Sitting here on pins and needles, because my family’s flight has been delayed, and my daughter will have a long wait with a 3 year and 3 month old at the airport before they will take off. She is an amazing mama who can handle anything, so I know it will all go well. But I am impatient!
This “lovely” photo is a macro shot of my computer screen with a few effects applied in Picnik. Not in the mood for serious photography today!
One more day until my babies arrive! The rooms are being rearranged and babyproofed, the cupboards are stocked with Miles’s favorite foods, and the teaching and art supplies are being organized for playtime.
It is Macro Monday and a perfect opportunity to photograph new crayons before they are used!
f/5.6, 1/80, ISO 2000, 85mm
Among the many items I have from my teaching days is a tin of buttons. Buttons were given out as rewards during the school day for following the rules, working hard, etc. and were used on Fridays to “purchase” items from our treasure chest. They were the perfect motivators for first graders.
It is a VERY rainy, dark Friday here, so I decided that bright colored buttons would be a good subject for a photograph. However, it is SO dark in the house today that I really had to bump up my ISO and search for the spot with the best lighting, which ended up being the hall bathroom. It is my Photoshop Friday, so this image was edited in Adobe Camera Raw.
f/5.6, 1/100, ISO 2000, 85mm
I have a busy day coming up. I’m off to Petaluma for lunch with my Rapunzel group, and knew I needed to find my photo of the day early in the day. Yesterday I moved my yellow begonia off the covered porch to get watered by the rain- and this morning I found a macro shot. Whew- mission accomplished!
f/9, 1/250, ISO 500
I promise to start taking something besides macro shots someday soon!
It was very overcast at 9 AM when I went out on the deck to find something- anything!- to photograph on this dreary day. Right by the back door I spied some berries- Aha! MACRO! It was soooo dark that I had to bump up my ISO to 2500 and also turn on the porch light. When I uploaded the photos, I noticed a lot of noise. I don’t know if this was because I inadvertently uploaded jpegs instead of RAW (I shoot jpeg and raw pairs- don’t ask me why…) or because (more likely) the images were slightly underexposed.
So…I added a texture to disguise (sort of…) the noise in the background. I know I could have reuploaded my RAW files and seen if that made a difference- but this was more fun.
f/4.5, 1/500, ISO 2500
Today is Macro Monday, and it feels so good to be confident that I can participate, since I have my new macro lens!
Photography takes up a lot of my time, but there is something else in my life that manages to eat up almost an equal share- SCRABBLE! No, I don’t mean tense competitions with a board and tiles- I’m talking Facebook.
I justify my time playing Wordscraper (the Facebook app that is a Scrabble-like game) by claiming that it is keeping my brain cells healthy. I am preventing Alzheimers, people! I joined Facebook relatively early on for a person of my age (maybe three years ago?- oops, my brain cells are failing me again…) solely to play Wordscraper with some teacher friends. Of course, I discovered all the other diversions too- chat, Farmville, YoVille etc. , but they fell away eventually, leaving Wordscraper as my main Facebook activity.
I really wasn’t a Scrabble person before Wordscraper- and I was surprised to find out that I was a really lousy player! It took me about a year to learn all the handy 2 letter words and the basic strategies. I am happy to report that I am now adequate. I can hold my own against everyone except my daughter and my friend, Julie.
And the best thing about Wordscraper? I am in daily contact with a large number of friends through this game. I play with teacher friends, friends from when I was a young mom, my college roommate, and even one childhood friend (who has recently given up Facebook for Lent!). Best of all, I always have a couple games going with my daughter (I love that, even though I rarely win).
And I guess I should mention the iPhone app, Words With Friends. I play that too!
I introduced my friend, Joan, to Wordscraper (and Words With Friends) – and she is as addicted as I am. In fact, she now is actually part of a group that plays Scrabble with REAL tiles and a REAL board- yikes!
Last year, Joan gave me the coolest gift- a name plate for my desk that is made of Scrabble tiles! I love it, and it is the subject for today’s macro shot.
f/5.6, 1/60, ISO 2500, 85mm
Notice how slow my shutter speed was and how high my ISO had to be in order to get this shot. With my aperture more open, the depth of field was too shallow to get the letter M entirely in focus.
My great-grandmother’s hatpins (she was born in 1859) made an interesting subject for my macro lens today. I am trying to do a quick post before I go out this morning, so I don’t have much time to play with the editing today. I actually liked the out of focus results better than the in focus ones, but I chose an image where there is focus on one of the hatpins. The cylindrical objects in the back are actually bokeh/reflections from surrounding pins.
f/4.5, 1/80, ISO 500, 85mm
UPDATE!
It is now almost midnight, and, while my husband watches some basketball recorded earlier, I am taking the time to look again at the hatpin photos from today. I fiddled with one and applied a texture- and I really like it (even though it breaks a design rule and has FOUR objects, not 3 or 5)!
So…I am updating my blog and adding another photo- which is now my REAL photo of the day!
I got a BIG SURPRISE yesterday from my husband- a MACRO LENS!!!
It’s a Nikon 85mm 3.5- and I can shoot less than a foot from my subject! I no longer have to be 4 feet away zoomed in! The autofocus works great- or I can manually focus OR use manual override, which I haven’t tried yet. And of course, this lens works great for portraits as well. I’m SO EXCITED!
Guess I have no excuses now!
I went out bright and early this morning and took this shot of a very, very tiny flower on our deck.
f/4.8, 1/160, ISO 500, 85mm
It is my Photoshop Friday, so I used CS5 to do a slight crop, and a simple levels and curves adjustment on this image. THEN…I added texture (thanks to Trish for introducing me to Kim Klassen Cafe where I learned how to do this!).
Be warned- over the next few weeks you will probably be seeing a zillion close-up photos of everything in my house!
If you have read a few of my posts about my issues with my 70-300mm lens, you know that I have had a LOT of trouble with it. I am embarrassed to say that I was blaming the lens. But now, its problems seem to have mysteriously gone away.
I think I just needed to learn how to work with it. It took me awhile in the beginning to realize that I HAD to focus manually at 300mm. Now, I just do that without thinking. The other thing is I have to have plenty of light. Its largest lens opening is 5.6. If I even THINK of shooting with it inside, I need a high ISO. And often the shutter speed has to be so slow as to require a tripod. The gorillapod doesn’t work too well with this lens; it just can’t balance it. So good lighting is key.
Today, I managed to take this shot inside, handheld – while talking on the phone with my daughter. Wow. I am pretty proud of myself.
f/5.6, 1/60, ISO 1250, 300mm
So I have made peace with my lens, and am making progress toward becoming a competent photographer!
BTW, this photo is a closeup of part of a candle grouping in my bathroom.
It is Macro Monday in the photoblogging world. I have resisted getting into this routine, because of my incompetence problems with the macro feature of my 70-300mm lens. So- just for TODAY- I am in the swing of Macro Monday.
I still have the flower bouquet, so took some more photos of them- but from different angles. I can’t decide what I like best, so made a collage- a macrollage!
f/5.6, ISO 400, varying shutter speeds
All the photos were taken at 300mm with the macro setting and manual focus.
Flowers! I love taking photos of flowers. Even more than water drops. Flowers with water drops are irresistible.
But my favorite way to take flower photos is REALLY CLOSE UP!
f/5.6, 1/100, ISO 1250, 300mm
Today my 70-300mm lens loved me! The focus is pretty sharp. It worked! Whew.
Thank you, Lonnie, for the flowers! And for a photo op.
My 70-300mm lens and I have been having issues. Just when I think it is HIS fault, he goes and shows off by focusing beautifully on a random fly that wanders into the frame (he has done this TWICE!).
This is just a small cropped corner of a larger group of flowers (this was from last weekend- how come we all want to photograph bees, but not flies?). So obviously, we have a SITUATION, and, since I focus MANUALLY in macro, there just might possibly be some user error going on here . . .
So today I tried again. I hooked my gorillapod around a chair and then sat in the chair and lightly held on to the gorillapod (because I am always afraid the camera will tip over because of the long lens). I had to scoot the chair back and forth to find the perfect focus and managed to do BETTER this time.
There is such a narrow depth of field in macro. The back of the yellow flower center is in focus, not the front. I had to use a high ISO, because I was inside on a rainy day. I think I can do better in the sunshine. But I am encouraged- and no longer mad at my lens.
f/5.6, 1/80, ISO 2500 at 300mm
It’s another foggy, dreary day here- not really a surprise for January, but I decided to look around our yard for signs of Spring. I found 3 azalea blooms AND some tiny red buds on our plum tree. I fought with used my 70-300mm lens in macro at 300mm and ended up with a very shallow depth of field and very over-exposed images. I adjusted exposure and anything else I could adjust in Aperture 3 and these are the results.
Azalea- f/5.6, 1/200/, ISO 2500
Plum branch- f/5.6, 1/125, ISO 2500
Well, call me obsessed- but I worked on my water drops again.
Today, I could concentrate on focus, because yesterday I had already figured out how to use my gorillapod/chair to steady the camera and that flash doesn’t work too well for me in this situation (my on camera flash limits my shutter speed to 1/200- I needed FASTER!). Next time, I will experiment with better lighting and a patterned background. The blue splotch you see in the drop is Dawn dishwashing detergent!
300mm, 1/1000, f5.6, ISO 2000
Today I tried all different ways to photograph water dripping out of my kitchen faucet. I’ve been inspired by all the beautiful macro work showcased on Clickin Moms- and have carefully read directions on how to achieve this with a macro lens and speedlight (don’t have either…)- and then how to do it with the 70-300mm zoom- YAY! I have that! What I don’t have, I discovered, is a working tripod other than my gorillapod (I’ve been carefully storing my father’s ancient tripod since 1982 and then discovered today that it is broken). There is a lot of camera shake with the zoom, so a tripod helps. I discovered that I could wrap the gorilla pod around a kitchen chair, manually focus, and then click- many, many clicks! I still think that I never achieved proper focus- but I got better as the day wore on (and the light waned, alas). I tried to get cool color effects by placing a pillowcase behind the faucet; I need to find something brighter next time. I also tried using my kit lens at 55mm (handheld, with no pillowcase)- and I like that one better! I’m not thrilled with either photo- but- BIG SIGH- it is all a process . . .
melinda anderson photography 
