A little bit of beauty for your Monday

Here you go:

ISO 400 50mm 0ev f/10 1/10

I took this shot last week, but am sharing it now in the hopes that it will brighten your Monday!

I took this at the St. Louis Zoo, which is very nice and also free.  This butterfly was kind enough to hold still for a bit and I was also using my tripod.  I have noticed that when I have both my camera and tripod a lot of people stop and talk to me.  If you are a tripod user, have you noticed that as well?

The butterfly is centered in the frame because it was a digital photography assignment that required the subject to be in the center.  I did also bump up my ISO to 400, because I thought it captured the color detail a bit better than the shot I took at ISO 100.  I also had my f-stop about mid-range.  I wanted to make sure to get enough detail, but I wanted my background to be a bit out of focus so that it was not a distraction.

Thoughts on this photo? would you have shot it differently?  leave your comments below…

Cheers!

Beautiful Birds (behind a wire)

Sometimes, I just can’t get the picture because wire cages get in the way.  The birds are beautiful though.

Cheers!

The Beauty Problem

I started this blog in part to keep track of what I am shooting and what settings I have used so that I would have a reference when I can’t remember what settings I used last week.  Then I started with the birds.  I figured, I’ll go out and shoot them everyday, messing with my settings and I’ll get it all figured out.  Problem solved right?

Ha, yeah, sure.  Insert the beauty problem.  Here is my best bird picture of the morning:

ISO 100 135mm f/5.6 1/15

Wow, that bird looks a lot like a hosta you are thinking. Or, wow, what an idiot, she doesn’t know her birds from her plants.  So, this hosta presents a whole host of other setting issues.  I should stick with just one subject matter, but it is hard with so much beauty to shoot.

Oh, and then there is beauty problem part 2; The beauty I miss:

ISO 400 56mm f/4.5 1/125

See that water drop on the outside of the plant in this cropped photo?  Well I didn’t until I had it on my computer.  That would have made an interesting close-up, had I not missed it.

Cheers!