Early Morning Snow

 Cat on a prawl. It must be tough existence to be a stray cat in Canadian winter.

Steady pace of this cat made beautiful footprint pattern in the snow.

Update: 8 hours later...

and 24 hours later.

We Have Snow!

But, no snowflake pictures, way too mild and wet. When I put the snowflakes under microscope they looked like cotton balls and melted within seconds. It looks like this season might be washed out as far as individual “typical” snowflake photos go. Still, I have managed to take few snapshots before it melted. We have a weird winter for Ontario.

Deck stairs in early light.

Hiding morning sun.

Sea Salt Macro Pix Revisited

Since I wasn’t completely happy with macro photos of the sae salt I took last week I’ve decided to give it another try. I think it worked out a little bit better. I have placed the salt in clear glass dish that was sitting on top of Plexiglas box and then I put halogen flood light directly underneath. Still, not what I wanted so I placed flash to the front and side and set it at 1/128^th power so it will not overpower the bottom light. Much better, but not there yet. Next, I have placed 67mm 80A blue Kenko filter I have from SLR days underneath the glass dish so that halogen light will pass through before hitting the salt. That did it. Next option was to try flashing some colorful backgrounds placed under the salt to see what will happen. I used same card as in my “Oil on Water” shot, colorful golf balls, and it turned out OK. I have tried another card with red flowers and it was different. I don’t know how far I can go with this project but it surely was fun.

Himalayan Mountain salt with halogen light moved to side.

One flash lighting the card at full power and second flash from front and right at 1/128^th power. Sea Salt.

Red flower card underneath.

Setup for picture #1 and #2.

Blue filter under the salt.

Another Winter Project

As I was thinking few days ago where I am going to set-up my microscope mounted with camera to photograph single snow flake I received email from my blogger friend challenging me to do just that. What an incredible coincidence! Looks like we shutterbugs think alike. So, out I went, let the microscope and slides cool down to below freezing temperature, got the lights set up and started collecting snowflakes. But I was out of luck. The snow we got overnight was more like a frozen fog and all I saw was tiny ice crystals that reminded me of sea salt. Eureka! I will shoot salts instead, who knows, it might even make a decent image. Well, it wasn’t to be. It was interesting but I am not sure I would print them. Still, here they are.

I have expected to see beautiful, clear crystals but what I saw looked more like sand. (Oops, another macro photography project: sand. That one has to wait few months, though). I will be watching weather forecasts for some nice heavy snow, I am all set up and ready to go.

Himalayan Pink Mountain Salt Crystals are the same size as regular table salt.

50mm macro with 2X extender and 31mm extension tube, f/22, ISO 400, lighted by 1,030 lumens halogen spot light. Focus was assisted by macro focusing rail and focused in live view zoomed down to maximum and 2 sec. shutter delay.

Coarse sea salt, same camera settings as above.

Setup.

Nature’s Shapes

When I was working in a kitchen with Napa cabbage it struck me how beautiful this leafy vegetable is once you remove the outermost leaves. It is such a simple beauty.

Dancing Smoke Update

Since I am practically newbie when it comes to editing in Photoshop Elements, which has a fairly steep learning curve, it took me good part of a day to figure out how to put different colors into same smoke. I learn the best by just hacking at it on my own, this way I will remember the technique for very long time. Of course I had a great help from fellow blogger The Bonnie 5, very talented photographer, and also my books on PSE7. This was real fun project and I am sure that I will return to it once it warms up, I was shooting in a garage where it was just above freezing. Now I have to find another indoor project to shoot. Maybe I will clean basement instead…nah, not fun!

Dancing Smoke

Actually, I should have called it Smoke Dancing with Photoshop, it would be more accurate. This is so simple to photograph, once you know how. There are quite a few variables for these shots. Aperture, synch speed with flash, ISO, distance of flash from smoke, distance of smoke from background… It is definitely better to take these shots in a large and draft free room. I have tried to do it in a bathroom with exhaust fan (my incense sticks stink!) but there was so much stray light bouncing all over the place that the background was grey no matter how much I choked down the side shields on my flash gun. Out to the garage I went. What a difference the large space makes! Background was so black it didn’t need any retouching and I had a space to move the flash around. It is fun to find all sorts of shapes in these smoke photographs.

Doesn't it look like spine and a skul?

I see hummingbird head.