Bubbly

A bubbly photo session with a personalized gift my wife and I received from friend from the recent holidays.

Trying to make simple things look sexy and elegant.

One shot. Two lights. A lot of bubbles.

Great or Lucky?

After a couple of weeks without taking photos, I decided to take some tonight. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my usual gear. I setup my subject and gear and took some test shots. Eight clicks then it's a wrap! Batteries went empty. Both my batteries drained out of their power.

I reviewed the few test shots that I got. I was able to select two shots out of the eight as usable. One of them is shown below. You know which one is the other from the series of thumbnails above I guess.

Great or Lucky Shot?

I did great. I got lucky. What do you think?

Cheers!

P.S.
Get back to the basics -- check your gear! :)

A Walk In The Park

This afternoon the weather was great to have a walk in the park. I was initially planning to do this walk tomorrow but the forecast says that there could be light rains and therefore wouldn't be a good day to take a walk and do a little photo walk.

On my way to the park, I saw these beautiful pink flowering trees on the side of the road.

Here's a setup shot of me to show me taking a walk in the trails of the park. I did by using the 10-second timer and running to the spot I need to be and pose and pretend that I was walking. I nailed this photo on my third attempt. I'm glad it didn't take too much photos to have a photo I like or else I'd be puffing tired.

I've noticed that there were a lot of these yellow flowers and took some sample photos.

Walking the trails made me a bit tired and I just relaxed and lounged in one of the benches in the park.

Wishing my family filled up the empty space...

See you around.

Flowers Delight!

Over the weekend, my wife together with my two daughters and I, went to church early and ate out for breakfast as I wanted to go to the Orchids Festival that was just recently concluded last March 7, 2011. These were taken at the Quezon City Memorial Circle where the festival was held.

I wanted to be early so I can still have soft natural light and didn't want to use flash in this occasion. Indeed the day was blessed with magnificent light. I really like taking photos of flowers under ambient light. Flower photography is my first love in photography and I can't wait to get myself a true dedicated macro lens for this (but it has to wait for awhile).

So let me share some of my favorites which I am very happy to share with you along with some description of the photo.

Here's an orchid where my intention is to focus on only one or two blossoms and let the others in the cluster blur in the background. Though the other blooms are blurred, it retained it's general form, shape, and color suggesting that the only focused bloom is part of a group and not a solo.

f/3.2, 1/200sec, ISO 200

Here's another bloom where I intentionally took a shot of the top part only of the cluster and show the color and the remains of the previous night's rain on them.

f/3.2, 1/640sec, ISO 200

A close-up shot (not a macro) of a bloom from a cluster of orchid blooms where I intentionally shot only one to reveal the patterns and color of this particular bloom. Actually, if you can look closely, there seems to be an alien's face (similar to movies -- big eyes, small mouth, and probably a third eye on the forehead) there in the pattern.

f/3.2, 1/320sec, ISO 200

This particular bloom is quite interesting for me as this variety is very seldom seen. The common color of this bloom is pink. I am actually trying to grow the common variety of this in our garden.

f/4.0, 1/125sec , ISO 200

I remember that this is my second shot from the series of photos that I have taken from this trip. My wife actually spotted this particular bloom for it's peachy color. The shallow DOF was intentional as I wanted to introduce dimension to the flower. I hope I achieved this. :)


f/2.8, 1/125sec, ISO 100

Ain't that delightful? Thank you for viewing. I hope you were enjoyed the photos as I enjoyed taking photos of them.

Share your delight and mine by sharing this blog entry to your friends.

Cheers!

Against The Sun

What kind of photos usually appear when you have your subject in front of a light source, for example the sun? More than usual it would be a black subject (silhouette) and a bright background.

Here's a little practical application of working against the sun in order to expose for the subject -- use fill-in flash. Yes, flash in daylight again just like my previous exercise: Cosmos Plants Exercise. In that exercise, the sun was at my back and now it's in front of me.

The little trick here is to know how much fill-in flash to use. It was trial and error for me. Here's the result of this morning's encounter with my cosmos flowers.

One thing to remember though, be careful when working against the sun as this can be harmful to both your eyes and camera's sensor.

This morning's recipe:
  1000D/XS + kit lens at 55mm, f/16, 1/50 secs, ISO 100, FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation): 0

Another note: I just noticed today that the bokeh on the kit lens (18-55mm f/3.5-5.6) are hexagonal when I thought that they were circular. Time to check the technicals of the kit lens. :)

Day 59: Starting To Bloom

I can't stop checking on my Cosmos bud. Early this morning, I checked again my Cosmos bud. Actually, it's not a bud anymore. It's starting to bloom! I can't wait for it to bloom fully. Sharing some photos again.

On the photos above too, a second bloom is showing some signs. Now I've discovered the color of my Cosmos plant. I'm wondering it would bloom other colors as well. I guess I just have to wait for other blooms to show up.

Ice Experiment

Oh well, I was thinking of something to do. Something out of the ordinary when I take photos. I then remembered that there's an old aquarium that is not being used lying around the house. I cleaned it and made experiment shots like these:

I included these inn my "Water Drops" project:

Water Drop Project

Back To Point And Shoot

It's been almost two weeks since I parted with my DSLR, that is in for service for flash repairs, and I spent again time with my P&S (Point & Shoot). I have to admit that taking creative photos again with my trusted P&S seemed a little bit challenging. It's kinda awkward -- in terms of size, weight, control, speed, and handling.

Despite of these temporal adjustments, I believe I was able to get some decent photos as shown below. Hope you can share some C&C.

More Flowers

It was a great day, I'm glad that we made this trip. I give credit to my wife for the nagging to take this trip. It's sort of a stone hitting two birds at the same time. Actually, it can be considered to be three birds -- my wife's aunt's tour, our kids' out of town trip, and my time with these gorgeous flowers. All photos taken hand-held, no tripod or whatsoever. Just my stance. You may click on the picture for a bigger and better view.

Below is a budding bougainvillea - trying to get only the center in focus while the foreground and background blurred. Needing a lot more practice or a tripod could have helped. You may click on the picture for a bigger and better view.

A couple of yellow flowers. You may click on the picture for a bigger and better view.

Here's a bed of orange flowers. Just keeping the foreground focused and the rest blurred towards to the end. You may click on the picture for a bigger and better view.

I took this photo towards the end of our stay in this beautiful garden. This was the best I can get. Somewhat in a hurry and just fired away. Got lucky I still have this. You may click on the picture for a bigger and better view.

Actually, there's a lot more of this set and can be seen in my Flickr and Picasa Web pages.