Going Outside?

I knew I was going to have to go outside, despite the snow and freezing rain.  But before I did that this morning I set up my camera in a window by the bird feeders.  Here is one of my visitors:

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/9 1/250

In order to get this shot I am using my tripod and remote shutter.  That way my camera can be close to the window to eliminate glare, but I am not there scaring away the birds.  I used the live view function on my camera which allowed me to see what I was going to take a photo of.  In this case I have also increased my ISO because despite the light of the snow, it was a bit dark.

Once I had this shot, I edited it in Photoshop.  I will show you the original at the bottom of this post, but I started my editing in Bridge and used Camera Raw to adjust the exposure and clarity.  Then I opened the photo in Photoshop and did a levels adjustment and some sharpening.  I also cropped the image. Here is the original:

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/9 1/250

As you can see from the snowflakes on the bird, it was actively snowing.  It stopped shortly after so off I went to clear the walk. Hope you are warm wherever you are!

Cheers!

This post was written in response to Daily Prompt: The Outsiders.

Award winning photography (mine)

This short video won an honorable mention in my photography club the other weekend. I was super excited.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may have seen this video before. I put it together this fall for a digital photography class I was taking. The photos were taken last spring. This nest was right outside my kitchen window and the photos were taken over a few week period. It was amazing how quickly the birds grew.

In order to get the pictures I set my tripod up on the kitchen chairs which I drug outside. I used a remote camera trigger. That way I could be inside the house and not bothering the robins. I am really hoping we get another nest this spring.

The program runs about four minutes.

Cheers!

Outside

We have a couple of bird feeders outside of my office window because I enjoy watching them come and go.  Here is a photo I took the other day:

ISO 400 50mm 1ev f/4 1/500

To get this photo I set up my camera with a remote shutter on a tripod and went back inside.  From my office window I could see when this Downy Woodpecker landed.  I was shooting bracketed exposures.  For this particular image I used Photomatix to combine them and then used one of the painterly settings because I thought that helped the bird stand out a bit from the background.

Cheers!

A Flower for Your Monday

I have been working on night photography for my digital photography class and here is a photo from that assignment:

ISO 160 f/18 0ev 50mm

This photo has an exposure time of 105 seconds.  My camera was on a tripod and I was using my remote release shutter.  During the exposure I used a laser pointer to color in the flower.  I will also tell you that even though this was night photography, I took the photo in the very early morning, while it was still dark.

Cheers!