More Photos From Today: Apple Blossoms

March 23rd, 2012 Thomasso

These were two additional photos that I wanted to get up here becuase they are, in my humble opinion, really great shots. This apple tree is right in the field by the Post Office in Fort Langley. I just walked up to the nearest branches with my 30mm macro, and got as close I could, and started shooting. The blossoms looked awesome. Having the Sun high in the sky made all the difference.

I am getting better Bokeh with this lens. This tree is in a really great location–full Sun, and no building on the Northern side of it.

I am even amazed at the cool effects this little lens gives me. These blossoms are only about 1cm in diameter.

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News Flash – It’s Spring in Fort Langley, Finally!

March 23rd, 2012 Thomasso

Albeit only a cool 8C out, the day was perfect, as it was sunny with just a smattering of clouds, and this could last for the whole weekend too. I was so happy to see the Sun shinning, and so was most of the town as the foot traffic was huge. Everywhere people were walking about just looking, enjoying the Sun. People were just walking about, it was nice to see, as most were smiling. But the flowers were finally popping up too. So, off I went shooting flowers and tree buds, totally enjoying the Sun and spring like weather.

Above, Apple Tree blossoms. I shot these a few weeks ago when we had a freak weather of sunshine, but these buds were just little things back then. This tree is right by the Fort Langley Post Office.

I can see flowers taking up a lot of my time as I walk around shooting.

I will be posting more tonight. I took over 70 shots just in my afternoon walk today, so more to come. Life is so much better with a camera when it is sunny out!

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Last Day for Playing With My Camera Shooting Water

March 22nd, 2012 Thomasso

Being that it was so dark outside, as the clouds beat me home from Langley and covered the Sun up, I went and set up my bowl of water so I could continue to master my new flash and photographing splashes of water with it. I also brainstormed an idea that I had kicking around this morning when I  found a really good water-dropper that works great, an old bubble jet refill cartage. Now that I had the perfect delivery system for a water dropper, I felt like I was going to capture that perfect shot of a water splashing. I also set up my camera slightly different than before, hoping that I could getting better light and faster shutter speeds. Off I went catching those water drops as they fell into the bowl–see below.

I started moving my flash around to different positions from the bowl of water. This above shot, I had the flash just over top of it, set to 1/36 (low power) to get this shot. I was now going down the right path I wanted.

Above–sadly I had the flash pointing away from the bowl of water and almost lost all off the light, but because the splash turned out so great I kept this one to post. It is a really cool splash!

Above, I used a 30mm macro lens, f2.5, ISO 100, leaving the shutter wide open and using the flash to freeze the moment. Focusing the lens was the most challenging task of getting these shots as the depth of field is so narrow. The focus was just off by a little bit.

Way too much flash, but the splash turned out good. Again, focusing was a problem. To get these shots I have to use manual mode on my camera, shut off the auto focus, and run my flash wirelessly. So setting everything up and getting it perfect was the hard part. Then there is hoping that when I press the shutter button, I get the drop in the right position, capturing that perfect splash. It was hit and miss! Out of 20 shots, eight images had good splashes in them.

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Water Fun: Splash With a Flash

March 21st, 2012 Thomasso

As I advance through my learning in photography, my next step in my evolution is getting a flash. I wanted to get the flash for a number of reason, but mostly to do high speed photography with it. I will not go into the science of why you need a flash to do basic high speed photography here today, but you do need one, and a good one, if you want to have lots of versatility with your shots. So I bought the best flash Sony makes–see yesterday’s post.

So, capturing a drop of water, just as it hits the surface of a puddle, is something that I always wanted to do. I was always fascinated by those shots of water, or other liquids, frozen in time while an object, or explosion of water, was occurring. These shots are something that a point-and-shoot camera cannot do, or as I found out, a really good DSLR cannot either unless you have a flash that you can set the intensity of the burst with. On my camera I can do everything, and even fire the flash wirelessly–which is really cool if you have only one flash–like I do at the moment.

Above was a fluke becuase this was my first shot, and I had the flash set really close. I used a turkey-baster to drop the water with. You can see the flash on the right side of the shot.

Then all the other shots where I found out that timing was everything. Holding my water dropper, while pressing the shutter button made for a lot of misses.

I adjusted the flash, moved it farther away, and cranked down my shutter speed on the camera. I found that I could see the drops better with these settings. Having a second flash will help.

And this is where I will leave for today. According to my math, I can reach a shutter speed with the flash of 1/6000 sec. I may try this again this weekend.

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I Asked for More Light, and I Got It

March 20th, 2012 Thomasso

I am in sheer delight. I was not expecting my shipment from Hong Kong until next Friday. With less than Four days since I, with the help of my friend, made those few clicks with the mouse on the Digital Rev website, I got the call just a while ago that my flash was here, waiting for me. It showed up this morning.

It is hard to believe that this flash was sitting on a shelf in Hong Kong, China, just a few days ago. And equally hard to believe at much money I saved buying it there than here in Canada. And, even more unbelievable is how fast this company, Digital Rev, shipped it out to me–across the Pacific Ocean!

Regrettably, it is too late for me to write more about the Flash, and what it can do while attached to my camera, so I will save that for later on this week. For now, I have it, and I will be learning, reading, flashing it over the next few days. This is a Sony HVL-F58AM Flash.

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The First Day of Spring 2012 – Yuck!

March 20th, 2012 Thomasso

I am at home now, just got in, which is about 4:30pm, and I am looking around outside seeing more of winter than spring. The day was showing a little promise of spring, teasing us with some Sun in Langley City, but that came and went within minutes. When I got back into Fort Langley, it was trying to rain. The air was still very chilly, still feeling like winter with no hint of spring.

Hard to believe that today marks the time in the year for the planet Earth when the Sun is shinning right over top of the equator, calling this the Equinox. Due to the forces of nature, we here in the Western half of North America are still in winter’s grip. Even more sadness, is what some meteorologists are saying that our winter like weather will last up until April. April! Come on, give us a break! Two more weeks of this crappy weather!

Well, at least it is spring. I am hoping that the Sun does make an appearance, even if it is just for a little while. Here are some photos that I took when I just got home. A very Grey day out, eh?

I guess too, if you have noticed, I changed my watermark for my photos for spring 2012. Instead of doing it with the 3D rending program, I cut to the cheep and did the logo with the 2D vector programs called Inscape, which is a very cool program in its self. I was hoping for the some really nice bright photos to mark this day with, and to go with my spring logo, but obviously that did not happen. The weather is constantly changing, so who knows, tonight, perhaps, it could all clear up, or snow.

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A Good Day’s Shoot’n – Clear Sky: Good Sun!

March 17th, 2012 Thomasso

On my way back home today from being up in the Valley, I stopped just down the road from where I live, a little place called Glen Valley, and shot a few hundred photos. The day turned great as right around sunset the sky cleared right up from the South, and the South West from where Vancouver is. I was the supreme shutter bug, going on a shooting spree, as I had so much built up photographer’s anxiety from three months of bad shooting weather; this was my therapy, my chance to unwind, and shoot like this was the last day sunshine.

I think everyone around the world thinks that Vancouver, British Columbia, is surrounded by mountains. This is not true, as there are mountains to the North, but from the East and South it is mostly flat land, and as you drive further away, you hit farming country. This is not to say that you do not see the mountains from Vancouver, but there is a lot of flat land between them and the city. I live among the agrarian communities, mine is called Fort Langley. The above photo is a cranberry farm, below, more of a wide shot of Glenn Valley–same shot, different viewpoint.

Here is a close-up shot of the chain that blocks cars from entering the aquifer access road. Cool eh?

There you go–mountains, using my 200mm telephoto lens. With the crop factor on my camera, this works out to having a 300mm lens.

I then packed it up and continued on home. But this was only round one or two photo shoots. I also had in mind to fulfill a request made by a Twitter friend, SpacePops, who asked if I could shoot the planets Venus and Jupiter, as those two object were high in the evening sky, and very bright right now. I have better photo equipment to shoot them with as compared to an iphone.

So, the two points of light you see in the above image are planets, taken with my 30mm macro, ISO 100, F2.3, 1.25 sec exposure on my Sony A33. The top light dot is Venus, and the bottom is Jupiter. When I get my mount for my telescope, I should be able to get very detailed, and closer shots of deep-space objects, but that is later on down the road when I get more money saved up for this hobby.

While I was waiting for the Sun to set, and I was standing on the shores of the Fraser River in Fort Langley, I took this shot of the Bedford Landing housing development.

There, this concludes my day for photography. Have a great weekend everyone!

Posted in Around Town, Art, Astronomy, General, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Friday Is Here

March 16th, 2012 Thomasso

Finally, Friday has arrived, and none too soon, as I have waited for the end of the work week to get here with so much anticipation. Although tonight I have a volunteer meeting to go to, just having time off from my day job is welcomed. I like my job, my regular employment, but this week was extra difficult with the new demands being placed on my employer to meet all of the requirements from our new contract. The added glum weather and co-workers stressed out, made for a situation that none of us wanted to be in. The great news is, I have two days in which to forget about that and focus on other entirely different stresses. What would life be without a little stress in it, eh?

Although I consider clouds to be cool for photographing, this one is currently parked over top of Fort Langley spewing out rain with no end in sight. This is the typical weather pattern from over the last three days: rain, sun, rain, sun with wind, rain with gusting winds, then more rain topped off with a short burst of sunshine–then repeat this pattern. Someone make it stop.

Anyway, it is the weekend. Time to unstress.

ADDED:

I just had to add this shot from the same batch of shots I took of that storm cloud. I edited this one from the RAW file, trying to clean up some of the noise from using a hight ISO.

The details: 160mm (285mm at 35mm format) f13 1/500 ISO 400.

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Going Back to Black and White: For the Moment

March 15th, 2012 Thomasso

With a freak storm that lasted for fifteen minutes, and weather that changed from hot and sunny, to cold and pouring rain, the only thing worth photographing today were clouds and a rainbow.

I converted the above image from my RAW format, into black and white image, using Dark Table, software that works with RAW files in Ubuntu 11.10. This was shot with my 200mm, f11, 1/400, ISO100 (300mm in 35mm formate) using my Sony A33.

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After the Storm – Pretty Rainbow Shot

March 15th, 2012 Thomasso

I just thought I would share this with you all. I also posted this on Twitter too becuase this is the first time I got a shot of a rainbow like this. I almost can see the entire spectrum of light in this shot.

The storm left as fast as it came, all within about fifteen minutes. We had lightening and thunder along with it; rare around these parts. The rainbow is pretty with this lens. The shot was taken from my back yard.

I shot this with my 50 to 200mm lens, at 50mm (78mm at 35mm standard) on my Sony A33.

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