This week came very close to becoming my first posting of a previously taken photo as threatened in my first post.  Saturday came around and I still had not taken a single picture all week and I had some chores to do around the house before the rainy weekend weather that has been forecast arrived.  With the chores done by noon and the sun still shining, Amy and I headed across the county to Mendon Ponds Park to see what interesting things I could photograph in nature with my new macro lens that I introduced last week.  My goal was to get a perfectly sharp photograph of a dragonfly and I knew that the park had plenty as I'd been there before  on a hot summer day and experienced them.  I did get some pictures of one that was willing to sit still long enough but as is often the case, I think one of my other shots from the hike turned out to be better.  In fact, I had a hard time choosing which picture to be featured in the post and the dragonfly picture is at least 4th on the list and as such is not getting top billing this week.

We hiked the Quaker Pond loop trail in the park, a 2.7 mile loop that takes you around the pond and through some marshy areas that I assumed would be ideal for finding dragonflies.  The edge of the trail was lined with wild flowers (or were they weeds?) and among them were plenty of goldenrods(?).  I would not normally consider these all that attractive but the sun was shining brightly on them and I took a few shots to see what they would look like.  This exposure came out almost perfect on the picture posted here.  It has had no post processing or adjustments done to it at all.  I like the bright yellow against the dark, out of focus background.

As we approached the pond and the wooden foot bridge that crosses the marshy area I could spot several dragonflies zooming about so I figured we could hang out for a while to see if one lent itself to a good shot.  While watching and looking around I noticed this grasshopper just off the trail near the bridge.  I tried to get a shot of him as he climbed along the reeds.  This shot of the grasshopper, like the goldenrod picture, turned out to better than the one I would eventually get of the dragonfly.  The sun became too hot to stand and we moved on off the bridge without the dragonfly picture.  Shortly after the bridge there was a fork in the trail and we were to go to the right to continue circumnavigating the pond but just up the trail to the left stood a deer staring down the trail at us.  I did get a picture of it but it was too far away and not really worth sharing here.  As we made our way around the pond the trees became thick again and shaded us from the worse of the heat.  Not too far along this path I came upon a red dragonfly that was happy to sit still for me.  I took several shots of it and the one here is the best of the bunch.  It is very difficult to get enough depth of field to get the insect in sharp focus while hand holding the camera and shooting quickly enough before your subject takes off.

After more hiking around the pond we came upon these pretty purplish colored flowers that were being picked over by both bees and butterflies.  I took several frames of the bee working its way around the flowers collecting pollen.  I knew if I took enough I would get a few with decent focus and pose and it was one of these shots that I selected to be featured this week.  Once I had my fill of shooting the bee and resumed my hike to catch up to Amy (she moved on until it was shaded) I noticed a butterfly that was collecting from the same set of flowers as the bee was.  I took several shots of it and I kind of like the way this particular profile shot turned out.  If it were a little sharper around the head it might have taken the top billing over the bee.  With that lack of sharpness, however, I don't think I can put it above the bee or the grasshopper and the earlier flower shot for that matter. Still a pretty good shot worth sharing.

We hurried along to return to the air conditioning of our car and only stopped briefly a couple more times to take pictures of some more flowers and some wild berries.  The berry shots were OK but this picture of the blue flowers was better.   Amy and I enjoyed the short hike to take the pictures even with several bug bites for our trouble.  If it wasn't for the need to have pictures for this blog we would not have taken the time to ride out to Mendon and enjoyed a pleasant walk in the woods.  I guess the blog's objective of getting me to go out and shoot more pictures is working (so far).  Until next week, enjoy.

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I have always been intrigued by the art of closeup photography.  When I graduated high school my mother got me a Canon AE-1 Program SLR as a graduation present.  Once I could afford it, I bought a bellows unit for it and tried to shoot macro photos.  Using a bellows is one way to go about shooting macros and I thought this would be what I would use now that I have a digital SLR.  It turns out that bellows units for today's SLR cameras are hard to come by, at least the Nikon one is, so I needed to go a different route.  After much procrastination on the subject I finally decided to go ahead  and buy Nikon's 105 mm Micro lens.  This is arguably the best choice for a macro capable lens in the Nikon line of digital SLRs or so says the photography community online.



The lens arrived on Thursday and I quickly mounted it to my camera and took it out on the deck for some test shots while I cooked dinner on the grill.  As we sat down to eat I couldn't help but try a close up shot of my glass of beer!  The lens is also very popular for portrait photography as 105 mm (especially on a full frame sensor) is a very good length for portraits.  To test this theory out I grabbed a quick candid of my daughter Kristina as she sat at the dining room table.  This new lens will give me plenty of opportunity to capture some last minute photos for this blog as there is always something that will look very interesting when photographed up close.  With this in mind I wondered what I would shoot for my first macro post to this web site.  My initial plan was to collect a bunch of snail shells and arrange them in a cluster and see how it turned out. But then I had other idea.

I have read a lot about a technique known as focus stacking that is done to help improve the shallow depth of field you get with extreme closeup photography.  What this entails is taking several exposures at slightly different focus points starting at the closest point on the subject and slowing focusing on things sli
ghtly farther away.  I tried this Saturday on a yellow flower from a bouquet of flowers that we had in the house.  It seemed to work fairly well.   Then later that evening as I opened up the umbrella on the deck, I noticed a rather large bug attached to the under side.  Once we (OK, once Amy) got the bug off the umbrella we realized it was dead or at least it seemed dead.  We left it lying on the deck and it was still there this afternoon.  I decided to take it down into the basement where my studio lights are setup and see how god a picture I could get with it using this focus stacking scheme.  This gave me three candidates for this week's choice and given that they were all pretty good I decided to stick with the original plan and use the snail shells.  I hope you like it along with the others in this post.

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Super Moon over Springdale Farm in Northampton Park, Monroe County

Haze on the horizon made it difficult to get a good moon
moon picture while it was still low in the sky.

Shortly after publishing last week's post I decided to get a jump on coming up with a photo for this week and told Amy I was going to go over to  Northampton Park to try and get a super moon picture. The park is less than 5 miles from our house and I figured we might have a vantage point to get a reasonable shot.  The technique for shooting an interesting full moon picture (super moon or not) is to catch the moon early after it rises while its still close to the horizon.  You then want to use as long a lens as you can to compress the scene, bringing farther objects (moon) closer to the foreground objects (Springdale Farm in my case).

My lovely assistant working hard. (iPhone 5)

The location we chose to setup proved to be too close to the farm for me to achieve the affect I wanted so I ended up using photoshop and created the above image from two separate exposures.  If I were able to back up another 1/4 mile or so I'm fairly certain I could have framed the shot as composed above.  The farm house base image was shot at 160 mm (240 mm equivalent on my D300) and the moon was shot at 340 mm (510 mm equivalent).  In addition the picture I chose to feature is an HDR composition of 5 exposures.  I've added the non-HDR version below along with the version without the bigger moon.

Original frame as shot.

You may be wondering why I photoshopped my picture to achieve the result shown above and may even accuse me of cheating to get the picture I wanted.  Some argue that a picture of a scene needs to look like it did in real life and if I were a photo journalist I would agree completely.   When shooting the moon with a long telephoto lens composed with foreground elements it never looks like it did in real life because the moon becomes so magnified that it looks surreal.  I did not have a scene that would permit me to create that affect so I chose to do so with some photoshop magic.  This may not have been what Ansel Adams meant when he said "You don't take a photograph, you make it.", but that is how I choose to interpret it.

If you would like to leave a comment on what you think about this, I'd be happy to read it.

Non HDR composition.  Sky darkened slightly from
original exposure.

The pictures in this week's post were taken with my Nikon D300 and an AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm lens and a 1.7x teleconverter for added reach unless otherwise noted.

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I have been struggling with whether or not to take on the responsibility of doing a weekly blog during the year I was 52 years of age. The daily blog I kept while driving across the country was a motivation for my sister, Becky, to do a 52 week blog and thus I feel the urge to follow suit.  The old "tag you're it" kind of motivation.  My sister is a far more social person than I and she has grand-children that provide her with an endless supply of material to blog about.  I fear if my blog postings were strictly about what I did each week they would quickly bore the hell out of what few readers I may attract.  I needed something else to focus my blogging on and photography was the logical choice for me.
There are many ways to blog about photography ranging from the 365 project style to simpler, less involved approaches.  I figured I would use this weekly blog to help motivate me to go out and take more pictures and try to improve as a photographer.   I love photography but still only shoot on special occasions or while on vacation at some national park.  Hopefully, this blog will help to get me out shooting and I'll share the results here, good or bad.   For those weeks when I am unable to motivate myself to get up and out, I will share a photo from my past that has special meaning or that I am particularly proud of along with the story about it.   I will endeavor to keep those to a minimum.  With that out of the way onto my first post.

This past Friday was my 52nd birthday and on Saturday Amy and I decided to venture off to Sterling NY for the Renaissance Fair that is held each weekend during the summer months.  We had visited the fair once many years ago and decided going again would be fun and may provide some photo ops to kick start my blog.

I'd thought I would try and get some artistic shots of artisan wares like hair ribbons and or metal sculptures but I think my best shots were taken during a one man stage show called the DaVinci Brothers comedic opera.


This man clearly enjoyed his craft and was skilled at drawing in the crowd before his show, which involved some "volunteers" from the audience to help act out some convoluted story that was really irrelevant to the entertainment value of the show.  The jovial nature of this performer is pretty well captured in the shots I took of him but my favorite is the one of him strumming his stringed instrument and singing.  Although watching him try to blow his horn while giggling hysterically was also fun.

Once again, I did not shoot as many pictures as I should have while on this trip.  I need to become more comfortable doing street photography as the place was teaming with interesting people in interesting costumes (one of the attractions for many that attend such fairs is to dress up in thematic costumes and go out in public and still fit in).   Shortly after we arrived, while waiting for Amy to return from the privy, I saw a woman in long white hair carrying a dragon's egg.  She wouldn't be the only visitor from Westeros that we would see during the day and I did not bother to take a candid or posed shot of any. 

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