their house to try and capture something that I felt she might appreciate. I have no idea if that occurred, because I didn't like what I got. So in an effort to try and salvage something from the shoot, I selected the best of the group and severely cropped the image, then isolated the bottles and their shadows, and played with just them. After isolating the bottles and shadows, I inverted the selection to just get at the background and fully blurred it. Then I reselected the bottles and shadows and increased the saturation of the blue as well as brightened it a bit. The next step was to convert it to a B&W image but in such a manner as to leave just a bit of the blue turning the bottles and their shadows into a blue-black vs pure black. Then I gave it a grungy frame and finished that off with a white vignette sufficiently large to affect the entire image. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 9.

10 Jul 13. Walking around Pt Townsend last Saturday with the cherubs in tow, Jan found some interesting stores to peruse while I went looking for something interesting to photograph. I found a spot that looked promising, but a few too many people got in the way and so I simply wandered to a different section of the location to try my hand at shooting a few flowers. At first I was rather disappointed at what I was seeing, but as I worked my way around the display I came to a large grouping of Crocosmia, a native plant of South Africa, a flower I really like, and one which resides in the small garden in the front of our house, only ours has yet to bloom and these were in full glory. As I was attempting to get the composition I desired, I heard a sound that is quite common coming from our rear deck and took my eye from the viewfinder to see a pair of what I believe were Ruby Throated Hummingbirds enjoying the flowers even more than I. As this pair was actually remaining at the flowers longer than a micro second, and not fighting with each other, I decided that I'd work with the birds as my main subject and not the flowers. I got a couple dozen usable shots, all somewhat similar, yet each different, and chose, well, Jan chose, this one to share for today. I've cropped away a lot of foliage, cloned out a couple annoying spots, added a wee bit of detail enhancement to just the bird, and softened the background via a noise reduction layer some to highlight the little gal. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 7.1.

11 Jul 13. As I exited the SUV in preparation to play farmer last week I noticed a rather bright grouping of poppies playing hide and seek with some grass on a mound of dirt next to the vehicle. My attempts at isolating the flowers from their surroundings were not as successful as I desired, but even though the flowers themselves were not thoroughly isolated, their color still showed through with dazzling brilliance, so I decided to use the color of the flowers as the theme of an image, as opposed to shape and texture. To accomplish this I first cropped the image to get the aspect I wanted, removing a large amount of competing material in the process, then I adjusted the saturation of the flower's color to make certain that it was the dominate aspect of the image. I then made a dupe layer on which I ran a filter to get a creative result whose opacity was then adjusted (decreased) to allow the underlying color layer to dominate. The result is an image that gives you some idea of both the color of the flowers in the evening light as well as their movement in the evening breeze. Perhaps useful for wrapping paper. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /9.

12 Jul 13. About a 15 minute drive from where we used to live in MD was a group of three fields of roughly 20 acres each in which the state game department planted sunflowers. Now the sunflowers were not planted for the sake of having some lovely flowers, birds, bees, butterflies and other creatures to enjoy and photograph, which we greatly did, but rather for their seeds. The seeds were not harvested by humans but by doves, which in turn were harvested by hunters, the reason for the planting of the flowers. Photographing the critters was a joy as well as a struggle, for it always occurred in the middle of summer with temps in the 90s and humidity to match. But the bounty was so great as to make it worth enduring the weather for several shoots each year. My last shoot presented me with a series of photos I didn't realize I had until I started looking at them on the computer, and then I was amazed at what I saw. Initially I didn't understand what I was seeing, but a bit of sleuthing on the web told the story. What I had captured was an assassin bug in the act. I had not heard of such a creature and was delighted with my "find" only to come upon a couple of the critters in my yard a few days hence. Likely they had been around all the time but I had just never noticed them. Then, like purchasing a new vehicle, you see them everywhere. This one has captured a bumblebee and is in the process of sucking out its insides while the bee is attempting, unsuccessfully, to fatally sting the assassin bug. Take a good gander at the stinger of that bee; it will give you an idea why they are so successful at impaling us mortals when they desire to so do. I've cropped the original some to just concentrate on the attack scene, and added a bit of contrast enhancement on the insects, but otherwise done nothing more to the photo. Nikon D200; 105mm macro; ISO 200; 1/80 sec @ f / 5 on a tripod.

15 Jun 13. It being that time of the year for harvesting the grass/grain crops, at least in this neck of the woods, and having not as of yet shared a single HDR image, I figured it was time to address both with an HDR composite of 4 images to create this shot of the god rays filtering in through the boards in the barn and bouncing off all the particulate matter in the air resultant from a combination of tractor exhaust and hay dust. There are two things that make you aware of just how much material is in the air when working with the haying process and one of them is seeing it via the light streaming inside an enclosed area which traps it and the other is breathing it. One makes for interesting photos, the other does not. So we shall stay with the filtered light approach. The beam running across the center of the shot is something I would prefer to not have in the image, but from the position I was having to occupy to shoot on this particular evening it was unavoidable. My cousin's two daughters were stacking the hay in the lower RH corner of the images so I had to remove them but otherwise this is basically the full capture. The 4 individual frames were combined into one, then I added some contrast enhancement to accentuate the beams of light. Finally I added a curves layer to adjust the overall contrast just a bit. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/4 sec @ f / 7.1 (middle of five exposures) on a tripod.

16 Jun 13 . At what I believe to be the NE end of the business section of Water Street in Port Townsend sits this unusual hunk of rusted out iron that I think may have been a heater for some form of boat decades ago. It looks like something I have seen on a smaller scale in a boat at the Center for Wooden Boats in Lake Union, so I'm basing my identification of what it may be on what I've seen there. In any event it needed to be photographed where it was and then a decision made as to what one might do with it. The original was very busy, so much so that the original photo as taken was useful for nothing more than perhaps identifying the object. But I wanted to do more with it, so I tried several approaches. For B&W Tuesday I came up with what you see today, but I did some other things with it I'll likely also share. To get to what you are seeing I did several things. First I cropped and cloned the image to remove several very distracting elements. Next I isolated the object, inverted that selection to grab just the background, then applied a strong Gaussian blur to it so as to make it drop out of contention for your eye. I then added some strong detail enhancement to bring out both the texture of the rust as well as the lost detail in the door at the top left and the domed screen at the top which is where I think the heat would have escaped. Then it was converted to B&W and the B&W conversion tweaked to get the look I wanted. Finally I applied a bit of noise reduction to just the background to make it drop out even more. Finally, it was converted to an sRGB gamut for sharing with you over the web. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 7.1.

17 Jul 13. While waiting for our local snail mail office to open a few days back, I had an opportunity to shoot some botany images at the neighboring hardware store in the early morning light, or lack thereof, depending on the moment. Among the many hanging baskets located in the garden area were several containing fuchsias. These very lovely plants are among many whose beauty I routinely enjoy trying to capture, especially the blossoms as they dangle over the sides of the containers. On this particular morning the light was such that fill flash worked perfectly to provide just the right amount of frontal lighting without blowing out the texture of the petals while allowing the background, where it showed through, to go black. This image has been cropped from the full frame to display just the four flowers; I then added a wee bit of contrast enhancement, and called it quits. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 8 with fill flash hand held.

18 Jul 13. For Theatrical Thursday I'm returning to the same base image I used for B&W Tuesday, but this time I've taken an entirely different approach, and attempted to turn the original object into something just a bit different; a fire hydrant like looking object. The approach I've used was to employ a filter to give the image a torn paper collage look, a form of art which, while I find it interesting, isn't something that you are likely to find adorning any of our walls. Still, I thought I might be able to transform the original into something appealing and the torn paper look was one I thought would work well. It took several layers of preparation to clean up the image such that just the old heater would play a role, but once that was done, the application of the filter created the torn paper look. I then did a bit of contrast manipulation to get the end result. In so doing, I've simplified the image into sky, land, water, sea wall, object, and ground panes, but hopefully with the main object retaining a bit of a three dimensional look; i.e, being a ways forward of the sea wall. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 7.1.

19 Jul 13. While we were enjoying the very low tide back in June, I noticed this one GB heron with a gunnel in its bill that was red, as opposed to every other one I'd seen prior that was green. I thought it a bit odd that this one was red, but really didn't give it much more thought. As I was preparing to send this out, I did a search for gunnel and found a page of photos of the critter, along with a lot of other junk, that showed more images of red than green ones. So it would appear that the red ones aren't so unusual, just that we've never seen one before. This image is straight from the camera, although I've cropped off some around the edges that didn't add anything to the composition. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f /10.

22 Jul 13. After picking up all the bales of hay the other evening, it was decided that it was time to band (neuter) the bull calves, as they were getting stronger by the day and the combination of wrestling with the calf and fending off a concerned mom was not going to be getting easier as time passed. The first one was only about two days old and although not easily banded, wasn't extremely difficult either. The second one was over a week old and proved to be a more difficult task. In addition, the entire herd came to give him moral support which made mom an even more aggressive (protective) parent. Everything was accomplished without injury unless you consider one's loss of male-hood an injury in which case there were two injured calves. On the way to band the second calf - we had to follow/coax/chase him up to the barn - I grabbed this image of the injury location. Aside from adding some small amount of contrast enhancement to the barn and silo to feature the beautiful textures in both, the image is not altered. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f / 6.3.

23 Jul 13. On our last stop at the lavender farms I wandered away from the rows of lavender to a small pond at one end of the farm. in one corner was a group of perhaps 20 lily pads and four or so blooms. None were situated so as to provide for a clean shot, so I did my best to minimize the number of green stalks protruding upward across the flowers and then cropped the resulting images to get rid of as much of them as I could. That resulted in some small loss of flower, but I felt the loss was acceptable and it got rid of the annoying stalks.A very straight image for B&W Tuesday with the exception of the print-like border. This started obviously as a color image but I applied a B&W filter to get the result you are seeing. I'll likely share the full color version on another day; note the visitors on the flower. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1250 sec @ f / 9.

24 Jul 13. One of our, or at least my, favorite lavender farms has several patches of poppies that I really like to shoot. Each year this farm has offered different opportunities for shooting these brilliant red flowers sitting atop large green stalks, but this year was an exception. Instead of red flowers waving in the occasional breeze, there was group after group of seed-heads siting atop brown to green stalks bouncing about in the steady wind, sometime gusting to above 25 knots. Since all the flowers were gone, and just the seedpods remained, I decided to inquire as to the possibility of purchasing some seeds for our garden. I was politely informed that since these were the real opium poppies, and as they had been planted there by the birds, and not the farming family, the govt was kindly letting them keep them to brighten up the farm but that they were not allowed to sell or propagate them in any way. In fact, were it not for the fact that the birds had planted them, the govt wouldn't have allowed them to keep them. So sorry, they couldn't sell me any. So I said thanks, "guess I'll just have to make like a bird." That said, I found my way back to where the poppies were standing and, making like a bird, plucked a few seed pods. When we got home I emptied them out getting perhaps 1000+ seeds for our garden. Now it simply remains to see how well they grow. Then next year we can all have a great time rolling our own. I've cropped the original significantly, selectively masked and blurred the background, and enhanced the texture on selected stalks and seedpods to achieve this look. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1/1000 sec @ f / 8.

25 Jul 13. As part of our Lavender Festival exercise we concluded our day with a drive up to Deer Park. Having been told that it was a lovely sight to see, and that there were large numbers of deer to see and even feed from your hand, we thought it would be the fitting end to the day. Little did we realize at the start of the drive that the final portion of the approach would be 8 miles of very bad and twisty road. When we finally got to the top we located a single deer, who refused to even turn around and look at us, and some very limited, but majestic nonetheless scenery. During an earlier portion of the drive we had seen13 deer reasonably close up, so this one critter didn't make up for the long drive. As difficult as the drive up was, it was nothing in comparison to the downhill return portion which we did with a horribly dusty windscreen and and evening sunlight glaring off it. I had to stop the vehicle several times as the glare completely blinded my vision and I had no idea where I was on that 1.5 lane road. Had we not had the cherubs, I do believe I would have stopped several other times to shoot the absolutely beautiful back lit alpine flowers, but with them in the car I wasn't comfortable so doing. Just prior to starting our return portion of the trip Jan spotted a clump of Sitka valeriana which appeared as though being highlighted by Super Troupers so intense was the back lighting. I took several shots but didn't really like what I got well enough to share straight from the camera, so I manipulated my favorite of the set and converted it to a water color which I do like quite a lot. So, to achieve what I have, I cropped the original to isolate just one triad of the flowers, added a small amount of detail enhancement, and and adjusted the overall contrast to recover a small amount of detail in the strongest portions of the back lit stalks. That was then converted to get the water color look. D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 9.

26 Jul 13. Something totally different for today's submission in that it is provided for you to make up your own story. Two seagulls; one sitting on a rock, part of the sea wall,, and the other in flight approaching it. There are several stories that I could come up with, a couple of which might be that they are parent and chick and it's feeding time, or that one is defending "its" rock from the other. But that is just a starting point. So you have a little fun and write your version for today. I've cropped the original a bit, and added some very slight structure enhancement to the feathers, but that's it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/2000 sec @ f / 7.1

29 Jul 13. With a weekend of lovely weather, and lots of activities going on in the greater community, it was a perfect setting for taking advantage of some of the flora offerings. We visited one arts and crafts fair which I'll write about later in the week and followed that up with a visit to one of our two favorite nurseries, one close enough that we could walk if we were certain we wouldn't be purchasing something, an experience we've yet to encounter. Not having time to work over any of the weekend stuff, this shot is from a couple weeks back taken in the same garden where I shot the humming bird. This little gal was hard at work and spent the better part of a full minute working over this particular daisy. Not sure what this blossom offered over the others, but she was intent on going over it several times before moving on to another flower. This shot could be cropped a bit tighter if you like, but my intent was to showcase both the entirety of the flower as well as the bee. I've added just a small amount of structure enhancement in addition to the cropping, otherwise, it is pretty much as the camera captured it. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/1250 sec @ f / 7.1.

30 Jul 13. A very simple and straight forward B&W for this week's submission. At the end of the road into Deer Park resides a series of camping sites, some for campers, some for tenters, but nothing for the larger vehicles. Several of the sites were in use when we finally arrived, but there were more open than occupied, which I found somewhat surprising. While we found the drive to not be worth it on that visit, I'm thinking it just might be now that I know what to expect and how to better approach the visit. The problem I see in so doing is that it might take a couple of visits to get to that point and it is a bit of a pain to get there. But the potential is seemingly great, based on just what we did see on that very brief visit. At the spot where we turned around to return home, the site of that painting image I sent earlier, the view is what I'm sharing today. It being a monochrome image, you'll have to imagine the deep blue sky, vivid greens in the foreground, and brown to white trees. And a bit of a white moon to boot. If I had taken the time to get out of the vehicle and wander around, I'm rather certain there were views that would be even more spectacular. So my gut feeling is that I'll wind up, sooner or later, giving it another go. And I'll wager all of you who have been there prior are going to say "yes, you should give it another chance." Perhaps this fall will be that time. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f / 9.

31 Jul 13. Our local nursery has a section dedicated to evergreens, with several of the species generally bearing cones. I like to play with the portions of the branches holding the cones, generally for both perspective and texture exercises. In the example for today, I thought it might be fun to try something different and play with color as the primary ingredient. This image is comprised almost entirely of yellow (bright), green (dark), and brown (medium) tones. My goal was to emphasize the cones without giving them some texture accent which I know would draw your attention to them immediately. With the composition such as it is, your eye will naturally want to go to the center of the image, but I want it to go to the periphery and look at the cones. This is a bit of a challenge as bright colors tend to project forward and darker ones recede. The cones, being darker than the needles on the branch, tend to recede and the branch move forward, but, by putting the branch slightly out of focus and the cones sharply in focus, that tendency should be overcome by the area of interest being that portion that is sharpest. This works for my vision, but, as I am the one creating it, I may not be the best judge of success in this instance. You look at it and decide if I was successful or not. I'll be curious to hear what you have to say. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/2000 sec @ f / 7.1.