Another cactus series

Autumn is slowly approaching and I still have some summer photos to post such as these ones. They were taken in the middle of August and the cactus on them is of a genus which is unknown to me, perhaps a Ferocactus. If you can help me with the ID I’d be glad. I have nothing much to say today.

1/100 sec. @ 100 mm, F 10, ISO 100

1/125 sec. @ 100 mm, F 10, ISO 100

I liked how the sun light shone through the petals making them glow. I tried both low and higher f-stop, which one do you prefer?

1/400 sec. @ 100 mm, F 2.8, ISO 100

1/60 sec. @ 100 mm, F 10, ISO 100

Technical details: all photos were taken with camera Canon EOS 450D and Canon EF 100mm macro USM lens under natural conditions.

I hope you like it and will be glad for any comments on how to improve it.

Enjoy the autumn and its colours!

Roses, roses…

Well, actually I have only one rose to show you but I like how the title sounds

A season of roses is slowly getting to its end. I like roses, they are so fragile, exist in so many colours varieties and smell beautifully in contrast to many other flowers. It’s interesting that even though they are so beautiful ,and thus a perfect subject for flower photography, it’s not easy to take photos of them, especially close-up or macro photos. First, you need to find a blossom which is in a perfect shape, this may be a problem and it may take a while even in a rose garden. Second, you need to find suitable composition which may also be a problem. You can always take a photo of a flower as a whole but that’s usually not very interesting, at least for me. If you are going to take some close-up or macro shots then it’s good if the flower is not opened yet and some stage of a bud is always good. In my opinion the best blossom for shooting is a bud with only couple of petals open or half open as a whole. Once it is fully open it’s almost impossible for me to find a composition that would satisfy me.

When I was coming home from work last Monday I was passing rose bushes next to our gate and one yellow rose bud caught my attention. It was very windy that day, sky was strongly overcast and as it was after 5 p.m. there was not much light remaining. I hurried to the house, took my camera, cut the blossom, put  it in a vase, took it outside to a place where a wind would get only rarely and started shooting. During some 30-40 minutes I took over 100 photos with different compositions, f-stop numbers and ISO. Unfortunately as I was shooting it was getting darker and darker and I ended with ISO 400 and lowest f-number on 4 Without a tripod I couldn’t do much more about it. Here you can see 2 photos which are the best from this session, in my opinion.

1/125 sec. @ 100mm, F5, ISO 400

1/60 sec., 1/125 sec. @ 100mm, f/4, ISO 200-400, 3 stacked images

I took maybe several hundreds of photos of roses in past months and years trying to capture the beauty of it but I was never happy with the results. I’m quite happy with these two. Are you happy with them as well?

Have a nice weekend and enjoy the fall!

Playing with (vine) leaves

This series is a real fun for me. I like to look for something interesting in trees or bushes, especially when evening light is shining through them lightning up all the veins and other details in leaves. We have one vine bush in our garden and those beautifully saw-shaped leaves look splendid in evening light. I tried some cramming in the leaves and here is the result.

1/400 sec. @ 100 mm, f4, ISO 200

1/250 sec. @ 100 mm, f4, ISO 200

I hoped for more yellow colour but leaves seems to dry quite quickly and most of them is dry by now when grapes are almost ripe, absorbing every possible bit of light.

These images are not my common stuff so let me know what you think about it.

Enjoy the starting autumn!

1000th visit!

If someone asked me how many visits I expect to have in 3 months when I started this blog I would probably say that I’ll be happy with couple of hundreds. I never thought that it will be 1000 before 3rd month will get to its end!

To be precise:

• starting date of this blog: June 29, 2009
• 1000th visit: September 12, 2009

This makes only 76 days since the blog saw the light of the world and it makes appx. 13 visits per day. It may not be much to one but it’s pretty much to me. I want to thank you all who visited my blog in this time and much more to those who regularly returns and leave comments. I really appreciate it and THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! I hope that I will give you enough of reasons to come back for long time.

Now I must apologize that I haven’t posted any new photos in last couple of weeks. I spent some time on vacations with my family and then I wasn’t able to find enough time to process some new images. I hope that it will be better in next days and weeks. Thank you for your patience.

I was thinking about posting something original for this special occasion and finaly I decided to post following orchid image. It’s not much original from compositional point of view or from topic point of view but it’s original as I haven’t posted a single orchid photo here, yet.

I hope you like it.
Enjoy the indian summer (where you have it) or the incoming autumn (where you don’t)!