Travel Theme: Flow

These photos were taken in a park near Virginia Tech.  We were in the Blacksburg area for a few days.  Blacksburg is a neat town, but the surrounding natural area is really beautiful.  I have chosen these photos to go with the theme, flow, which is what is featured this week at Where’s My backpack?:

ISO 100 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/500

This first photo is perhaps not what you would normally think of as flow, but that is what the lines in the wood reminded me of.

Here are some more standard images of flow:

ISO 100 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/125

ISO 1600 1mm 0ev f/5 1/40

For this hike I chose to take along my Canon Powershot instead of my 50D.  This was just a logistical decision.  We were doing quite a bit of walking to the waterfalls with children, towels, and lunch.  Sometimes, just having a small camera makes more sense.  I do have to say though, I wouldn’t mind doing the hike again with the larger camera and a tripod.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves

I was at the St. Louis Art Museum this morning, so I thought I would see what I could find for this week’s photo challenge.  The theme this week is curves, and here is my little gallery:

ISO 800 10mm 0ev f/4.5 1/13

ISO 800 7mm 0ev f/4 1/6

ISO 800 12mm 0ev f/5 1/8

ISO 800 4mm 0ev f.2.7 1/50

Curves are pretty easy to find in art.  I picked a variety of mediums to represent that.  Photographing art can be a bit of a trick.  For this outing I used my Canon Powershot.  A few weeks ago when shooting in a museum I used my Canon 50D.  The biggest difference between these two posts is really the weight of the two cameras.  Taking a point and shoot really is easier and the results aren’t bad.  Since I couldn’t use the flash, I did bump up the ISO to 800.  When shooting in a museum you do have to take a moment to think about the angle you want to shoot from.  Two big concerns for me are always glare and the background.  So, generally I try to get as close as possible and then sometimes crop the photo later.

How about you? what are your museum tips and tricks? feel free to leave them in comment section below.  If you have written a blog post about it, feel free to leave a link.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Peaceful

This weekend I made a short visit to the St. Louis Zoo.  I had my 50mm lens on my camera when I saw this very peaceful looking lion:

ISO 250 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/160

And right there you see the limitation of a 50mm lens.  I can’t get any closer to the subject, so that is as good of a shot as I am going to get.  So I switched to my 28-135mm lens for these next two shots:

ISO 400 135mm 0ev f/7.1 1/60

How peaceful looking is that? but remember to stay alert around wildlife because I took this picture 15 seconds later:

ISO 400 135mm 0ev f/7.1 1/80

Hello there, not asleep!

For the two shots taken with my 28-135mm lens I did have to increase the ISO and decrease the shutter speed to get the depth of field that I wanted.  I don’t find the rock outcropping that she is sleeping on to be distracting, so I wanted to keep it in focus.

My blogging friend Rosemarie wrote about the St. Louis Zoo recently and also took some great photos.

This post was written in part as for the weekly travel-theme challenge that is hosted on the blog, Where’s my backpack? this week featuring peaceful as its theme.

Thoughts? Comments? feel free to leave them below!

Cheers!

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

This Spring I was working on a series of bird photos.  I wanted to do birds of prey.  My favorite place to photograph birds is World Bird Sanctuary which is just outside St. Louis Missouri.

If you have never seen a Barn Owl in flight, it is almost silent.  It is almost like you can feel a slight disturbance in the air rather than hear it flying.  Talk about fleeting, it you didn’t know the bird was in the air, you might miss it.  I was at the Sanctuary, and they were flying this owl:

ISO 400 70mm 0ev f/5.6 1/500

For all these images in this post I was using a 70-300mm IS lens.  For the photo above and below I was using a fast shutter speed because I really wanted to stop the motion of the bird.  For these images I was not using a tripod.  Here is the owl at rest with a treat:

ISO 400 300mm 0ev f/5.6 1/500

Here is the final photo I used for my project:

ISO 400 150mm 0ev f/5.6 1/125

This is actually an HDR image.  I merged three photos that were exactly the same, except for their exposure, in Photomatix, which is a software that specifically helps the user create HDR images.  As for the photo itself, because the bird was still, I lowered my shutter speed.  It had been at 1/500th for the other two shots in the post but here it is 1/125.  That is still a pretty fast speed and the reason for that is that I know that if any of the feathers are moving at all, it creates a blurred look in HDR.  For this shot I was also using a tripod.  A lens like the 70-300 IS I was using is fairly heavy, so the tripod was to help with any camera shake I might have introduced by just holding the camera.

I was happy with the way my birds of prey turned out.  I have them on my website as prints and also 5×7 cards.  If you would like to see the card for this Barn Owl, it is here.  If you would like to see the whole gallery, it is here.  One of the other birds in the series was a Eurasian Eagle-Owl that I blogged about here.

This post was written in part as response to the Weekly Photo Challenge hosted by WordPress, this week’s theme is fleeting. I appreciate your thoughts and comments so feel free to leave them below.

Cheers!

Chickens Move On

This will be my last post about chickens for the season.  The chickens are ready to move to the various farms and homes that are waiting for them.  Here is one group ready to go:

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/50

Before they left, I took a few outside to stretch their legs and get some photos:

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ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/320

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/320

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/100

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/200

These chickens were all part of a life cycles unit for a second grade class.  If you missed my other posts, or just would like to take a second look they are here: Still in the Egg, In the Incubator, and Small Chickens.

The challenge for all these chicken photos was dealing with the light.  Under the warming lights, it was bright and hard to get detail.  In the incubator, it was on the dark side, but the incubator needed to be left alone, so I worked with what I had.  Taking the chickens outside was bright, but the uneven light some times created a problem.  Taking photos of something that is moving is always tough.  In this case I was trying to stop the action and get as much detail as possible, so I always tried to get the shutter speed as fast as possible. I use my 50mm lens for shooting these chickens.  I can get close and the detail that a prime lens offers is great in this situation.

I hope you enjoyed following the growth and development of these chickens.  I had a great time taking photos, and the kids in the classroom learn so much!  I always appreciate comments, so feel free to leave them below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says

According to these signs, we are in the middle of World War II:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/1.8 1/20

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/1.8 1/13

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/1.8 1/20

These signs are taken from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago where they have a German submarine, a U-505, on display.  This exhibit was really interesting, and I would highly recommend it.  I thought it was going to take us a half hour to walk through, it ended up taking closer to two.

Getting the photos of these signs was tough, the lighting was pretty dim overall, but then there were bright lights on the posters.  I used my lowest f-stop setting to let in as much light as possible, so f/1.8.  I also increased my ISO to 800.  The shutter speeds used were still pretty slow, so I braced myself against the wall to be as still as possible.  Looking at the photos now, I am thinking that I should have tried the ISO a little higher to see if I could get a faster shutter speed.

This post was written in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge at WordPress.  The theme this week is: The Sign Says.

Your comments are most welcome below.

Cheers!

Stained Glass in Chicago

I was intrigued when I walked past The First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple and saw a series of stained glass windows at eye level.  This one in particular caught my eye, so I thought I would share it:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/320

The story here is that the third building this church had that was at this location burned down in the Chicago Fire of 1871.  The other windows told of other parts of the church’s history.  I think this was the first time I have ever seen a fire like this in stained glass.

This post was written in response to Thursday Lingering Look at Windows.

Cheers!