Weekly Photo Challenge: Carefree

I’m not a very good gardener.  So in our garden we keep it simple.  I keep my eye out for native plants that don’t need a lot of care.  This year we tried two patches of wildflowers in our garden.  One worked really well and the other is struggling.  I think the patch that is struggling just doesn’t get enough sun. The patch that is doing well has produced some beautiful coneflowers:

ISO 200 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/40

In order to get this photo I used my tripod.  These flowers are only somewhat protected by the house, so any breeze will blur the photo.  I could have overcome this by shooting at a higher ISO and shutter speed, but in this case the color is better if the ISO and shutter speed are low.  It is a subtle difference, but in this case it mattered to me.  I settled on an f-stop of 3.2.  That left enough in focus and blurred out enough of the background.  So, I was happy with this version of the photo, but I did want to create something a bit different:

ISO 200 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/40

The theme of this week’s photo challenge by WordPress is carefree. So, I wanted to create a slightly dreamier looking version of my original photo.  I used Photoshop to do my editing.  I have applied an oil paint filter to the photo.  Then I used the high pass filter with soft light.  The result you see above is more mellow than the original photo.  Ironic isn’t it, that I had to do more work to look carefree?

Cheers!

Coneflower in Black and White

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/2.8 1/125

This coneflower has had my attention for the last few days. Today I decided to shoot it in black and white.  Actually the original image is in color.  I used my Canon 50D with a 50mm lens to get this shot.  I also used my tripod.  There was a slight breeze, so I thought the tripod would help with any movement. When taking a picture like this I am often thinking about depth of field.  What should be in focus and what would I like to see blurred.  I settled on an f-stop of 2.8 because I decided I liked the petals in focus but not the stem.  I tried f/1.8 but the petals were to out of focus for my liking.  At f/7.1 the stem and some of the ground were in focus which ended up not being a very pretty picture.

I edited this photo in Photoshop.  I converted it to black and white using a red filter setting.  In addition to cropping, I also changed the contrast.

From there, I cropped it a bit differently to create a 5×7 card to put on my website.

This post was written in response to a black and white photo challenge that is hosted by Sonel, and I would like to thank her for the inspiration for creating this photo.

Thoughts? Comments? feel free to leave them below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 in Pictures

ISO 800 50mm -0.33 f/16 1/400

ISO 125 4mm f/2.8 1/120

ISO 800 50mm 0.33ev f/1.8 1/640

ISO 500 135mm f/10 1/50

ISO 500 28mm f/22 1/125

ISO 100 50mm f/5 1/25

ISO 500 50mm f/4.5 1/125

ISO 500 90mm f/9 1/50

This is a gallery of some of my favorite pictures from my blog this year.  It is a response to this week’s photo challenge from WordPress.  A big thank you to everyone who has stopped by my blog this year!

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Circles

Circles are the theme over at Where’s my backpack? this week.  I have a few to share:

ISO 125 4mm f/2.8 1/120

ISO 100 11mm 0ev f/5 1/160

ISO 250 135mm 0ev f/9 0.6s

ISO 2000 28mm 0ev f/3.5 0.5s

Four photos, three cameras, I could have called this post.  The coneflower was taken with my iPhone.  The cactus with my Canon Powershot.  The other two were taken with my Canon 50D.

Cheers!

Best of the Morning Walk

ISO 100 85mm f/5.6 1/5 tripod

Yes, this photo has some post-editing done to it.  I messed with the color and cropped the photo.  I was surprised that the color in camera came out a bit washed out looking.  It was cloudy out, so I thought the light would be pretty good.  Any suggestions on shooting on cloudy days?

Had to make a quick exit as well, the skies opened up just minutes later.

Cheers!