Spring Means JD’s Garden #6A

As usual, the professor was right.  Here I did a little dodging and burning to bring Herb's face forward in the photo.
Enjoy.

Spring Means JD’s Garden #6

Met Herb (that’s what JD calls this lizard).  Herb climbs out on this flower every evening and surveys his kingdom.  Actually, he sits there and waits for flying bugs to get close—after all, a guy has to eat!

To me, this photo is more about the complementary colors of green and orange than it is about Herb and his perch.  So, I chose an aperture that would only allow Herb’s face to be in focus.  I wanted the rest of the photo to be about muted shades of orange and green.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 300mm f/4 with a 1.7x teleconverter (effectively 500mm),  ISO 800, f/8 and 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and adjusted hue and saturation of green and orange.

Photoshop CS5—sharpened Herb’s face using the high pass filter method.

Spring Means JD’s Garden #5

This photo is totally about the lines—both those in focus and those that are not in focus.  I wanted the image to show the different greens within the frame.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/8 and 1/15^th of a second on a tripod with an SB800 with a snoot and triggered by PocketWizard Flex.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and adjusted hue of green.

Photoshop CS5—sharpened leaf using the high pass filter method.

Spring Means JD’s Garden #4

In this photo, I was not doing much besides trying to see what the Nikon 28-300 f/3.5.6 could do more-or-less as a macro lens.  I wanted to capture all the details of the flower and yet make the background to be slightly soft.

Overall, I liked the results and was surprised that I could get the background as soft as it is at f/38.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/38 and two second on a tripod with an SB800 with a snoot and triggered by PocketWizard Flex.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and adjusted hue of green.

Photoshop CS5—sharpened flower using the high pass filter method.

Spring Means JD’s Garden #3

I found this little guy when I was trying to adjust my flash for a photo of a flower.  I immediately turned and tried to get as close as possible to him.  As it turned out, the photo is cropped version (about one third of the entire frame).  I really like the contrast in colors.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6, ISO 200, f/22 and one second on a tripod with an SB800 with a snoot and triggered by PocketWizard Flex.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and adjusted hue of green.

Photoshop CS5—sharpened bug using high pass filter method.

Spring Means JD’s Garden #2

Here I was captivated by the way the light was falling on the two leaves.  I tried to figure out what was causing it but never could.  I really like how much contrast there was between the two leaves in the front compared to the rest of the photo.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 300mm f/4, ISO 800, f/22 and 1/20^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and adjusted hue and saturation of certain colors.

Photoshop CS5—dodged and burned areas of the photo.

Spring Means JD’s Garden #1

It’s spring so that means I spend many hours walking about JD’s plants looking for something that catches my eye.  I was photographing the leaves a plant when I looked across the driveway and noticed how the water from the sprinkler system spayed across the leaves of the plant that was backlit.

I  tried various shutter speeds and finally settled on 1/90^th of second.  I thought that gave the best streaking effect.

Enjoy.
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 300mm f/4, ISO 800, f/13 and 1/90^th of a second.
Post Processing:  
Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and vignetting.

Walking around Downtown Houston #5

Today’s photo is different from most street photos that I present—it is in color.  I must admit when I think of street photography, I think black and white.

This man was cleaning the rails downtown for the train.  I have no idea as to why they need to clean the rails, but they evidently do.  Here I was attracted by the colors reflecting off the buildings.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8, shot at 200mm, ISO 200, f/2.8 and 1/180^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and vignetting.

Walking around Downtown Houston #4

Vacation is over.  No, I have not really been on vacation, but I did take a little sabbatical from my blog.  Yes, I had lots of work however I could have found time to do a few posting during the month.  Just lazy, I guess.

To me, today’s photo is a classical street photo—it depicts a classical human topic:  husband and wife “debating” over something with each doing his/her thing without regard to the other. 

I kept the composition simple.  I wanted the two people be the focal point of the image.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6, shot at 300mm, ISO 800, f/8 and 1/180^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—Set black and white points, added clarity and mid-tone contrast and vignetting.

  nik Silver Efex Pro 2—converted image to black and white, added orange filter and vignetting.