A lizard on a lizard, love this juxtaposition and its really a lucky shot considering the narrow depth of field. I try my best to keep the eyes in focus and this time I got lucky! Taken at the Honolulu Zoo this past May. 1/250 sec at f/5.0 with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM on Canon 40D at ISO400. Cropped and post processed in Lightroom/Adobe Photoshop CS4.1
About the portrait: To be honest, most of the credits go to the model. She has a very natural way of behaving. My intention was to catch her wonderful eyes. I asked her to move very close to the lightbox to soften the strobist light. On the other side of the face I placed a disk strobe for circular reflections in the eyes. Afterward I made the square crop and the selenium toning.
Thursdaisy was one in a series of daisy photos I’d put up that week. The week before, serendipity (in the form of a few bokeh-filled days amidst banks of the flowers) had brought an informal Bluebell Week. Am a big fan of bluebells and I loved how the photos had turned out. So the next week, I found myself with a bunch of daisy photos. Et voila! Daisy Week was born. The theme weeks have been a fun way to direct the photography for a while.
This shot was heavily cropped from a larger raw file. I shoot exclusively with the 50mmf/1.4 on a 40D and usually shoot with it wide open, sometimes stopping down to f/2.2 if I want a bit less depth of field. This was shot wide open - a set of daisies, this in the bottom right hand corner. I was kneeling to get this from the right angle. With the f/1.4, the light was such and the background was such that the bokeh was guaranteed. I’d played with the shot and wasn’t happy one bit until I isolated this little fella and cropped tight on him. It went through a bit of post processing in Lightroom - took the shadows down a bit, upped the brighter colours, desaturated a tad. I then added a gradient top left to give the daisy a target of light for his streeeetttccchhhhing.
If someone was looking to replicate this shot, you’d want that low aperture and lots of light to help the bokeh behind. The f/1.4 wasn’t strictly necessary, it could have been the nifty fifty f/1.8 (the best value lens on either a Canon or Nikon) rather than the f/1.4 and there wouldn’t be any great difference. In fact, the petals would probably have been in slightly sharper focus… The f/1.4 does give that lovely smooth rounded bokeh though. That and the 40D were the best purchases I’ve ever made.
Wow, some awesome advice on depth of field and the differences between f/1.8 and f/1.4. Thanks for that Harold. Make sure to check out Harold’s photostream.
And just cause he has some great stuff, here is a slideshow of his most recent work:
The shot is of a small Japanese maple we have in our front yard. We had just gotten back from the Griffith Observatory hoping to get some shots of the LA skyline but it was too hazy. I can always depend on some kind of plant in our yard in Long Beach to provide something I can shoot. I shot looking up toward the sun - hoping to get a nice sunburst, while getting the red of the maple leaves to light up nicely. I used at cross process on the blue sky to really make the color pop blue against red. I shot this with my Canon 40D and trusty 24-105. My wife and I are both going through some minor (but bothersome) health issues at the same time - and I had remembered this Rilke quote - a sunburst always reminds me that there is something deeper to be found in every situation; and that these situations often yield something we weren’t expecting.
What drew me to this photo was using the sun as a backlight which normally would make the subject dark but because the leaves were transparent you could see their beautiful colors against the blueness of the sky. The brightness of the sun also creates a vignette that directs your eyes to the subject. Very well done. See more of Simon’s work.
This photo was taken at Moanalua Gardens where the old monkey pod (I think) tree’s are both spectacular and breathtaking.
It’s hard to get a grasp on the sheer size of these trees without a sense of scale, which unfortunately, is missing in this photo. I converted it to black and white because I was after the patterns the branches and leaves were making. So I converted, punched up the contrast and threw in some sharpening in post. Taken with my Canon 10-16mm on a 40D body. The wide angle’s flattened out the tree a bit for this interesting effect. Enjoy!
