Tiger

Last weekend we went to the zoo with my sister and her family. I took about 200 photos and Shane took about 50. I haven't had a good look through them yet, but I thing this is my best one. Shane got some fabulous butterfly shots.

We have just started renovations on our house so my POTD are all shots of my house - interesting for me, but shots of house stumps and footings probably isn't going to be very thrilling for anyone else. I will try to get some other ones up soon though.

Narrawong Beach Before and After - CC please.

SOOC

Adjusted levels, Krisztina's B&W action, sharpening and crop

I took this photo a few months back andit was one I was never really that happy with. I was using my old tripod, which wasn't really stable so it wasn't overly sharp. Because the exposure between top and bottom was quite different I bracketed the exposures (this is the middle one). I hadn't done anything with this image until tonight but all the talk of HDR inspired me to give it a go. Well the results of combining the 3 images using HDR in CS3 where less than impressive - really dull and muddy. So i thought I would just play around. I used the magic wand to select the sky and sea in separate layers and adjusted the levels in each and the erased the bits I didn't want. i really do need to lear how to use layer masks. Then when i was happy with it I ran Krisztina's B&W action. I sharpened the area around the branch, but not the sky so as not to increase the noise in the sky. than i cropped.

So do you think it worked??? CC always appreciated.

The pink wall

We are about to start a major renovation / extension of our house. I can't wait coz our house is classic 1970's - uurrgh. And too small. Anyway, three bedrooms will stay the same, so we are trying to get these updated before the builders start. I told the kids they could all choose a colour for one wall in their bedrooms. the choices they came up with are bright pink, orange and turquoise. (lucky paint is easy to change). This is the pink wall I have just finished painting in my DD's room. How cool is that going to be for a backdrop. My DD's are away at the moment visiting their grandmother for 3 weeks, so I had to con DS to pose for a photo. He will only let me take a photo if I let him pull a funny face - typical boy. So the photo isn't great - but I really wanted to show you the wall.

A sunset one also

iso 100, f 22, ss 1 sec, polarising filter and tripod

I took this at about 9pm tonigh (6th Jan). I cranked everything up as much as possible to slow down the shutter speed and get the misty water effect. I'm pretty happy with this one. but I would like the ss to be a bit slower still. The tide was coming in and it was getting dark so definitely time to go home. You may recognise this scene, it's one of my favourite places to take pics and featured heavily on my blog last year.

bottle in a tree

Okay, so you are probably thinking "why do I have a photo of a tree with a circle around a few branches". Okay, here's the story. This is a Norfolk Pine tree - Warrnambool is full of these trees. A few weeks ago my boss at work was telling me about this tree, The small white dot in the circle is a bottle that has been stuck onto the branch. I have know idea how it could have got there. These trees are really big and really old. So today i finally got around to taking a photo of it - hummm, the result was less than stellar. So the question is how do you take a photo of this that shows the bottle at least relatively clearly, but also shows its position in the tree? or do I just need two photos :)

Butterflies

I did some butterfly stalking in my garden today. I used my 70-200 lens and had to set the iso to 800 to get a fast ss, so they are a bit noisy.

A little bit of sea mist and a little bit of fill flash

Today was stinking hot again, so after I dinner we went to the beach, We were still swimming past 8 o'clock. On the way home we moticed one of the beaches was covered in a sea mist. By the time we got the camera and got out there it was almost gone. I though I would use the opportunity to try a bit of fill flash. I used the on board flash (forgot i had my speedlite with me). This is my DH, Shane. I was fairly pleased with how it turned out - would have been better with a more specacular sunset.

Recycle

This is one of those photos that didn't turn out as good as it scene looked at the time. I was driving home tonight and I was struck by all the recycle bins (the yellow lids) out for collection, Unfortunately the photo doesn't do it justice. I'm really disappointed with the lack of sharp focus in the distance - should have used a smaller aperture. I think from memory I used about f 10. Live and learn.

Learning Flash

#1. no exposure compensation / no Flash exposure compensation

#2. no exposure compensation / positive Flash exposure compensation

#3. No exposure compensation / negative flash exposure compensation

I have had my flash for 12 months now and I am still clueless. Lucky for me the wonderful Krisztina has set up this group http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/mb.asp?cmd=display&thread_id=2423233 (can you tell I have no idea how to do links). So here are a few of my shots from tonight. They aren't very good, in fact they are pretty bad, but it helped me get a bit of a grip on flash exposure compensation. I think I was too close to the subject and the background to get the best effect. But who knows, by next year I may actually know what I am doing. No CC necessary - I know they are crap.

Happy New Year

The last day of the POTD challenge for 2007. Well I didn't get to 365 posts. I started well, but after a few months I really dropped the bundle. So, do I try to do it again in 2008??? not sure yet, I'd like to keep this blog going and try to at least up date once a week. My New Year's resolution is to commit to following through on things more, so who knows. I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who visited my blog and thank you for also sharing your photos with me.

Take Care