Lights

Thanks to ideas from my friend Guru and photographer Bryan Peterson, I shot this at Austin's trail of lights by zooming the lens while taking the picture.

Welcome

Idol in Houston temple

Grass Flowers

Dragonfly

Tropical storm Hermine brought lots of rain, and also this dragonfly to my patio. Used flash to brighten it and was surprised by the colors it brought out.

Insects invited

Thanks to the spider, it had built its web vertically, far enough from the trees behind it. Took the photo at night with a flash - the light exposed only the spider (overexposed) and its web and not the background as light gets weaker with distance. You can still see the leaves of the tree blurred in the background. Converted the picture to B&W as it did not have much colors.

Pennybacker bridge

Pennybacker bridge in Austin, also called the 360 bridge, has an awesome overlook from the hills on its north-end. This was a 84 second exposure from the hill on the west. Austin's downtown skyline is at the far left, small though. See the star streaks in the sky? Should return here for star trails.

Fireworks

July 4th fireworks in Austin.

Dropped it!

I just had a munch !!!

Black smoke ?

The background was not as black... see it on the pictures? :)

It's red

Same setup as the last post, different magazine! Increased the contrast and sharpness in PP.

Water drops

Here are some water droplet pictures I tried this week. The setup was a small plastic bottle, with a pin hole, fastened to a tripod, dropping water onto a glass container (if you look closely you can see its brand), with a flash. A magazine was placed under the glass container for the background. More photographs in next post.

Lightning

My first attempt at video with pictures - made with the best video software - windows movie maker ;). Lightning was difficult to capture initially, always shot after the lightning, that resulted in black pictures. So I set the camera on intervalometer mode - multiple 30 second exposures. That's why the tree is brighter than the lightning! Not one picture stood out of the rest, so put them all together. Though D5000 can shoot video by itself, this was fun too.

Smoke

Was holding off, for months, on the purchase of a Nikon speedlight/flash/strobe expecting the SB-700 to be announced. Finally ran out of patience and got the SB-600. Its a good addition to the D5000, the cactus V2s remote flash trigger completes it. The above photographs are with all put in use, where the strobe (fired remotely) illuminated the smoke from an incense stick.

A birds meal

A collage seemed the best way for presenting these shots. 

Birds with coolers

They came in flocks for the fruits and water. They looked cool and seemed to have coolers on them 'naturally'.

Beach guards

There were lots of them at the Galveston beach. There was also this lone seagull sitting on the 'no swimming' sign, making sure humans were not swimming (seagulls can, as they are in the background :) ). As I prepared to photograph it there was this next one! Aahh my camera was set to single shot mode (not continuous), anyway captured as fast as I could. Here are the pictures of change of guard duty.

Reptiles

Some reptiles spotted in Brazos Bend state park, near Houston. Though the park map mentioned there were lots of alligators, this was the only one we spotted! The tortoise was basking the sun in one of the ox-bow lakes. 

Squirrel

Saw this guy eating something, immediately went for my camera. By the time I came back he was done eating and was on the run (on seeing me). I could get only a few shots before he ran far off. I like the second photograph where he seems to pump his fist and say 'Hey, I got away from you'.

Sparrows again

Few more shots from last week. They were not very colorful - best ones for black and white!!! 

Sparrow

 

 

On the way out from my apartment I saw these birds. Was running out of pictures to post in the blog and immediately knew these would be it. Came back with my D5000 & 55-200mm lens.

There were lots of them. They did not mind me till I was about 10 feet from them. Any closer they flew by to nearby branches. Here are two pictures of the many (will probably post few more sometime later). I don't know if birds in both photographs are of the same type

Shamu

ISO: 1000

Exposure: 1/100 sec

Aperture: 5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 1000

Exposure: 1/100 sec

Aperture: 5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 1000

Exposure: 1/200 sec

Aperture: 7.1

Focal Length: 45mm

Yet another post from sea world. Shamu is one of the top attractions. The theme was 'Believe'. When I got there many seats were taken and had to sit about 25 rows from the water. Was thankful I did not take the front seats (the first two pics). Was a good show, still wonder how they train/communicate with the whales.

The music and show was so good that most people were humming 'Shamu Shamu' after the show and some headed to the sea world store to get a mini Shamu.

Penguins

ISO: 1000

Exposure: 1/125 sec

Aperture: 5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 1000

Exposure: 1/80 sec

Aperture: 5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

Still in Seaworld, San Antonio. From the bright sunny outside to the dark cool penguin shelter - wait for a while for my eyes to adjust... then see these penguins - lots of them all over the place, I would say it looked too crowded. Still wonder how penguins survive in Texas. 


Some were taking a dip, some swimming, some doing nothing, some posing and few like in the second picture. I knew I had to shoot at a high ISO (in P mode) but still could not capture the penguins that were moving (while swimming) without any blur! Got to do some practice shots with fast moving objects!

Under water

ISO: 1600

Exposure: 1/30 sec

Aperture: 5.6

Focal Length: 55mm

ISO: 3200

Exposure: 1/10 sec

Aperture: 5.3

Focal Length: 45mm

Yes these were under water. But I was not :). Had been to Seaworld, San Antonio last October. Though it was not the end of the season most shows and rides in the park were closed! Even rides that were supposed to open were suspended for 'want of crowd' - I would say. 

With fewer rides and shows I decided to take lots of pictures! Here are some of a fish and jelly fish. There was lots of fish in that aquarium. As it was dark I had to switch to a high ISO. Even then I did not get good pictures as they kept moving and I could not keep up with them. Hmmm. Then I spotted this guy who never moved and posed for me as though he understood my problem! 

The jelly fish did not help me as the fish did and kept moving. Pushed to a higher ISO and shot. Though the picture is not as sharp I like it.

Blue Moon

ISO: 400

Exposure: 1/640 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 200mm (cropped)

 

ISO: 400

Exposure: 1/5 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 150mm

Don't expect the moon to be blue, it was as usual white :). This was the second full moon in a month, on 31st December 2009, called blue moon. There was also a lunar eclipse that day in some parts of the world, but was not visible in Austin. The moon was really bright to the human eye, may not be evident in the photographs as the metering system adapts to the available light. Being the eve of new year, I wanted to head downtown for photographing fireworks... but it was too cold that I dropped the plan and settled on shooting the moon.

Had to wait a while in my patio for the fast moving clouds to clear for a good view of the moon. My first few shots had the moon completely white, so I set the metering to spot metering from matrix metering - then the moon had more surface details. Even at the maximum zoom of 200mm the moon was only about 5% of the frame. So I suggest to use a higher zoom lens or use teleconverters. I have cropped the first picture to the point that it does not look too bad in terms of resolution :). When I was just about to wind up the clouds started reappearing hurray! Took few photographs before the moon hid behind the clouds.