Project 365 - March 8, 2015

Playing with a Lens

Every once in a while, I borrow a lens to see what it is like and how it is different from the ones I own.  This lens is a 50 mm Nikkor lens.  It is a manual focus, which provides a challenge, but that is okay.  I like a challenge.

So naturally, I use whatever subjects are available to me.  Today, it was Newton!  Or Noot as my daughter now likes to call him!!

Noot is a great subject since all he does all day is eat and sleep!  He was lazily napping on our dining room table.  Lots of natural lighting for me to play with.  This was taken on manual everything at 400 ISO and 2.8 aperture.  I love the amount of detail in the fur and the whiskers.

Then I decided to step outside and see what my flowers would look like with this lens.

I love the shallow depth of field.  I think I moved the aperture to 2.0 here.  I sat on the ground and focused by moving my body closer or further away to get just the one flower in focus.  The colors are a bit weird on the leaves.  Not sure why they look purple.  

 Then I took the last photo of this new marigold that just started to grow at the base of my avocado plant.  Supposedly the marigolds keep spiders away.  So far, no, but I keep trying!!

So a short lesson on photography today.  Best to just pick up the camera and use it!  It has been a long time.

Project 365 - January 14, 2015

A Little Leftover Christmas

I haven't visited this blog in a very long time.  But I was outside doing my wandering thing with my camera.  As I walked out the front door, I immediately giggled when I saw that Joel and I had forgotten to remove the penguins!  Yes, there is a bit of Christmas still at the Hills of Inverrary!

I guess these guys just got away from us!  So perhaps we will leave them out a little longer!!  No one has said anything.  Usually we get a letter if we do something against the condo rules.  But not this time.  Maybe these are nondenominational penguins!!

I kept walking.  I have a usual pattern, where I walk between two homes across the street and then down near the lake.  There I usually find some birds or bugs that capture my attention.

I like when the sun is setting. It is much more challenging to take the photos in a darkening situation. So these birds were flying by me and I played with the settings and tried to capture them the best that I could.I love the colors of the reflections.  

And then there are these birds.  Someday I will look up the species.  Until I do, I will just continue to call them the "monkey birds" because they sound like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz!  I love when the sun illuminates their perch and especially their beaks.  The bright orange certainly stands out in nature!!  I could watch these guys for hours.

And then, of course, I always looks for something in bloom.  This was in front of Jackie Gleason's former residence.  There were so many of these flowers blooming on this tree.  This was the last of my light.  So after I snapped this one, I headed back to the house.  I really haven't done much of this type of photography lately since I took up running 5K races. I always feel like have to keep moving and not with a camera in my hand.  But this day, I just made the time.