Sometimes, it is only when we look very closely, that we can see the cracks.
This is the top of my very old silver salt shaker. You wouldn’t know, unless you looked with the help of a macro lens, that there were even any cracks.
Sometimes I think it is the same way with people. If you take them at face value you don’t see that we are all broken in some way. It is only when we slow down and take the time and really observe….
That we see what is really there.
I will be honest. This poor little icicle is no more. It came tumbling down off the roof several days ago and laid in a broken and melting heap for several days before the weather finally warmed up a bit.
I was not sorry to see him go.
But before he met his horrible, icy demise I spent some time leaning out of my bedroom window taking pictures of the drips. I hadn’t been planning on opening my window and leaning out, camera to eye, to take pictures. It is just that as I was standing there folding laundry I saw the drip form at the end of the icicle and then throw itself into space. I watched again and ran to get Big Bertha. There was some frustration at first because, no matter how hard you try, you are NOT going to be able to hit the shutter at just the right time to get the drip in just the right place. I almost gave up. But I don’t like to give up on things. It makes me angry to throw in the towel.
And then I remember.
I paid a great deal for a camera body that is supposed to help me do these kinds of things if I would only use it correctly.
Insert dope slap here.
Photos like this are what the Continuous shooting mode are for. I am not a huge fan of that mode, if I am being super honest here. It just means that I have to go through a lot of photos just to find one that I really like. But I am willing to use it when need be, like when I am taking photos of Cheetahs.
I was just happy to have the cheetah relatively in focus. You should SEE the photos that my fellow PhotoSib, Erica, takes. Oh my ever lovin’ heck they are good! But then, she takes a lot of photos of Cheetahs. It might have something to do with that Masters Degree in Cheetah Conservation that she has almost completed.
Or perhaps it is just that she likes Cheetahs a whole bunch.
The ever popular wedding blowing of the dandelion. Not possible to accomplish without Continuous mode.
Just as an aside, I coordinated a wedding this past summer where there the photographer (who had never shot a wedding before and yes I know we all have to start somewhere) had her camera set on Continuous shooting mode for the entire wedding. All I could think was…too many photos to go through.
But I digress.
Even with Big Bertha set on Continuous it wasn’t as easy as you think to freeze the drip “in the act”. Thank goodness my neighbors, who already think I am a bit odd when I lay down on my driveway to get just the right angle for the leaf shot, could see me cackling with glee when I realized that I had done it.
It doesn’t take all that much to make me happy evidently.
Folks it is cold. This morning, when I went out to walk Max the Magnificent it was……
Wait for it……..
This cold……
16F, all by itself, is colder than I normally like to see it. And I live in a place where that is the norm in the winter time. But when you put a minus before that 16 then it is what we lovingly call “freezing my nose hairs” kind of cold. You can bet your bottom dollar that Max the Magnificent was speedy quick with his morning necessities. It is really easy to pick up the morning doggy deposit when it flash freezes before you can get to it.
Too much information?
But you know what is good about these sorts of temperatures?
Fractals!
If you time it just right and keep the shades in the living room pulled down until after the sun comes up the fractals are preserved for recording with Big Bertha. We won’t talk about me running around this morning gathering camera and tripod to take a picture or two. The thing is, fractals are sensitive things. The minute that I raise the shades the heat from the room starts to work. You have maybe 10 minutes max before the above picture starts to look like this……
The fractals just start melting away.
There has to be SOMETHING good about –16F weather. I will take the fractals.
And the 100mm macro lens that makes watching them so fun.
I am making slow and steady progress with leaning how to use the new Macro lens. I have to rethink how I take a shot and what I think it should look like and how the ISO should be set and all manner of things.
So. Much. Stinking. Fun.
Plus I am finally learning Lightroom. I need about 24 more hours in the day. And I need to make sure that I sleep well. Yesterday wasn’t all that great because I couldn’t turn my brain off on Sunday night which meant that 1a on Monday morning found me out in the living room reading by flashlight. I felt like I was 10 again, under the covers and reading with a flashlight thinking that the Parental Units couldn’t POSSIBLY know that I hadn’t gone to sleep.
Yeah right.
Did I digress?
If only snowflakes would hang around until it is nice and warm. I didn’t want to take the time to put my boots on when I ran out to take some pictures so I just stuck my feet into a pair of my fake crocs and stood in the snow. The things I do for art.
Oops, I didn’t mean to take a break from blogging. Life is just a bit on the busy side at the moment. Don’t leave me.
Please?
And yes, I know that I owe you a post on the Ornament Exchange. I will get there…eventually.
Now back to our regularly scheduled blather.
SO, I have given myself an early Christmas present. Actually, this may be the first time that I have ever deliberately given myself a gift at Christmas. It just hasn’t ever been something that I thought about doing. Don’t know why. Just is. This little acquisition has been in the back of my mind for some time now. It wasn’t going to be all that cheap, as most of these things never are, and I had to think about it for a time and save some money. In fact, I saved almost all of the money that I earned hanging with my boyfriend. I squirreled it away and watched the amount grow and grow. Then, when it was a nice pile of legal tender I took it and…..
Put it in the safe for 6 months.
No, I didn’t put it in the bank. If it was in the bank I might have put it to a different use. I put it in the safe for a very specific reason. I wanted it to be there and I wanted to have some time to really think about this purchase. I wanted to see if my enthusiasm for “the thing” and what “the thing” might be able to do would wane over the course of time.
You KNOW how that is. You think about something that you are ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that you must have to make your life complete. The world will be a dim and dismal place if you do not have that very thing right this minute. But you don’t get it and after time you realize that you don’t REALLY care about it and aren’t sure why you ever wanted it in the first place. Don’t lie to me and tell me that that very thing has never happened to you.
I will know if you are lying to me. Don’t think I won’t.
So I waited. I went on with life. I thought about “the thing” and my enthusiasm for it never waned. Not one little bit. Zippo. Zero. Nada. If anything it increased.
Today, the thing arrived on my doorstep…….
Do you know what it is?? Do you??
That my friends is my new Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens.
Oh shivers of joy and excitement that I cannot even convey to you. No, you have no idea how I squealed and jumped around when I came home from some errands and there was the box sitting by my garage door. I knew it was arriving today, I have Amazon Prime so I knew. But still, the excitement was a bit on the excessive side.
I have taken 6 pictures.
I am in love.
You are going to get SO sick of macro pictures of everything in my world. But I really don’t care. Oh my gosh I have always loved macro photography and I can hardly wait to explore.
Now if I can just find the time.
Does someone have a few extra hours that I can borrow…or days.
It rained yesterday. Boy howdy did it. HHBL left for a bike ride with the words, “I think I have about a two hour window of time. See you later……..”
45 minutes later…….
Yeah, lots of rain. But he road on, tough guy that he is.
This morning, the rain that was left on the Impatiens just cried out to be photographed.
I think my neighbors are getting used to me hauling the tripod and the camera out to the patio and then hunkering over the flowers.
Or else they have just stopped looking.
I am sure that the neighbors were burning up the phone lines a few weeks ago. The question would have been, “Why is Debbie squatting down in front of the Spirea bush by her front step?”
That is because there was a lone Grape Hyacinth waiting to be photographed.
I am ambivalent about these Spring flowers. Well, really, that isn’t quite true. I dislike them. Oh, I like them just fine during the short period of time when they are in full bloom. Our next door neighbors have their front walkway lined with Grape Hyacinth. A completely spell binding carpet of little purple flowers…for about 2 weeks out of 52 weeks per year. Then the flowers fade and they sort of go to seed and THEN, it just looks like they have an out of control grass problem running rampant through their front landscaping bed.
And the dang things seed themselves all over the place. I will admit that when they crop up in our landscaping beds I ruthlessly pull them up. The landscaping crew isn’t going to do it. Heaven forbid they pull something like a flower/weed. That would be almost as unheard of as their spraying for the deer.
But there was one glorious Spring day several weeks ago that found me crouched over the lone Grape Hyacinth that had escaped my purple purge. I didn’t bother with my tripod as I usually might have done, I just went spur of the moment.
A Reversing Ring and a stock 18-55mm lens on a Canon 7D body generally doesn’t lend itself to total spontaneity with macro photography, despite what all the videos on YouTube would tell you. I am much more meticulous when doing this kind of photography. There is a tripod involved and occasionally an added light source. There is patience and thought. There might even be a long pair of surgical tweezers (thanks Dad) to rearrange things to my liking. But not this time. This time it was grab Big Bertha and hope for the best.
And then there was the breeze.
In order to get this fuzzy and art house sort of photo I had to sway in rhythm with the flower.
Either I was doing a rather splendid imitation of a Cobra right before it strikes or I was acting out that last scene from Avatar. The neighbors will never know.
But I still like the photo.
I am trying to spend some time experimenting with my do it yourself macro photography using my reversing ring and one of the lenses that it fits on. Those lenses would be the 50mm, 85mm and my stock 18-55mm.
I am sure that having an actual macro lens would make things a whole lot easier. But I don’t always want easy…and right now a macro lens just isn’t in the budget. That would be a completely frivolous purchase. Some day perhaps….some day. But in the mean time I want to get everything possible out of this set up that I have. I want to own it, so to speak. Working with the reversing ring means that I have to slow down and think about what I want to do. I have found that most of the time I get the best results by having Big Bertha on a tripod and whatever I am photographing laid stationary on a small platform I have rigged up with an onld box and some felt. Focusing is a slow and precise process and isn’t always great. I am going to have to do some more research here because I am spending time looking at other photographer’s work using a reversing ring and the photos are often much sharper than mine. It is a learning process.
But it is so entirely fascinating. Every day things look so very different and so incredibly beautiful when looked at really close up. I have a growing list of “Everyday Things” that I am going to take the time to photograph.
Outside of our bedroom window is a tree with the most beautiful blossoms on it. This is one of the blossoms that wasn’t quite at the fully open stage.
I am completely mesmerized by some of the results that I am getting.
1. This is a dead Lady Bug carcass which has been residing on a window sill for some time. I am unwilling to say how long.
2. I was going to vacuum “her” up today when it occurred to me that I might take a picture of her.
3. I am odd that way. No need to point it out.
4. This was taken with my 18-55mm kit lens from my OLD camera (the 7D doesn’t come with a kit lens, or at least I didn’t order it with one). This is a lens that sees very little use these days. He is a rather “light” lens, adequate but light. But he may see more action with the reversing ring.
5. I am hoping to take a picture of a dead stink bug. I killed two of them this weekend before it occurred to me that I should “harvest” one and let him peacefully freeze to death in the freezer so that I could photograph him.
6. See #3
7. I can predict that there will be a lot of laying out on the driveway and photographing things this summer. And also photographing things in the lawn.
8. If my neighbors don’t already think I am odd then they will for sure think that by the end of the summer. I better warn them about this when we all have dinner together this evening.
9. Using the reversing ring on the lens is harder than you might think. It requires patience….which I am occasionally lacking. It requires thinking outside the box, which I love. It requires a very steady hand unless you are using a tripod, which means that I do not do this right after I have had my morning gallon of coffee.
10. I can predict that there is an actual, honest to goodness macro lens somewhere in my future. I don’t know when, I just know it will happen.
11. I am having just too much fun.
