Egret in Flight: Take 2

I've got this photo up in the Critique forum over at DPS.

I've added some motion blur to the shore line in the background. I still can't put my finger on what I don't like about this picture. I like the egret, and his pose, and that I can see his head from the angle I shot at. Maybe it's the colors? So drab...

I do like it a bit better with more blur in the background. Here's what I've got so far:

Back Yard Adventures

Hung out in my back yard around sunset this evening. This is my favorite time of year, weather-wise: 70-ish and just gorgeous. Fall leaves come down too quickly for my taste, and this year I hope to get out and get some photos as things change color. Unfortunately, it's been such a weird late summer/early fall that some trees are losing their leaves without them having changed colors. Kind of bizarre.

In this picture, I was trying to capture the sky, which looked a lot more dramatic in real life than I was able to portray with my camera. I tried various white balance settings, to no avail. I'm facing east, and the sun is setting to the west directly across from my subject. It made some neat colors in the clouds. This shot has been cropped quite a bit, and I cloned out an annoying golf hole flag.



And a semi-low semi-red moon tonight - 98% full, waning gibbous. This wasn't the most crisp shot I got, but it showed the color of the moon the best. The red only lasted a few minutes, and after that it was just like any other moon...



Earlier in the afternoon, I caught a shot of a great egret flying over the pond in my back yard. Unfortunately, I had bumped my camera dial (apparently) and it was set to Manual mode (and the last thing I'd shot was the moon!) - so the shutter speed was way too slow. The photo was grossly over exposed, but I kicked down the exposure 4 stops in Lightroom and then messed with color levels a bit. This is what I got:



There's some camera shake around his wings, but it looks more like an indication of motion to me than a blur. I cropped the photo a bit, as there was originally more room on the right and I wanted to give the guy some room to fly into. I wish I had been outdoors when I took this shot - I was indoors behind a window. I kind of like it, particularly the position of the bird and the bit of shadow beneath him. I don't much like how the bank of the pond behind him looks.

Here's a question for the masses: are the effects of camera shake acceptable if they add to the movement of the subject in the photo?

(I can't say I'm sure that's the case here, but I think it's at least arguable!)

Fun with Water

The happy water drop photo inspired me to try to get a happy water drop of my own! I wasn't quite as successful, but learned a bit for next time I try :)

First off, I took a lot of shots without the flash, and I just couldn't see the drops. In frustration, I switched to the close-up auto mode, and the flash popped up. OK, might as well try it... and, voila. Water drops. So I went back to aperture priority mode (I was copying settings from the happy water drop photo) and took a few more shots. I got a couple so-so shots - better than I thought I'd get, but not as good as I'd hoped, if that makes any sense!

Next time, I will start out using the flash, and will try some different settings. From the few shots I'm keeping, it seems my biggest problem is with focus. It's hard to focus on something as elusive as a water drop! What I ended up doing was setting the auto focus to one specific point, then got it to lock in a focus once. Then I switched to manual focus to maintain that focus setting. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

These were taken in my kitchen sink :)

Here are a couple of the shots I kept:

My favorite of them:


One that I think would have been better if I got the focus on the drop itself:


One that came out in close-up auto mode - it bumped up to ISO400 and is a bit too noisy to do anything with, but the splash is kinda cool:

Happy Waterdrop

This photo has inspired me to go fill my sink and try for a happy waterdrop of my own!

I will, of course, let you know how it goes :)

Assignment: Beach

DPS Assignment: Beach

Not sure this qualifies, as I took it 3 years ago with my Canon Powershot A70 point-n-shoot camera, before I knew a darn thing about photography! (Not that I know much now, with a whole 2 weeks under my belt!) :p

This was taken on Waikiki Beach in Maui, Hawaii. They have the most gorgeous sunsets there!

When I took the picture, I thought of editing out the guy sitting on the beach (since I don't know who he is), but I've since decided that I like him there :)



I have no camera settings to post, since this was probably taken on Auto mode with a point-n-shoot.