Once in a Red Moon...

Ok so I don't have any cool racing photos to show you... but I can say I was in one heck of a hurry after trying to go through Hillsville VA on the opening day of the Flea Market.  Even at 6am the bustle of the town and people setting up booths were really slowing things down.  
After making it out of Hillsville, and onto an open two lane highway, things were going well and I was on time to make it to Rocky Knob to catch the sun breaking the horizon. 
The fog was thick, thick enough to make it so my reaction time was longer than the distance I could see at the speed I was going(basically if a deer popped out it's 'goodbye')

About 3 miles from the top of the knob, I noticed the moon very graciously setting over nice rows of trees and fog.  I stopped the car and started taking some shots handheld with the Pentax K20d and an old Sears 135mm 2.8.  The crop factor of this camera body and the length and superb sharpness of this old lens make for a nice combo when shooting telephoto landscapes.  To get the composition below, I ended up sprinting down the parkway to get into a better position. I am glad I spent the time to stop and shoot this moonset, because the lens of the Sears 135mm struggles with flare when shooting into the sun, so my results were going to be better in a lower dynamic range/no flare situation.

The cool part about this is that, when I composed the moon photo, I actually couldn't make out what was in the foreground fog... turns out that an old run down building sits there(lucky me:)

 

 

Have a great and safe weekend!!

 

 

Living Slow...

I live a mile-and-a-half from a not very busy highway in Southwest Virginia.  Basically, turn left after Galax towards Pipers Gap, and go until your Verizon Wireless phone stops working, and it's on your left just past the 'two dogs'(listen for my rooster's mangy crow) Life around here can be as slow as you want it to be, it really is something else(something awesome)

I will take my camera and a little Yorkie down the road, and take photos of flowers, cow pastures, bugs, dogs, turtles... anything that will stay around long enough to get photographed. 

The other morning I was taking a photo of a pasture covered in fog when a couple of the more well known locals came walking about,  the 'two dogs'.  You see the 'two dogs are kind of celebrities on our road.  So much so that if you were to get directions on how to get to our house, you might hear something like "once you see the two dogs, it's on your left after two more houses".

You see, the 'two dogs'(I don't actually know thier names) like to lay in the street and bask in the sunshine, while greeting anyone that comes by.  Whenever I go running, the dogs will come meet me and run with me to the end of the road and back:) 

After a great church service this morning(about 'Margins in Life'), I know I need to make my life just a little bit more like the 'two dogs'....  Take it easy, go for walks, lay out in the sun, and be nice to everybody:) 



Don't let her sad face deceive you, her tail is a waggin'




The Sigma provides nice sharp focus



The mornings get foggy more often as the season starts to change:)

Hope you all had a great Sunday:) 



I love Spiders (Part 2)

I opted to set up a flash behind my subject here.  I like how all the water drops catch light and make a really nice line throughout the image.  If you look closely, you can see little starbursts on the points of light(notably the larger drop right infront of the spider on the first image).  The aperture was closed down to f14 for these images.  A small aperture is usually a nessecity for macro photography, as a razor thin depth of field is very hard to work with.

Click the images to view a larger version.

Thanks for Looking:)

 Thanks for looking:)





I love Spiders(part 1)

I think spiders are awesome.  I am fascinated by them.  I am not currently fascinated to the point where I go and look up what type it is, or if it is poisonous, or what its scientific name is etc..  I just love admiring them.  It is amazing that a little creepy crawly builds a web designed to catch a wayward bug who might get tangled in it.  And once the bug gets caught... game over:) 
Tuesday morning I went outside when the gf left for work.  The air was really foggy(as it often is) and the dense humidity caused the webs to have gazillions of little water droplets on them, making the webs very visible.  On a dry day it can be hard to spot even the largest webs.


The first three images are of the same spider, and were taken near the carport outside our house.  All of the images were taken with the Tokina 100 2.8 Macro lens mounted to a Canon 5d Mark ii.







The web resembled a Compact Disc with the sunlight shinging through the water drops.




A ray of sunlight lights up a spider in the morning




Some nice light coming in from behind a very large web. (Cumberland Knob, N.C.)




A spider just getting his web started on Old Quaker Rd.

 Thanks for looking, stay tuned for more:)

Front Stoop Macro Photography

I had most of the day off yesterday, and while the dog was doing her 'numbers', I opted to take some photos of the slowly wilting flowery plants in the front yard.  After first seeing the spiders and the bees, the next 400 exposures were a bit of a blur.... :) 

1:1(maximum magnification on the Tokina 100mm Macro) photography is difficult on a moving subject.  It is made even more difficult when you are leaning over in odd stances.   Your depth of field(the part of the image that is in focus) is razor thin at f2.8, almost unusable this close.  If you stop your aperture down to f10 or so, you have a few milimeters of focused area to work with.

I did not use my lens' focus for the bee pictures below, I set the lens to its closest possible focus point, and just moved the camera back and forth inch by inch to get the focus right.  Then, when I was done, I deleted about 300 some exposures:)




Most of the flowers here have started to get depressed and look like this.

 Once I noticed the spiders I knew I was gonna be photographing for a while..



A spider scurries into a flower



I have always thought that Yellowjackets looked awesome.  But these are a different kind that have a shiny green back and stripped bottom half.   They are sweet looking and the Tokina brings out the detail very well. 

Barbed Wire, Spiderwebs, and Red Sky

I am hoping you will enjoy these images from the Parkway.
The fog was thick as I left the house well before sunrise. It scattered just enough to allow me to see some really nice color.

On the way back I grabbed a few macro shots of some barbed wire near the house.



A soft landscape shot at 1.4




More 1.4 Landscape

 

A classic North Carolina Scene taken by sticking 3 images together.  Shot with the Sigma 50





I am under the impression that young spiders, new to the web-making scene, use these barbs as practice:)





Refraction... I shot this with apertures 14, 6.3, and 2.8.   The 2.8 image left only the largest drop in focus, with everything else out of focus.  6.3 allowed a few more of the drops to come into focus, but still not the results I wanted.  At 14, the shape and detail of the barb shows just enough while not being distracting.



Thanks for looking:)  Feel free to leave a comment or a question(no need to log in)

Cumberland Knob Macro Photography

Yesterday I had the whole day off!!(sort of).  I took the gf to work, grabbed the camera, and headed down to the Cumberland Knob in North Carolina.  I made sure to bring my almost functioning Tokina 100mm 2.8 Macro(I got it sandy at the beach and now it won't focus to infinity:(.
 The Cumberland Knob is located just south of the V.A./N.C. line on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  There you will find a large picnic area, a 2.5 mile hiking trail, an awesome little creek at the bottom of a ravine, and TONS of macro opportunities!  I also had the (soon to be replaced) Canon 24mm 2.8, and the Sigma 50mm 1.4.

I like shooting macro for a couple of reasons... One is, the 'Grand Vista' doesn't happen as often in the Southeast as it did back home, so I try to 'focus' on different, smaller things.  The other reason is that I when I look through a macro lens at full magnification, I feel like I can see the backbone of our entire ecosystem, and that is pretty cool.  Enjoy...



Close Focus with the Sigma provides wonderful bokeh




It's difficult to match up the plane of focus with the subject sometimes(notice the blurry edges of the web)




A single strand of webbing crosses in front of a completed web in the background.




The green here is holding on strong, but the yellow is showing its face in spots..






Some TINY mushrooms growing on top of a stump.



This was fun to photograph.  I used live view and the Canon Depth of Field Preview to help me select the perfect focus point and aperture.





I had the pleasure of watching a spider make one of these tightly wound webs.



He hangs in a heart:)

DUN DUN DUN!!!  Fall is coming!!

A colorful leaf(shot with 24mm)

(shot with Sigma 50mm)

A mushroom and a rock sharing some space on the forest floor.

A splash of bright yellow in a dark green forest.

This little photo walk got me super excited for the fall!  But I will take the warm weather as long as it feels like staying:)

A new dress, a new lens

The gf recently got a new dress, so I got a new lens to match the occasion.  After going back and forth for quite sometime, I ended up purchasing a Sigma 50mm 1.4 over the Canon 50mm 1.4.   It's kind of a gamble when you buy third party lenses, but I feel like this one paid off.  The images are awesomely sharp, the bokeh is very creamy, and the lens feels nice mounted to the camera(bigger/heavier than the canon).  I have shot with the Canon 50mm 1.4 multiple times and have nothing negative to say about it, but lets face it, after almost 20yrs, Canon should consider an update:)

Among other lenses considered were the Ziess 50mm 1.4, and the Canon 50mm 1.2L.  I had almost decided on the Ziess, but its straight aperture blades and manual focus were a bit of a killer, especially since it retails for $300 more than the Sigma.  I briefly considered the Canon 50mm 1.2L, but realized that with that much cash($1350), I could purchase a lens, a tripod, and a plane ticket out west:)  This was a no brainer with my current photography habits:)

Here are some images of my wonderful girlfriend Ashley:)  All shot with the Sigma 50mm 1.4.  And all shot mostly wide open.  Enjoy...