Recent Photographs- Spring Edition

It’s not the camera it's the photographer. The shot of the Flowering Almond blossoms is great but you even made dandelions look good!

 

It was all about the clouds yesterday.

















This is actually the sun behind the clouds, even though it looks like a spooky werewolf moon pic.




They're on fire!

 

Not much going on at the lake today. This little guy was primping and prancing around for his belle who was nearby. Right down to his perfectly applied eyeliner and lipstick! He was pecking away at a little red bob of something, but not eating it, letting out a call every so often. Suddenly the female swooped down and he handed it to her and she gulped it up. I'm not sure she was impressed. After devouring the snack, she waddled away from him.

 

Diligent Duckie. She means business! The look on the other duck's face... lol

 

People at the lake enjoying the return of good weather.

 

I call this one Duck Rocks… a couple of ducks frequent the spot in the summer, and if you take a good look at it, the rocks form into a duck! (No, I'm not high or drunk! )




Nearing sunset




Moon shadows




Blue blue skies




Gull taking a bath

 

Nice picture but you should have prefaced it by saying “with all due respect to cat Stevens” :guitarist:



Hotwater

 

Ha... I've been singing the song ever since I put up the title.

 

the beach is gone! last couple years there was sand out 30 feet or so from the wall. apparently this year the lake is about 2 feet higher than usual, plus the sand usually goes up to the bottom step right there. all the land seems to have moved a bit east; there's a stony beach there that was all under water in the past.



the public beach is still there though, and seeing a good amount of traffic. you can't tell from the picture, but there were even people out at the lighthouse, which you have to wade through waist-deep water to get to. the water temperature is still listed at just 42 degrees (although it felt much warmer on my feet as i walked about a mile in it between the two pictures).



oh, and somebody built this just down from my beach entrance.

 

Early may, end of april:

 

These 2 crack me up as it looks like he has only 2 legs (no photoshop!):





Well, also that look in his eyes that say if you try to take my stick you won't get it :-D

 

The purple martins are back. I have to try get a closer shot of them, they're so beautifully iridescent with their blues and purples. But it's hard to get the shot, they're fast!




Tree shadows (I don't think that one's a song.)




Fishing at sunset

 

Super photos of the moon, Lucy! My camera does not capture the moon so wonderfully. What kind of camera do you have?
My photos of the moon always pale in comparison to what i really see sometimes.

 

I love your doggy asmo!

 

Thanks, Moon! My camera is a Digital SLR. It's a Nikon. I had a hard time deciding between the Nikon and a Sony. I really like Sony cameras, but this Nikon had a few features I preferred over the Sony. If you have only a point and shoot camera, you probably won't be able to get a good shot of the moon. Unless it has a fancy shmancy moon setting. You basically have to shoot in manual mode to get the details. So if you have a DSLR (or maybe other digital cameras have manual modes? I'm not familiar with them.) set it to manual. Then you have to play around with the settings. It's the combination of settings that make the ideal picture.

Some settings that work are:

ISO (speed of the film) - around 200. The higher the ISO number, the lighter the picture will be, but the picture gets grainier as the number gets higher.

Aperture - f/5.6 or f/6.3 but you can go higher even to f/10 but you'll have to adjust your ISO. The higher the f number, the smaller the aperture size… less light gets into the lens , so you have to increase the ISO number (ISO is the speed of the film). The higher the f number, the sharper the image will be, but the darker the picture.

Shutter speed - I've used 1/200, 1/400, 1/640. You use higher numbers for less blur. (When you take action shots, you tend to use very high shutter speeds.)

Some combo settings I've used for moon shots are:

ISO 200
1/640
f/6.3

ISO 400
1/400
f/5.6

ISO 200
1/200
f/5.6

The metering setting is very important. You should choose the "spot metering" option. It usually shows a dot in the middle in the settings, which means it will focus on the object itself (the moon in this case) and not anything around it. In other metering modes, it will try focus on the dark sky too and compensate by adding more light, then the moon is overexposed and ends up a washed out white blob and you don't see the detail.

I used a telephoto lens at 300mm. You can use a shorter lens, but the moon won't be as big in your picture. When I only had my 55mm, I still had the detail, but the moon was pretty tiny.

Hope that helps. Sorry, got a little long-winded there. :-D

 

I was thinking it looked more like "Can I put this dang stick down and have my kibbles now?" :-D

 

Thank you, Lucy, for a most detailed answer......I have a Sony camera....and have had it so long....but maybe I need to get a new camera this year at some point.....

 

I caught an awesome picture of the end of a rainbow. I need to figure out how to change size

 

End of the rainbow!

 

Was there a pot of gold, Lodog?