Showing posts with label flower. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flower. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Hodegs Garden - Orange Moth
I must have chased this poor little guy for 15 minutes from flower to flower. Finally the wind settled down and i was able to creep up and capture this close-up image using a 200mm lens.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Hodges Garden - Nector Sucker
Finally, I was able tp capture a sharp image of a beautiful butterfly sitting on a flower.... patience grasshopper, patience.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Hodges Garden - Old Flower
I wish this butterlfy, or moth, I'm not sure which it is would have found a fresher looking flower so that it looked better in this image, but I guess it knows what it needs.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Magnolia At Last
One of my favorite flowers is the magnolia, maybe because it is the state flower of my home state of Louisiana or possibly because they remind me of growing up in south Louisiana where these trees are plentiful. But all my life I can't ever recall having a magnolia tree on the property where I lived.
Well, I do now. The home we purchased last year has a small magnolia tree in the front yard and it is filled with flowers. This is the first magnolia bloom I picked from that tree, but I'm sure it will not be the last.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Graves on Golden Ground
After leaving the beach and heading back home to Houston I spotted what I thought was tall dead grass in the old Galveston City cemetery on Broadway. After taking a second look I realized that it wasn't dead grass but yellow flowers covering the grounds of the cemetery.
I thought this would be a great place to take some late afternoon photos before we headed home for the day so I made a quick U-turn and we pulled into the cemetery. There were many other visitors with their cameras in hand who apparently had the same idea as me.
My wife loves pictures of old doors so I took this one for her. You can't see her, but she was standing to the left of this image taking her own pictures of this door.
I liked the twisting branches of this small tree and the high peeks of the monument behind the tree. Did you notice that the tree doesn't have any leaves? That is extremely odd for May in south Texas. Many of the trees in Galveston or dead or very late blooming because of the many days they spent soaked in salty Gulf water that inundated Galveston during hurricane Ike. This cemetery was covered in three to six feet of water by the hurricane.
To get this image I crouched down as low as I could on the sidewalk to position the sun behind the top of the crucifix to hide the sun but allow the rays to burst around the sides of the monument. I like the image except for the lens flares (small dots caused by the sun bouncing of the glass lenses of the camera) you can see in the middle of the image.
A clump of the flowers growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.
A wide angle view of a small portion of this very large cemetery
My lovely wife and three wonderful boys were very tired and ready to get some food and head home for the evening after a great day in Galveston. We'll be back in a few weeks.
I thought this would be a great place to take some late afternoon photos before we headed home for the day so I made a quick U-turn and we pulled into the cemetery. There were many other visitors with their cameras in hand who apparently had the same idea as me.
A family mausoleum surrounded by yellow
My wife loves pictures of old doors so I took this one for her. You can't see her, but she was standing to the left of this image taking her own pictures of this door.
I liked the twisting branches of this small tree and the high peeks of the monument behind the tree. Did you notice that the tree doesn't have any leaves? That is extremely odd for May in south Texas. Many of the trees in Galveston or dead or very late blooming because of the many days they spent soaked in salty Gulf water that inundated Galveston during hurricane Ike. This cemetery was covered in three to six feet of water by the hurricane.
To get this image I crouched down as low as I could on the sidewalk to position the sun behind the top of the crucifix to hide the sun but allow the rays to burst around the sides of the monument. I like the image except for the lens flares (small dots caused by the sun bouncing of the glass lenses of the camera) you can see in the middle of the image.
A clump of the flowers growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.
A wide angle view of a small portion of this very large cemetery
My lovely wife and three wonderful boys were very tired and ready to get some food and head home for the evening after a great day in Galveston. We'll be back in a few weeks.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
It's a Macro Morning
Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last BLOG entry. I've been busy with work and family matters and just haven't had any time to go out and shoot.
Tomorrow I'm leaving for a business trip to San Diego, California where I hope to have time to get out of the hotel and conference hall and shoot some photos. Hopefully I'll be able to write a BLOG entry or two while in San Diego. This will be my first visit to the San Diego area.
Ok, now on to the reason I started writing this BLOG entry. This morning while my wife Dawn and I where checking on our vegetable garden in the backyard (we should be harvesting green beans and red bell peppers shortly) we noticed that one of her many lillies was blooming so I decided to use it to practice some macro photography using a new set of extension tubes I recently purchased. Extension tubes are spacers that fit between the lens and the camera and push the lens further away from the film or photo sensor which results in a magnified image just like using a magnifying glass to read small text. There is a downside to using extension tubes and that is it reduces the amount of light that falls on your film or photo sensor and it also reduces the sharpness of the overall image.
Each the following three images in this series is a progressively closer macro image of the lilly taken with a Canon 40D and Sigma 17-70mm Macro lens. Because of a slight breeze the second two images had to be taken at ISO400 so I could get the shutter speed fast enough to stop any motion blur caused by the wind moving the flower.
Tomorrow I'm leaving for a business trip to San Diego, California where I hope to have time to get out of the hotel and conference hall and shoot some photos. Hopefully I'll be able to write a BLOG entry or two while in San Diego. This will be my first visit to the San Diego area.
Ok, now on to the reason I started writing this BLOG entry. This morning while my wife Dawn and I where checking on our vegetable garden in the backyard (we should be harvesting green beans and red bell peppers shortly) we noticed that one of her many lillies was blooming so I decided to use it to practice some macro photography using a new set of extension tubes I recently purchased. Extension tubes are spacers that fit between the lens and the camera and push the lens further away from the film or photo sensor which results in a magnified image just like using a magnifying glass to read small text. There is a downside to using extension tubes and that is it reduces the amount of light that falls on your film or photo sensor and it also reduces the sharpness of the overall image.
Each the following three images in this series is a progressively closer macro image of the lilly taken with a Canon 40D and Sigma 17-70mm Macro lens. Because of a slight breeze the second two images had to be taken at ISO400 so I could get the shutter speed fast enough to stop any motion blur caused by the wind moving the flower.
ISO100, f/11, 1/100 sec at 40mm without Extension Tube.
ISO400, f/36, 1/50 sec at at 70mm with 21mm Extension Tube.
All images copyright Daniel Ray Photography.ISO400, f/22, 1/30 sec at at 70mm with 31mm Extension Tube.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The Color Purple
After work today I was weeding our small vegetable garden and noticed the wisteria that we trained along the wooden fence was flowering. By the way, wisteria is one of my favorite flowering vines and I love the color and smell. As I walked around the yard after the garden weeding was complete I noticed many of our flowering plants were of varying hues of purple or they had purple details. So I pulled out the camera and tripod and captured these images which I decided to share with you.
Orange Symphony (Osteospermum Hybrid)
Lavender (Lavandula)
Wandering Jew (Tradescantia zebrina)
Daniel Ray Photography.
Orange Symphony (Osteospermum Hybrid)
Lavender (Lavandula)
Wandering Jew (Tradescantia zebrina)
Daniel Ray Photography.All images copyright
Flowering Wisteria
Friday, March 06, 2009
My Wife's Passion
Both my wife and I are both feeling a bit under the weather due to allergies and a cold we both caught. To raise our spirits and try to put more spring in our step we've been trying to do the things we love. For her that is painting and for me it's photography. So today I took these photographs of her painting a picture inspired by a photograph I took of three pink tulips she planted in our yard.
Here she is working on her painting of three orange tulips.
Here is a closer view of the paint that she has mixed to get just the right shade.
Taking a moment to admire her work.
This is my photograph that she said inspired her to create this painting
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Using Natural and Artificial Light
With all the flowering plants sprouting up outside I decided to do some close-up macro photography using the flowers as my subject. I went outside setup my tripod, attached the camera and mounted my Tamron 17-70mm MACRO lens to the camera.
I then set the aperture to f/25, manually focused on the flower and looked through the view finder to see the flower wiggling back and fourth as it was buffeted by the winds. I popped off a few shots and quickly determined that this wasn't going to work because I couldn't keep the ISO at 100 and get the shutter speed high enough to compensate for the movement caused by the wind. So what to do next? I went in the house to get a pair of scissors and vase. I was going to cut the flower and bring it inside and photograph it there. But what do I see sitting on the kitchen table? A new flowering plant that my wife had just purchased and the flowers where orange, my favorite color. I had a new subject to photograph.
I typically shoot using natural light but I was in an experimental mood so I retrieved my tripod and camera from outside and set it up in the kitchen. I placed the flower pot near a window to provide some back lighting using the soft natural sunlight flowing in from the northern facing windows. Because I was using the natural light as a back light I had to use artificial light to illuminate the front of the flowers to prevent a silhouette effect. I could have used the camera's built-in flash but that would have most likely washed out the color and flattened the image. I set up my portable light stand and umbrella and mounted my Canon 480 EX flash in slave mode and placed it at a 45 degree angle just to the left and above the flowers and bounced the light using the umbrella. I mounted my Canon 580 EX II flash on the camera's hot shoe and pointed it straight up to bound the light off the ceiling and provide fill light. I overexposed by about 1-1/3 stop to blow out the background.
I like the results, what about you?
f/22, ISO100, 4.0 sec, 70mm
This is the same image as above post processing in Lightroom 2.0 to convert it to black and white and overexposed to give it a high key look.
I then set the aperture to f/25, manually focused on the flower and looked through the view finder to see the flower wiggling back and fourth as it was buffeted by the winds. I popped off a few shots and quickly determined that this wasn't going to work because I couldn't keep the ISO at 100 and get the shutter speed high enough to compensate for the movement caused by the wind. So what to do next? I went in the house to get a pair of scissors and vase. I was going to cut the flower and bring it inside and photograph it there. But what do I see sitting on the kitchen table? A new flowering plant that my wife had just purchased and the flowers where orange, my favorite color. I had a new subject to photograph.
I typically shoot using natural light but I was in an experimental mood so I retrieved my tripod and camera from outside and set it up in the kitchen. I placed the flower pot near a window to provide some back lighting using the soft natural sunlight flowing in from the northern facing windows. Because I was using the natural light as a back light I had to use artificial light to illuminate the front of the flowers to prevent a silhouette effect. I could have used the camera's built-in flash but that would have most likely washed out the color and flattened the image. I set up my portable light stand and umbrella and mounted my Canon 480 EX flash in slave mode and placed it at a 45 degree angle just to the left and above the flowers and bounced the light using the umbrella. I mounted my Canon 580 EX II flash on the camera's hot shoe and pointed it straight up to bound the light off the ceiling and provide fill light. I overexposed by about 1-1/3 stop to blow out the background.
I like the results, what about you?
f/22, ISO100, 4.0 sec, 70mm
This is the same image as above post processing in Lightroom 2.0 to convert it to black and white and overexposed to give it a high key look.Sunday, February 22, 2009
Almost Spring
This morning started out on the cool side with the temperature in the low 40's but as the day progressed the temperature climbed into the 60's. Here in Houston the trees are already starting to bud which is a sure sign that spring is just around the corner. I decided to see if I could find any other signs of spring in our back yard and I did.
Strawberry Blossom
Strawberries... Yum!
Strawberry Blossom
Strawberries... Yum!
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