A few delays this morning getting ready to start work. Looking out of the window I noticed several leaves starting to turn. Many trees near where I live are evergreen so I miss the overwhelming colour changes you see with large deciduous forests. The one leaf changing colour on my silver birch in the front yard doesn’t have the same effect! The car was all packed, so I used my old D300 for the shots you see in this post.
Silver Birch seeds.
I can see the silver birch trees from my bedroom window and I keep an eye on them as the seasons change. At this time of year most of the “seed pods” have changed colour and are in the process of dispersing seeds all over the garden! The leaves will go more yellow and then fall to leave only the stark skeletal structure of the tree until next spring.
Silver Birch Seeds. These things get EVERYWHERE!!
I quite like this last shot … shallow depth of field and quite a pleasing bokeh. Hopefully you like the photos too.
The car was packed and I was all set to head off to shoot a property in Takanini when I was told the property wasn’t ready. Being as it was a little cooler today we decided to take a stroll around Auckland’s Botanic Gardens. Not wanting to unpack the car I took my old Nikon D300 along with the first lens I bought for the Nikon, the Nikkor 18-200mm. The first thing I noticed was how light the camera felt in comparison to the ones I usually use. Rather pleasant to have less weight to carry.
Cyclamen … I think!
After walking through the bush we arrived at the magnolia area of the gardens we almost missed these little cyclamen(?). No leaves and quite delicate colouration to the petals made these plants easy to overlook. I was quite intrigued with the “spiral stems” that you can just pick out at the base of the plant. I wasn’t aware that cyclamen were leafless, but perhaps some are. Anyway, if you know the name of the plant please let me know.
Not sure what this is … but it’s pretty!
The next plant was just a mass of colour! Very pink indeed, but with a few yellow bits. I have absolutely no idea what this plant is, but it’s rather nice don’t you think?
So, the D300 still works. The dynamic range isn’t anywhere near that of my D800s and the 18-200mm lens lacks the clarity and bokeh offered by the lenses I usually use on the D800s. Looking at the first image, the bark in the background somewhat overwhelms the bloom … seems much too busy, and this was with the lens wide open and after adding some gaussian blur in Photoshop. All the same, it was a nice lightweight combination to take along for a stroll and the photos aren’t too bad … are they?
Yet another glorious day here in Auckland and a chance to take a walk along the coast at Martaetai. After parking the car at Te Puru Park we enjoyed a lovely walk along the headland then along the beach at Omana before arriving at Maraetai. The path has been upgraded and has a surface suitable for people of most walking abilities. Here’s a few photos of the scenes you can enjoy along the walk.
You may recall me mentioning that the stray cat has returned to the compost heap to produce yet more kittens. This afternoon I tried to see where they were hiding. We’ll need to get them off to the SPCA reasonably soon to be in with a chance of getting them off to some good homes. Folks seem to be more attracted to cute kittens than stropy cats for some reason. It was difficult to decide where they are hiding … and I suspect they’ll find places in which they can escape or hide when I try to catch them. There’s so many little places into which they can run from which I’ll find it close on impossible to extract them.
Whilst looking for their ‘home’ I spotted one of the kittens amongst some undergrowth near the compost bins. Looks like I was the only one doing some spotting!
Lurking in the undergrowth by the compost heapI think I’ve been spotted!
I was chatting to my son about light and some of the challenges you have when trying to take photos of glass. So, to illustrate the point, we grabbed a few glasses from upstairs – nothing fancy as there was a high chance things would get broken – and headed down into the basement! The glasses were placed on my light table which has a glossy white plastic surface. We tried a few different configurations, just to illustrate how we could change the appearance of the image by where we placed the light source.
Ambient light shot This is the first shot. Taken with available light from the window to camera left. You can see a range of reflections on the glasses – I really must tidy up in the basement! Anyway, besides seeing all the clutter in the reflections you’ll notice the glasses seem to blend into the background. Instead of looking at the shape of the glasses you’re probably looking to see just what the clutter is in my basement!
Single flash from below
Same setup as before, except this time I placed a speedlight under the light table. This gives quite a different effect. No longer are the reflections of the basement clutter so obvious and you get a much better idea of the shape of the glasses. One thing I’ve learnt is that when you play with glasses have a clean cloth handy so you can remove your greasy finger prints!
Light from behind with gels
Next we decided instead of having the background predominantly white with the form of the glasses being black to swap things round. Now we tried a black background and had the glasses being white – or another colour! This time a gobo was placed behind the glasses and two white reflectors placed on the left and right of the glasses. The white light table was replaced with foamcore with some glass under the glasses to give some reflections. We also placed some gels in front of the flash to get some different colours.
Light from behind with gels
We used the gel filters from the studio lights; yellow red and blue. The first shot used the yellow gel, but then using both yellow and blue gave us green as you see in this image.
Remember that I mentioned I had two white reflectors on each side of the glasses? Well, for the last shot we used two speedlights on low power fired through red and blue gels at these reflectors as well as a third speedlight behind the gobo as in the two previous shots.
Extra coloured speedlights left and right
So there you go, a bit of fun with a speedlight or two in the basement. Good fun and I think my son learnt a little as well as had some fun with the filters, reflectors and speedlights.
