30 Jan 14. Based on the number of responses I got to Wednesday's image I'm going to have a hard time consistently meeting that bar, if ever again. For today's Theatrical Thursday submission I've picked a piece of driftwood that sits on our local beach, and I'm guessing it will be there for some time to come. As it was in the original capture it was interesting enough, but the conversion to a water color format, perhaps even better described as a paint-by-number format, resulted in a much more interesting image to me. When I was taking the picture I imagined the old log as an apartment house for many small critters. I didn't see anything living there save for some small insects, but somehow it struck me as being available for much more. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/80 sec @ f / 8.
31 Jan 14. For today's macro offering I've selected what might be more properly termed a close-up as opposed to macro as the object only 1/8 life size. This one is straight from the camera save for some serious cropping. I put this together last summer and it has been sitting around waiting to get its turn in the show. I find this image to be of interest primarily for the color and the somewhat unusual plane of focus. When I was taking the set of images of which this is but one, the bees were quite active as was the wind. The flowers were moving back and forth and the bees traveling along the petals at the same time. The intent was to have a sharp bee and anything else sharp that might happen. As it turned out, the plane of sharpness is along the rear of the bee as well as portions of the petals around the left middle of the flower. I have no explanation for this, and from my limited understanding, it shouldn't be so. There are at least two things I might do differently today from what I did last summer. The first is that I'd change the perspective from that attempting to show the expanse of the flower bed to just emphasizing the single cone flower and bee by cropping off the entire right hand third of the shot, cutting it off at the edge of the short petal. Then I'd rework the cone portion of the flower to give it more detail and a bigger part of the show. I didn't do that originally when I worked this up as I felt it wasn't sufficiently sharp and thus would detract from the overall impact but I now think it would actually enhance it. Two judgement calls, one then another now. But by leaving it as it is you can conceive of both options as opposed to having made the changes and not giving you sufficient material with which to understand fully the choices. With the shallow depth of field there is a bit of texture in the soft focus areas which I could have removed but left alone as I feel it substantially adds to the overall feeling. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/800 sec @ f / 6.3.
