Today I walked around work, again, over my lunch break. I was fortunate enough to notice this monarch butterfly who wanted to give me a show. As per normal with me, I had my 100mm macro lens on, if I'd had my telephoto, I'd have gotten an even closer shot. I also noticed the leaf below sitting under a bench, causing a striped shadow. I like how the abstract contrasts with the organic.
Yet another busy, busy day. Plus most of the day was grey and cloudy. I wandered around work again on my lunch break, but only came up with more rose pictures. I like how abstract it is, and the colors and curves.
Tonight, Nell and I went out to dinner with our friends Nick and Maxine. Then Maxine and I planned on heading down to the harbor to practice some night shots. The weather was pretty icky though. It was foggy and misty. But we took some shots anyway and I was surprised at how well they came out. This shot is from the Santa Barbara wharf looking back at town. I like how the different colored lights light up the fog.
At work today I went for a walk to look for things to photograph. I'd seen these flower before, they are from a succulent plant that was recently planted here. I think they're pretty interesting flowers. Below is a lizard that greeted my on my walk. He sat there and let me take a few photos of him with my telephoto before he got bored and ran off. These things are all over where I work. I like that he almost looks like he's ready to challenge me.
Another busy Monday. At least it's not a flower. I'd love to cast a section of rose thorns in silver and make something sculpture-ish. Someday.
Today, Nell and I went climbing with our friend Paul in the mountains above Santa Barbara. This photo was tough because Nell was mostly in the shade of the rock, and it was sunny out, so there was a huge contrast. I like that you can see the coastline down below. In the middle of the coast, that you can see in the photo, is UCSB, to the right of that is a little point, we live close to that.
Nell came up with this idea for my photo tonight. She rocks. I love it.
Today we had our friends Nick and Maxine over for dinner. Since we were planning on making bananas foster for desert, Maxine and I decided we would try to take some photos of the rum burning off when we made the dessert. I figured this would be a challenge, so we decided to practice. It was hard, very hard. It's super difficult to figure out the right exposure, not to mention focusing the camera on something in the dark. I think Maxine ended up with a better photo that me. I had to turn up the brightness all the way on this one. Kind of artsy.
Today on my lunch break I revisited the rose garden here at work. I almost feel like it's cheating because it's so easy to get a good shot. Above is a hard focus, and below is the same flower, at a slightly different angle, with a soft focus. I liked both, so you get to see both. Though I realize that they are almost the same picture. Whatever.
We all love receiving Nelfi smiles. Today was a very busy day, so I only had a few moments with my camera. Luckily I can make my wife smile on cue. It might be a bit of a cop out, but I got a pretty good shot in less than 30 seconds, so there.
This evening I went out photographering with my photo buddy Maxine. Unfortunately it was really grey and boring out, so we were forced indoors to take our photos. These are her two cute cats, Perdita above, and Elim below. The lighting wasn't very good so I had to resort to my 50mm 1.4 set at 1.4 aperture. This meant a very shallow depth of field, and it also meant that it was really hard to focus the camera. But I managed, and came up with these two shots, and I like the soft focus effect that the shallow depth of field adds. As you may be able to tell, Elim is the active character of the two, while Perdita tends to sit around regally. Elim just had to play in the lampshade that we took off for better lighting.
Today it was foggy here in sunny Santa Barbara. Foggy ALL day. I'm sure I can cry some of you a river. I noticed these dew covered spider webs as soon as I got out of my car at work. Needless to say I was a few minutes later for work than I had intended, but I got some good shots. If I would have had more time, or had I been thinking, I would have played with my flash to try to get the dew drops to sparkle. I like the one below because you can see how the spider manipulated the grass stalk to fit his needs.
Ahh, travel, it's always exciting. Today we're flying back to the US. But first we have to take the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground.
Today we wondered around like crazy tourists in London. First, we did a guided bus tour on an open topped double deck bus. This was a ton of fun, and a really good way to see London. Taking photos from a moving bus is a bit tough though. I got some decent ones, but once we departed the bus and hit the ground running, I was able to take my time and get some really good shots. The one above is of Big Ben. Below is the London Eye, which is basically the world's largest bicycle wheel.
Today I took Nell around to see all of the highlights of Cambridge, so naturally we visited the King's College Chapel. This time the light was coming in through the stained glass windows and sending rays of color into the chapel. I tried to capture this as best as possible. The lighting was tough, and the angle of the perspective was a little odd, but I'm pretty happy with the result.
Nell and I also went punting on the Cam. This basically means pushing a long narrow boat down the Cam, the river running through Cambridge, using a long pole. This was quite fun, and definitely one of the highlights of our trip to Cambridge. Below is a photo of Nell punting, with the Bridge of Sighs behind her.
Today was more sightseeing in Cambridge for me while Nell was in meetings all day. I decided to spend the day inside museums and such, which was really awesome, but most of the museums didn't allow cameras. So while walking between museums, I looked for alternative photo opportunities, and came up with this. America has all but gotten rid of phone booths, but England is still all about them, they are everywhere. While taking this photo I kept waiting for someone interesting to walk by to add some more character to the photo, but after a while I got bored. I would have loved to have a guy in a black suit and a black, round top hat walk by like the Ministry of Silly Walks, (photo examples).
Photos do not do this chapel justice, of course. The ornate stonework is amazing, the place is huge, and the ceiling is really high. More photos of Cambridge tomorrow. Today I walked around a lot, and took just over 300 photos. Tomorrow I do the same. Life is rough.
We're in Cambridge now. After the long flight, and the train ride to our hotel, we went for a walk around campus and I got a few shots off. I was rather exhausted from the travel and was having a hard time focusing on photography. Fortunately Cambridge is beautiful so I mostly had to point my camera and click. This is Kings College Chapel. In the next couple days I hope to do a tour inside the chapel.
Just kidding. While we were waiting at LAX, I noticed this picture of (I assume) Tokyo, so I had Nell stand in front of it for a fun portrait shot. The lighting was tough because it was an airport, but luckily I had a compelling subject.
Today I went out photographering with my photo buddy Maxine, and Nell came along for part of it. I made a pact with myself to leave my macro lens in my camera bag. I need to do this more often because I'm not as used to my other lenses, and thus did not get as many good shots as I'd hoped. Luckily Nell was there to pose for me. The first one she likes, the second one I like. So you get to see both. Also, next time I will try to get a better candid shot of Maxine, because I failed this time. That's another thing I need to work on, my candid shots.
Today was a cloudy, gloomy day in sunny Santa Barbara, so I figured it was a good day to take photos of flowers, of course. Well, to be honest I started out looking for other photos but failed. The pictures above, and below are of fennel flowers, they are all over the place around there. I'm not sure what the other flower is, but it's yellow. I did learn something today, that I am horrible at focusing my camera. I took probably 200 photos today and at least 80% of them were out of focus. I need to work on this.
I'm feeling a bit better today, despite being diagnosed with an ear infection. I wondered around the garden area, as per usual. These flowers are part of a huge bunch of red flowers. I've taken photos of them before, but failed to come up with a good shot. I like this one because of the three stamens that kind of draw your eyes to them.
Today I was feeling rather under the weather so I stayed home from work. It was a nice sunny day so I mustered up some energy and walked out to the garden. I found this lone California poppy lit up by the sunshine. It's not my best flower picture, but not bad considering I'm sick.
This evening I went out photographering with my new photo buddy Maxine. She just got a new camera and someone may have inspired her to start a 365 challenge. I had a great time teaching her photography but I think I had more fun just listening to her having fun experimenting with different camera settings and learning new things about her camera. The sunset was pretty sweet so we both managed to get quite a few good shots. Her new camera, a Panasonic Lumix Micro Four Thirds, is pretty sweet, it's kind of a point and shoot with interchangeable lenses and the ability to change exposure settings just like a DSLR.
This is Bacchus, he's a bearded dragon, and the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy. He is the companion of my friend Nicole. Taking photos of a god is pretty hard. They don't like to sit still, but he did seem to like to be in the spotlight. Lighting was pretty tough for this one, the lighting in the room wasn't very good so we used a flashlight to illuminate him. As soon as we started using the flashlight, I really liked the affect because it isolated his face. I guess, now that I think of it, this was the shot that I had in mind when I first had the idea of photographing Bacchus. It's nice to do a photo shoot and end up with the photo you wanted. Oh, and a big thanks to Nicole for letting me take pictures of Bacchus, and for being such a good lighting assistant.
Today I lazed around a bit, did some cleaning, and then realized I had very little time left to take my photo of the day before we went to another dinner with friends. I rushed out to the garden and almost immediately found these backlit flowers. I took 30 or 40 shots in about 10 minutes and came up with quite a few good ones. Since I am not very good at choosing a single picture, I thought I'd leave that up to you to decide. Enjoy.
This morning Nell and I went for a walk around the Deveroux Slough. There were quite a lot of birds out, so naturally I took as many photos as I could. This is a Great Egret, I love the reflection in the water. Below is a Great Egret flying.
Below is a Great Blue Heron with a fish in it's mouth.
Today, while having dinner with friends, I tried to get some candid portraits. This was tough because it was a low light setting and thus hard to get good shots, and using a flash tends to ruin the mood. I like this photo because I think it captured Nick's personality pretty well, he is a very laid back and happy person. Of course having a nice 50mm 1.4 lens helps when taking low light portraits.
I didn't have much time to play with the camera today, so it was a quick few shots of the infamous marble.
There's a rose garden behind one of the buildings I work in. Who knew! This means that you should expect more rose pictures in the future of this blog. As you may well know, I love closeup pictures of flowers, but I especially like closeup pictures of roses because of the depth and curve of all the petals.
