A few minutes watching Dragonflies

When I got home from work last night I decided to go for a little walk about in the yard again. I am finding it to be quite relaxing and fun at the end of a long day. 

Anyway I saw a Dragonfly, or at least that 's what I was always taught to call them, flying around by my swimming pool. I wanted to photograph it but it wouldn't stop long enough for me to get a shot. Finally as I moved around my small orchard I went to the peach tree and after sitting there for a few minutes realized that the same little fellow kept landing on one of the top branches and eating the bug he had just caught. So with my 70 - 300 mm lens stretched clear out to 300 I took a picture the next time he landed. I was sitting on the ground so it was some distance from the branch in the top of the tree where he was sitting and made for a rather long shot. I slowly stood up hoping not to scare it off and took several more shots each time inching closer. 


Then I noticed a second one on a lower branch. I took a shot of it and then finding it busy eating and not paying a whole lot of attention to me I moved around the tree and got closer. It would fly off for a second and I would think it was over and it would then land back on the same branch. So I moved even closer and was facinated as I watched it eat each time and then move it's head around as though trying to get a better look at me. I must have been there for 15 minutes as the two of us were watching each other with ever increasing curiosity and I of course kept taking pictures.

Needless to say I had fun and was simply stunned at the fact that it stayed there for so long but was glad that it did and allowed me to capture some different shots of it.

A TUMBLE down memory lane

My nephews daughter had this on her blog and suggested I put it on mine so here it is and have fun.

Here are the instructions:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. (It can be myself, Marie or any of our 6 children, or any of their children. Yes I am a Grandpa and proud of it). It doesn't matter if you knew me/us a little or a lot; anything you remember.

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's fun to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you provided I can find the time to do so. (I'll try, but this was just part of the original instructions.) Please leave the name of your blog in the comments so I know where to go, I am not as good at this as these children of the computer age.

Wedding image fun

Sometimes it is just fun to see what can be made from a couple of pictures or what can be done to other pictures. That is what I have put here today. 

My wife and I always go to the weddings together and really enjoy it. I am able to concentrate more on the camera and the settings while she concentrates on the wedding party and the couple and how they look and everything else that goes into getting them just right. We also love to have fun with the couple and do crazy things so that they are at ease and having fun as well since the stress of the day will usually block everything from their memory later anyway. So below is one of the shots we always like to take and of course it is to show who the boss will really be in most situations, just kidding of course, but it is always fun to see their reaction to the picture when all they could see was straight ahead and not what the other ones was doing and not realizing in the photo they would be face to face rather then 10 to 15 yards apart.
Yesterday though I decided for the first time to take and separate them from the background and put them into an entirely different one. It would make it look even more like she was actually holding him in her palm.
I didn't like the first one since it was too busy and way not realistic, as though any others might be more real.
So I tried just a solid white background, (not shown), but the bride blended in too much just as the groom blended into the black background here. So that is when I went to my images from my Oregon vacation earlier this summer and after looking at several possibilities decided on this one. It almost works even though the lighting is a little too rich on them compared to the actual image and there is an obvious "two light source" situation  but it is still fun. The reaction from my wife was, "but we were not at the beach" and I simply said "no we weren't" but I am sure the couple wishes they had been.
The rest of these images are just some others that I had taken of them in the course of the bridals and the reception. They were a fun couple to work with and her theme with the fairies made it a lot of fun as well since I had some more things to play with in photoshop. I have a couple of ideas there also but that will have to come later.

Another friend you might not want to say Hi to.

Saturday I was irrigating my lawn, like we do out here in the desert when we don't want to use culinary water to keep things green, when I discovered a visitor to our yard. I think that it must have sensed the water and was wanting to cool off a bit by taking a slithering swim. Anyway I went and grabbed my camera and for the next few minutes played with him rather than tending the water. It kept trying to move in a direction across the lawn away from me and so I would move in front of it and take another picture. Finally it must have decided to end the game and just started sliding straight toward me. I could get it to stop but each time it started again it would come straight for me. Well it's tactics worked and I gave him a little more room. I must admit it was a little unnerving to have it not try to get away but rather to challenge me instead. It was a four foot long blow snake so I wasn't scared of it even though it would put out a pretty good hiss each time I touched it. I quite like this particular snake since I understand that it likes to eat Rattle Snakes and mice, two creatures I would love to have non-existent around my yard.

SAY "HI" TO MY FRIEND

As you now probably know I am always on the lookout for a picture to take. Last night while waiting on a person to come and open a barn where my daughter is planning on holding her wedding reception I decided to wander around and see what might be there. I soon saw one of the insects that are very dear to my heart because they are such good ones. This little Praying Mantis was sitting on one of the doors and so I quickly ran and got my camera and put on a close-up lens filter of a value of +4 and then started taking pictures of it. It was a fairly young one and did not really trust me but I still managed to get it to pose for a few shots before I went to join my wife and daughter in the barn.

I GOT STUCK ON THIS ONE.

I had so much fun yesterday that I decided to try it with another image today. My new beautiful niece was fun to photograph and so I decided to see if I had an image that would work for her as well. I don't know if either of these brides will like the picture but when you find something that is fun to do it is always a good idea to try it again and sometimes even several times until it becomes easy to remember. 

I had already done some photoshop work with this particular image but decided to try it again with this new background so that I could put across the idea that sometimes one image will work with multiple backgrounds. Saving a .psd file with all of the layers makes it easy to try several backgrounds as well since all I did on this one, as I did yesterday, was to make two layers of the first image and then drop the image of the clouds in between them and mask out the portion of the top image that I don't want showing in the final picture.

SO the real message here as I have said before is to never limit your imagination and just have fun.

How to photograph what she feels

OK, so how do you photograph how the bride really feels on her wedding day? Well I haven't quite figured that out yet but today I had some fun trying to portray it through a little photoshop fun. I'll try to show you the basics of what I did, yet the real knowledge of how to do it comes through practice and experimentation (mostly experimentation).

I was lucky in the fact that the wind was blowing at her outdoor reception at a pretty good clip(which isn't really a good thing most of the time) so we shot some images with the wind having fun with her veil and dress. I then took the image and with a mask extracted her from the background. (You can't see it here but after the extraction I still had a lot of the windows etc. showing through the veil. A problem I hadn't really thought about.)

Then I was lucky again in the fact that as I drove the 14 miles home from church I was watching some beautiful fluffy clouds as they constantly changed shapes while oving across the sky. That gave me an idea so when I got home and had a couple hours to relax (which doesn't happen very often) , I set my camera up on a tripod and every 8 seconds took a picture of the same section of the sky and landscape. I plan on making it into a movie clip that I may put on the blog later. For today though one of the images served the purpose of giving me a Cloud 9 for the bride to be floating through the sky with on her wedding day.

I then put the two images together and of course cropped the cloud shot way down and then resized it to fit the image of the bride. I had to change the direction of the cloud so the light would appear to be coming from the same direction. Then I had to lower the opacity of the veil so I could basically remove the obvious outlines of the house showing through.

I then added a faded white border to the image to give it an extra special feel of serenity.

And finally removed the color just to have some more fun. 

Now maybe she wasn't really feeling like she was on cloud 9 or even floating with it but that wasn't how I interpreted what her actions were portraying. I think most brides really do float through the day and thus the one thing that brings it all back are the photographs. (Even if they are created in photoshop.)