Weekly Photo Challenge: Close Up

I’ve been to a nearby lake a few times in the last few weeks. With my 70-200mm lens I was hoping to get a close up picture of the herons that nest near the lake.  It was not to be, they were all still too far away.  While I was pouting about that, this dragonfly stopped to rest on a branch near the water.  So I took a few photos.  Here is an edited version:

ISO 800 160mm 0ev f/22 1/40

The dragonfly was actually at an awkward angle from where I was or where I could be to get a photo without being in the water.  He stayed for awhile and so I experimented with quite a few settings in my camera which is why this one is a bit of an odd combination of high f-stop, low shutter speed.  This is actually a bracketed photo, so three photos with different exposures that have been merged.  I used Photomatix to create the HDR image. I was surprised at how well that worked considering the slow shutter speed.  The f-stop was high with the thought of getting the detail in the wings, but it got all the background in detail as well which was distracting.

In order to deal with my background, I opened the HDR image in Photoshop as a smart object and then made a second smart object layer.  I desaturated the top layer to about 48 percent and then created a mask and masked in the full color dragonfly and the tips of the branch he is perched on.  I then used and Iris blur to keep the dragonfly sharp but blur the background a bit.  I also used Photoshop to do some cropping. I was going for a bit of a dreamy other worldly feel without leaving reality completely.  Here is the original photo:

ISO 800 160mm 0ev f/22 1/40

It was several steps worth of editing, but I liked the outcome.  What do you think? feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Close Up: It’s Time for Chickens

It’s a great time of year.  It’s chicken time:

ISO 200 50mm 0ev f/6.3 1/30

These eggs are part of a life cycle unit that a friend of mine who is second grade teacher teaches this time of year.  It is getting close to the end of the year, so it is harder to keep the kid’s attention as the weather get nicer.  This unit however, is fascinating, and a highlight of the second grade school year.

So, this is one of my first photos of this year.  The next step will be for these eggs to go into incubators.  As you can tell, there will be a variety of chickens hatching this year.  This is, in part, to show the kids the diversity that can exist among a species.  The chickens that hatch will eventually go to local farms.

You may wonder why I chose this for this week’s travel theme, close up. It’s my opinion that education should make you wonder about the world around you when you are young so that when you are old enough you can go out exploring on your own.  Projects like this one help bring that larger world close-up in a tangible way.  In a less direct connection to the travel theme perhaps,  I think it is good for the kids to see a part of how their food chain works close up. Often, I think, food just appears in front of them without any real discussion of how it got there. If there is to be a lovely natural world for them to explore as adults, I think it is important for them to be informed of where their food is coming from.

I’m pretty “egg”cited about this project, so there will be more posts as the unit progresses.  Feel free to drop by again to check for updates, your comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Another Orangutan close-up

ISO 500 50mm f/4.5 1/125

This is another orangutan photo I considered for the “close” category of the weekly photo challenge.  I went with the other one instead.  I guess the shot of her looking directly at the camera said “close” to me more than this shot does.  I like this profile shot though.

Cheers!