I took the family photos for everyone at church on Sunday.

I took this photo with a Sigma 170-500mm on a tripod.

I don't know much about birds so tell me if I mislabeled any of these birds. Yesterday, while it was snowing, I setup a tripod inside the house and took all of these bird photos. I was surprised at how well they turned out. 

Sparrow/Thrush/Wren - Which is it?

Female Cardinal

Red Headed Woodpecker

Dark Eyed Junco?

Holly Berries

Suzi sighted a woodpecker near the house and asked me to photograph it. I grabbed the tripod, 500mm lens,and the camera, and went out to shoot the bird.  I had tried to shoot birds without a tripod before, it didn't work to well while using a 500mm lens because I had to have a 1/1000th SS to remove hand shake (the longer the lens the shorter the speed you can hand hold) - this meant that I had to use ISO 1600(grainy and not nice) too.

It was very easy to get sharp shots using a tripod.  On this shot my EXIF was 500mm, 1/250th sec, ISO 400.  The problem with using a tripod is it takes a long time to setup for each shot, thus it is difficult to capture fast moving birds.

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to shoot some portraits of the families at church.  Jenny Wilkes gave me lots of help arranging the groups. I did some experimenting with lighting - bouncing the flash from different directions. What I found to be the best settings, at least in this room were, 150° to the left, and 45° up/down. I think I got better results using the Sto-Fen diffuser on the flash head.

I was glad to have this experience. Next time I shoot family portraits I think I'll be able to use/build on the techniques that I learned this time.

Here are some of the best photos:

Sometimes when I take some really good shots I start to feel proud of myself. I know this doesn't please God, so I wanted to take this chance to publically dedicate my photography skills to serving the Lord and edifying others.  I acknowledge that any skills and talents that I have are blessings from God. These talents are to bring Him glory and to edify others. I thank God for His bountiful blessing on me and I desire to serve Him with my life.

My little sisters are part of a Keepers Of The Faith club. Yesterday the club met down at Bull Run Park for a hike. I was able to go along with them as a photographer , shooting some of my favorite things: flowers, animals, and landscapes. Here are some of my shots:

           

All of these flowers remind me of a Bible verse: Matthew 6:30  "But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

Mr. Seidel picked me and one of his friends up early this morning(4:30AM) and drove us down to Washington DC. Our purpose was to get photos of the cherry blossoms and the monuments as the sun came up. After  about 1.5 hours of shooting(I shot around 600 shots) our fingers were nearly frozen, and the sun was well up, so we went back to the car. Then Mr. Seidel treated us to breakfast(Thank You! It was very good!), and we headed back home...  So, here are some of my shots...

                 

I went out today and took some photos of the new flowers. I was surprised by how many flowers I could find already. I took these using my 17-70mm lens - the one that can almost do true macro photos.

Here are some of my better shots:

Crocus:

 Wild Flowers:

Daffodils:

Peach Tree Blossem:

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to go on a 'nature walk' in the Wilkes neighborhood(in the woods behind houses). Daniel Wilkes and I went out with our cameras hoping to get a few good shots.   We discovered that there wasn't much alive(green) back there.    As we walked farther in we found some strange looking plants. We wondered what they could be and took lots of pictures of them. Slowly working our way back to the Wilkes house we looked for more things to photograph. When we got back to their house Kenan identified the plant as a skunk cabbage.

Even in the middle of winter there can be interesting things to shoot...

Here's the Wilkes report on this.

I just went out on another photo-shoot. My main purpose was to do a study on running water. I grabbed the camera, tripod, and a light reducing filter, I then trekked on down to the creek. The purpose of the light reducing filter was to allow me to take longer shutter speeds(without the shot being overexposed). I wanted to do this to produce the "silky water" effect in my photos. 

 The whole plan worked out pretty well except I forgot to clean the lens filter. When I looked at my shots I found that they had dust spots on them. It just took me a little work in Photoshop to fix those spots. Here's a few of the shots:

I thought that I'd post a few of my recent shots, and then discuss some techniques that they demonstrate.

What do you most like about these shots? What do you think makes them stand out?  

• One major thing that makes this series of shots nice to me is the shallow DOF. The background is out of focus, so it isn't distracting to the impact of the main subject. 
• Hmm... I just like winter shots of Holly berries
• I like the way the snow has been captured in these shots (you can actually see the crystals).

A few other tips not directly related to these shots:

• a little note on the side... I try to stay away from having my subjects exactly centered, but sometimes there is no other way.
•  A key thing for any shot is to plan your subject -  try not to have a jumble of different subjects drawing your eye in different directions.
•  Of course you want to make sure you have a clear crisp shot without any: camera shake, unintentionally out of focus areas, graininess due overly high ISO, or under/over exposure.
• Try to get an accurate replication of the colors in yours shots by experimenting with White Balance.

-I think I will address exposure in a later post. I just went quickly over a few major things if you have questions on any of them I'd be glad to further explain. 

 For about the last month my main camera(Canon Digital Rebel / 300D) has been giving me problems. I've been intermittently getting an error message, this specific one is the 'catch-all' error message. Therefore I have no idea what is wrong with the camera. I've tried numerous different things to fix it and none of them work. Now it is to the point where I can only take one shot before I have to reset the camera.

Recently I've been considering upgrading, and this issue with my current camera gives me the perfect reason to do it. I finally decided to go ahead and order the new camera(Canon Digital Rebel XTi / 400D), but it will be a while before it arrives. So, in the intervening time I'll be taking fewer pictures.

I just recently came across this post on photo-stacking. So what is photo-stacking? It is when you take multiple photos(exactly the same except what is in focus) at different DOFs/areas in focus and digitally superimpose them on each other to get one ultra sharp image. I always wondered how they got this quality of shots... well this is how. Check out what Wiki has to say about this.

   

 Of course virtually all of these images are done using dead insects because it is almost impossible for a live one to stay still during 30+ exposures.

This technique is useful not only for macro photography, but can greatly enhance landscapes also. With only one shot there is virtually no way to get a foreground- grass just inches away from the camera, and background- hills miles away both in focus. If you take multiple shots, and use the photo-stacking methods it is possible to do this.