Small forest plants with a dusting of early-morning frost, Rocky Mountain national Park.
After all of the in your face color in the last few posts, I decided to change things up with much more subtle image. I captured this image last fall on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park. I was shooting moose when I paused to look down and saw something much more interesting. These tiny leaves were flocked by an early fall frost, which beautifully highlights the texture of the plants.
On a purely technical note, this picture is sharp. On the full-sized image, I can see the ice crystals on the leaf at left. Sharpness is generally overrated: strong seeing is way more important that technical perfection to a successful image. Still, there’s something pleasing about taking a tack sharp, highly-detailed photo.
This photo is a good lesson in not deleting images too quickly. I passed on this image during my initial pass through this shoot. But when I went back the other day looking for something else, I decided that I like this quite a bit. (Maybe the lesson here is my unstable photographic preferences!). The light angle (supplied by an off-camera flash) and the composition of the bug’s limbs works nicely. In additon, I like the way that this image depicts butterflies differently than we see them with the unaided eye. We tend to focus on the brightly-colored wings, not on the strange eyes, curling proboscis, and sharply-angled legs. This is not a beautiful image in the classic sense, but is evocative. Be sure to click on the image to see a larger version.
My neighbors must think I’m crazy, but such is the lot of a (backyard) wildlife photographer. I found this Broadwinged Katydid in my alley while doing some yard work a weekend or two ago. I hadn’t managed to drag myself out of bed that weekend for early-morning wildlife photography, so I was itching for some photography. Plus, I’ve never seen one of these bugs before, let alone photographed one. So . . . out comes the camera for some alleyway macro photography. Only problem: I couldn’t get the bug on a good perch on a decent background. I wound up attaching a branch to my tripod, placing the katydid on the branch, and moving the whole setup into the shade and in front of a pleasing background. I looked a little strange with my macro setup (including large flash diffuser) photographing a small bug sitting on my tripod. But at least I got some decent images.
Broadwinged Katydid on a leaf
<Begin photo gear geek discussion>
P.S. To the guys who designed the Canon flash metering system: seriously? Center-weighted averaging is the only choice for metering? And, metering that produces a completely different exposure every time? I finally gave up and used manual flash for these shots. Happily, the Katydid held still long enough for that to work. It’s enough to make me think about switching to Nikon.
</end photo gear geek discussion>
Monochrome Aspen Leaf (Img# 100716_1008536)
I captured this image of an aspen leaf on a recent trip to Lake City, Colorado. I was struck by the way that the back lighting highlights the veins and other detail in the leaf. A quick monochrome conversion in Lightroom, a bit of subtle platinum toning in Photoshop, and voila.
Leaves (Img# 100329_1006756)
I shot these leaves in a shady spot in La Jolla. I like the range of tones and sense of depth. I keep thinking that the images needs a little more (maybe cleanup at lower left?) but I like it nonetheless.
I was looking for a perch for a songbird setup a la Alan Murphy. Never had much luck with the birds, but this is a pretty good consolation prize. This is a tiny bud from one of our bushes (maybe 1/4″ across). In order to get the whole thing sharp I stacked a number of images using Helicon Focus. I converted to monochrome and toned the image using Photoshop and a custom tone curve.
Admittedly, I have spent too much time lately playing with Lightroom presets, as evidenced by this post and my earlier post of an abandoned building in Crystal, Colorado. I find that using presets is a great way of discovering a hidden side to some images, including this image of a plant from Alcatraz Island, California. The image above is my favorite interpretation, though I like the alternate interpretation and original images below as well.
Here is the original image:
Upon editing this image I see a number of things that I’d like to try (and try to do better — the yellow in the flower is a bit burned out). But one of the joys and frustrations of nature photography is that subjects are not available at the photographer’s whim. Maybe next spring . . .
This is a flowering prickly pear cactus that I photographed in Arches National Park earlier this summer. I shot this image at a number of different apertures to get just the right depth of field. I wanted the flower to be sharp, but for the thorns and the leaf to be slightly soft, but recognizable. This is my favorite of the bunch.
This is a stylized version of the first shot. I’m not sure whether I like the straight image better or the version. If you have a preference, please leave a comment below.
Things have been a little slow photographically lately. Not really winter (it was 72(!) in Denver today), but not quite spring yet — things have yet to green up, there are no baby animals to photograph, and the migrant birds are still a couple of months away. But there are some hopeful signs — this is a semi-abstract image of the first flower to bloom in my garden this year.
|
|
