More dahlias (again)

Pat and I went out to a dahlia farm this morning, what a great way to while away a few hours! She's great company...I feel very fortunate to have met her, and she is a walking encyclopedia in regards to plants and flowers, seriously! The husband and wife who own the farm are just so nice, and they allowed us to shoot to our heart's content :) I came home with a couple dozen dahlias as well, in all sorts of colors. I'm sure I'll be photographing them over the next few days, so y'all might get a little burned out on them...sorry!

Used my flash for all of these, but I'm not that happy with the way they turned out. I don't know why, but I couldn't seem to get my settings just right today. Tomorrow will be a better day!

Pat pointed out this fly to me, and he just hung around and let us both take his picture. I'm not all that fond of flies, but his colors were awfully nice against the colors of the flower:


Now, if you can believe it, there is a dahlia with my exact name (kinda cool, eh?):
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And here's the proof (Michele is even spelled the same way I spell it):


There was one named after Pat's first and middle name as well, hopefully she got a picture of it cuz I have no idea which one it was!

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I am SOOOO mad at myself on this one, I should have stepped back just an inch or so to get a little more of the flower above and below the middle part:

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I'll save the others for another day. Thanks for looking!

"Finding the Color"

So I goofed around with a tutorial I found on ILP today about popping color a bit. I tried this method on a couple of pictures and didn't particularly care for it, then I decided to try it on one more, and I do like it on this one. I think I've posted this photo before, months ago.

Here's the photo how I would normally edit it:


And here it is after, it was too strong for my taste initially, so I lowered the opacity of the layer to 60% (I also ran portraiture at a low opacity on this as well):


I like how by bringing out the colors in the background, it helps draw my eye to his face more. If you like the effect, you can find the instructions here (you'll need to register if you're not already a member):
http://ilovephotography.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=227126

Dalias, dahlias, and more dahlias...

I'm going through another one of my "not happy with what I'm capturing" times. Seems to happen every few months, it lasts a few weeks, and then I kick myself out of it. It used to bug me, but now it doesn't really as I know it's just a phase.

I have been busy lately with non-floral stuff and feel very out of practice with macros :( hope to make more time to shoot SOON. Anyhow, due to being un-inspired, there are a lot of boring, straight on shots below, and I forgot to bring my flash with me, would have been a great help to pop these just a bit. I think I need to visit some sites to get the creative juices flowing again.

Oh, and Heather, I typically sharpen for web at 200/.3/0, and then will fade if necessary.

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Playing around with a couple of conversions. This first one is using the 'calculations" method:


This second one was doing a "tritone." I have no idea what colors I used, I just fiddled around:


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On a completely unrelated note, I'm a little bummed today. We are planning on selling our house and moving to a smaller one next summer after C graduates. Our house has always been larger than we need, and with him away at college, we just don't want to keep it (and the yard) up any longer. Anyhow, there is some work to be done on half of the daylight basement, it really hasn't been touched in decades, and will make the house a lot easier to sell if it was updated. We also were going to add another bedroom down there, as there is plenty of room for it.

I was really looking forward to having it done, and to see the potential of that space come to fruition after living here for 17 years. ANYHOW, we've juggled some bad contractor luck the past few months, and finally found one that we REALLY like and would love to work with. However, his first rough estimate came back at 3 times what we thought it would cost. And we all know that the numbers typically only go up from there. So....we have to let it go if we're not going to get more than that cost back in an increased selling price :( I really wanted to see this house be all it could be, KWIM?

So, we'll concentrate over the winter on giving that half of the basement a minor face lift ourselves (paint, carpets, new doors, etc), put new windows throughout the entire house, update two bathrooms on the main floor and call it done. I don't know why, but I am really sad about this....

Summertime :)

Don't these look like "end of summer" to you? They do to me!

Thanks so much for your input on yesterday's photos, I REALLY appreciate it. I'll keep practicing :)

"Extreme" macros

Just playing around doing some abstracts. I'm still on the fence as to:

1. whether I like them or not
&
2. if they work at all

I'd love to know your honest opinions if you're up to it! Thanks a bunch :)

SACAGAWEA

Heather asked which camera I used for the shows last weekend. I debated if I had enough practice with the new camera to feel comfortable shooting a show with it. I started out with the D50, and shot a couple of the shows with it, while at times "testing" out how the D200 performed as well. Once I was satisfied that I would have success with the D200, I switched over to using it.

Speaking of cameras. The D300 was officially announced today. It's got a few more bells and whistles than the D200, but most importantly it is supposed to handle noise better than Nikons have in the past. In fact, at the press junket, it appears they handle noise as well, if not better than Canons do. Considering I shoot shows at at least an ISO of 800, that is GOOD news! However, I am pretty bummed...had it been announced just a few weeks ago, I would have held off on buying the D200, and waiting until the 300 came out. Hindsight....what's a girl to do?

Sue asked about flash. I use available light for theatre photos, no flash.

Anyhow, here are a few (ok...once again MORE than a few) pics from Sacagawea:

Lots of show pics

I had the opportunity to shoot a festival of 6 new musicals this past weekend. It was great fun (and I saw some wonderful theatre as well), though absolutely exhausting! That said, I would do it again in a heartbeat! The festival was for readings of shows that the theatre is considering producing for their 2008-2009 season, and only members and their guests are invited.

It was challenging in several regards. Apparently there have been complaints from the theatre patrons in the past about the photography, so I had to shoot (standing for the most part) from the back of the theatre, next to the control booth. Because I had to shoot from the back, I rented the 70-200VR for the weekend. I've never shot a show with one before, though I did rent it a few weekends ago to practice with it a bit (and it performed well).

That was not the case inside the theatre. Because these were readings, there were chairs onstage for the actors. These chairs were a black vinyl (so the backs reflected light like none other), with metal frames. So, even though I had my focus set soundly on an actor, the contrast from these chairs would pull the focus back onto them, so the subjects were slightly OOF. It was crazy, in all the theatre photography I've done, I've never had this happen before. Unfortunately, I was not aware of this until I downloaded the images from the first show, and boy, was I disappointed.

As it turns out, I ended up manually focusing the a good amount of the remainder of the shows, which is ridiculously difficult in this situation (being in a darkened theatre at a good distance from the stage). But, I believe I prevailed, and all in all I am very pleased with the images I captured. I think the theatre marketing staff will be as well.

So, here are a few of my favorite pics from one the last show. No sets, no costumes, and actors using their scripts. I'm sure I'll be sharing the remainder of the shows in the coming days.

SAINT HEAVEN: