Macro Flower

I was watching one of my co-workers pets while he was away on business and he asked me if I would water his plants. I didn't really think much about it at the time, but when I watered them I noticed that a couple of them had some really little flowers. What really drew my attention is the way that the light was reflecting off of the flower petals. I had my D5000 handy so I decided to strap on my 50mm 1.8 with my reversal ring and start shooting. I didn't spend a lot of time on it because I was there to entertain a dog. The 5 minutes I did spend there turned out pretty well though.

None of these photos have been post processed or cropped. These are all straight from the Nikon. I have shrunk them slightly using FastImageResizer.

More Macros:

Macro Cacti

Macro Cacti Part 2

Macro Cacti Part 2

After a few days of editing I got enough shots to put up another post. These macro shots were taken with my D5000 using a 50mm 1.8 with a reversal ring. This is the second time I have experimented with the cacti in my window. You can check out the first cactus image set here: Macro Cacti

Macro Cacti

Valley of the Sun Panorama

This week I flew into Tempe, AZ for business. Leaving the fridged 20 degree weather in Michigan and landing in a nice 60 degrees is quite refreshing. It actually felt good to be outside, something that people here tend to forget during the winter months.

I was there for three nights and each night I had a chance to get out and take some pictures. I took about 1000 shots in the few days I was there. I'm in the process of picking the best ones and editing them in photoshop. Here are the first of many shots to come. These two panoramas are from my last night in town, and were taken on the top of a mountain in Papago Park. Well, to a Michigander it was a mountain. I'm sure they would have called it a hill in Ariziona.

I used hugin to create these panoramas.

 

Winter Sunset Panorama

Three Panorama Pictures

Old School RPM

I post on the Nikon D5000 forum over at www.dpreview.com. You should check out that site for all your camera information needs. The forums as well as the camera reviews and comparisons are quite helpful... On to the post!

The reason I decided to post these images was because over at the forum they have weekly challenges. This week was ***Challenge #96 - VINTAGE *** 

I took these pictures in southwest Michigan a couple of years ago at a car show. The only tweeking that has been done is the change to black and white. I used Picasa for the black and white.

 

Nikon D60,  f/5.3, ISO200, 1/400sec at 35mm

  

 Nikon D60,  f/5.3, ISO280, 1/125sec at 38mm

Lola at Six Weeks

These pictures were taken a couple of weekends back. Lola had just turned 6 weeks a couple of days before this shoot. I didn't try to do anything special with this one, mostly just moved around and took candid shots. These are what I came up with. Enjoy.

 

Lola at Six Weeks

Lola at Christmas

Lola Five Days Old

I'm an Uncle!

Nikon Flashes

Recently I have been taking more portraits then I ever have in the past. I have known for a while that if I continued to take a lot of portraits that I should probably invest in a flash for my Nikon D5000. What I typically do is find out what I want/need and then I look at my options. When looking through the Nikon products I was presented with a few choices. The reasonable ones seem to be SB-400, SB-600, or SB-900.

I almost instantly decide against theSB-400, maybe someone can convince me otherwise, but being the cheapest Nikon product available for my camera, it is almost guaranteed to be lacking features that I will want to make use of.

TheSB-600 seems to be packed with more features, but is double the cost of the SB-400. This is not out of my price range, but I can't help but look at the next best thing.

The next best thing is theSB-900. The SB-900 appears to be the top of the line product for my camera. It has a bunch of really great features, but it cost double what the SB-600 cost. This could still be in my price range, but it's really hard for me to drop $450.

I'm leaning towards the SB-600. It seems pretty middle of the road, and as I am a beginner it will probably work well for what I need. What do you think?

Circumhorizontal Arc

After many failed attempts I finally managed to capture a Circumhorizontal Arc. These are somewhat rare to see if you don't know what your looking for. I recommend you check out the wiki for more information, but in short...These occur when the sun is at a specific angle in the sky, and there are also cirrus clouds present.

They are sometimes called fire rainbows. If you can see a circumhorizontal arc where you live all depends on your location and the latitude. Here in the United States it is a relatively common to happen several times each year. Actually seeing them is somewhat tricky. I have read that they are quite rare to see mid-latitude and northern Europe.

Yesterday I helped my dad cut some trees down on his property. As we were cleaning up afterwords I looked up at the sky and noticed the clouds resembled the clouds I had seen when witnessing a circumhorizontal arc. I rushed inside and grabbed my camera, just as I was coming back out I saw it. I ran down to an empty field so I could get a better view. So after a few attempts of trying to get one of these captured in one of my photos... success!