From the archives...

I haven't been out with the camera for a few days, the weather hasn't been the best and I have been pretty busy, so today's set of images comes from the archives.  These are from back in December/January when I was playing around with the Dandelion seeds

With Winter on its way and hopefully the rain that comes with it - will be lots of rain drops in the garden. I am hoping that on the days that I can't get out with the birds because of the weather, that I can try my hand at capturing rain drops instead.

Last day of the holidays

Today has been a pretty relaxing day. We are back at work tomorrow and our visitors are returning to Auckland.  Life returns to normal, whatever normal is. We broke out the marco lenses today and some more dandelion seeds. I was determined to master the art of getting the reflection in the water drop no matter how tiny it was and I believe I did!

Macro has never really been my thing so I have had no real idea of how to achieve what I wanted to do other than reading about it on the internet. Unfortunately I am not one that learns that well from reading - I have to do it to learn. I am happy to make mistakes along the way but unless I physically give it a try it will never happen.

I am really happy with today's results. I know a bit more about my macro lens and how it works and that is always a good thing. I am confident that I can recreate the image if I want to and no doubt probably will to try and improve some more. After I got past the frustration of my flash not working well it became fun!

More macro

I haven't really had a lot of time to pick up the camera of late and the birds are getting totally neglected. They are still coming to visit the feeders but they haven't had a camera pointed at them in well over two weeks! I am becoming a little bit obsessed with achieving the reflection in the water droplet thing. Reading up lots and playing with the macro lens some more. I have a feeling that I need to get a whole lot closer to the droplet but I am working on making that happen.

In the mean time I have been playing some more and these are a few of the results. After doing some research I was pleased to see a reflection in the main droplet of water but when I changed the flower to something different I lost the reflection which was a little disappointing. I am sure there is an easier way and I will find it!

Macro magic

I did a radical thing this afternoon. I took of my big lens and replaced it with a macro. Macro photography is not something I have done very much of, and when I have, I have generally used my 70-300 zoom lens to achieve it. Every time I picked up my macro lens I got frustrated with the results. So for about four years now it has sat untouched, except when I have lent it to others.

Now, I have decided it is time to revisit the macro. I know a bit more about my camera now and how to achieve the results I want. Google tells me where the sweet spot is on my lens and a recent workshop at the PSNZ regional convention gave me the idea. These images are not so much about recording nature as they are about creating art using nature as a tool.

These images were achieved with coloured plastic and dandelion seeds and a whole lot of guesswork. I am really happy with the results and will be trying lots of new things now that I have worked out how to make the camera do what I want.