This was sitting there in the sun on a mostly overcast day.  I liked the lines, the shadows and the contrast. 

I will get a new picture posted asap.

Thanks

Chris

1/1600 at F/8.0 ISO 2000.  I cropped and applied some vignetting to it.  Is vignetting a word?

This Glock 17 and a Beretta 92FS were the first test subjects. 

Anyway, I did get a few decent pictures of a dragonfly.  Unfortunately, I was not able to get into the perfect spot so there is a small branch in the way.  Also, I was not able to get a good, perfect picture where the whites and blacks worked just right.  Not bad all in all, though.  I like them.

I also got a good candid shot…

Stillwater, Minnesota was very busy.  I guess everyone thought the same thing we did; it would be a nice weekend to hang out by the water and watch the people.  The river was flooded badly.  Only the smallest of the boats was able to get under the bridge.  Anything larger than 17 feet in length or so had to wait for the lift bridge to go up.  The water was up and over the sidewalk.

I was able to get a few decent pictures.  I am still working on getting them ready for publishing.

I set up with a black backdrop on a table, pointed a couple of shop lights using “daylight” bulbs at the flowers and shot from various angles and with various apertures.  I used my Tamron 2.8 lens.  These three turned out the best in decreasing order.

The first one here I put a couple of lights towards the back to get a glow and used a front light to get the detail.  I pulled the flower out of the background and replaced it with a solid black. 

Believe it or not, this one is on the background as shot.  I turned off all but one light, shot from above and had a wide open aperture. 

 I’m not so sure I like this last one.  The flowers are a bit too small for the vase and I did not feather the selection enough so the flowers are a bit sharp against the background. 

I shot this with my standard Tamron 28-75 F/2.8 lens with a circular polarizer (which explains the deep blue sky).

I just love this barn with holes in it, the roof sagging and falling, the overgrowth and the lines of the planting drawing your eye towards the big hole in the corner of the red outcropping on this barn.

Put a balloon in view, set the sound-activator to fire a flash when it hears the sound, turn off the lights and pop the balloon.  Couldn’t be easier.

Now, I need to hook up a faster flash.  The one I used was a $5 disposable.  If I hook it up to a good flash (like my 580EX) it can stop the motion a bit better. 

I saw this big guy fly right over my head, very close to my head, actually.  Luckily, he decided to have lunch on a tree close to our house.  I was able to get inside and get the camera while he was still eating.  Not a bad shot overall.

This is the first shot I got off before they went too far away.  There are several others.  I hope to get a few more posted shortly.  The detail in this one at full size is incredible.  The claw underneath, the curve of the beak, the individual feathers.  Awesome!

I had watched her and her daddy get the kite into the air. There was plenty of wind. He thought it was humorous that I was taking a picture.

I love how blue the sky turned out.  That’s the circular polarizer filter at work.

My mother tells of a time she convinced my dad to stop and pick up some cattails (a flowering, seeding plant that looks like a cat’s tail) intending to bring them home to us kids. He got very dirty getting them but mom was happy. She put them under the car seat to keep them safe for the drive home. She forgot them.

If you have any experience with cattails you know they will seed whether they are stuck in the ground or not. These things seeded out and waited under the car seat for just the right moment. Mom opened a car window which blew these millions of seeds into the air, inside the car… They are coughing and choking on these flowering, fluffy seeds and cannot see a thing as they are driving down the highway.

The way mom tells it, dad was not too happy at all and had absolutely no sense of humor about it. I don’t think they ever got the seeds entirely out of the car.

I was walking around a small pond waiting for a job interview and caught sight of these. These two were sitting out on their own. Focusing on a small area with a wide aperture (F2.8) was not easy especially from a distance great enough to not mess up my dress shoes.

Something about this small part of a large tractor caught my eye. I like the shadows and the fact that it looks like the thing has not been run in years. It cannot be that old but Minnesota winters will do that.