If the rain comes

They run and hide their heads… or pull out a camera and take pictures of stuff around the house. Tonight, this little weighted exercise ball caught my eye. I positioned it on the hallway rug, mounted the T2i on a tripod and gave it a go. It’s a short, narrow hallway so I took three shots from slightly different vertical angles. This low angle view got the nod.

Petaluma Bridge

Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm at 225mm. ISO 400, 1/4 sec at f/5.0, Tungsten white balance. Black and white conversion: Nik Silver Efex.

Canon T2i staying dry.

Coming out early

February in Northern California is a mixed bag. There can be days in a row of heavy rain, maybe a few frosty nights, and then there might be stretches of halcyon weather. It must be confusing for the budding plants–it most certainly confuses me. If the rainy spells fall on weekends, pruning gets postponed. This unpruned hydrangea is ready for Spring, so I gave the one bud its green back.

Hydrangea bud in February

Lens: Canon EF 70-300mm at 135mm. ISO 400, 1/8 sec at f/5.0. Black and white conversion: Nik Silver Efex. Photoshop for the splash of green, crop, resizing and sharpening.

Canon T2i thinking of Spring.

Job’s Tears

It’s rainy today so after I got home I decided to play around with a different lens–my new and yet to be christened Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM. These close ups of our winterized Job’s Tears plant were shot on a tripod with the lens at 300mm. The camera was set to 1/20 at f/5.6, ISO 200, and white balance on cloudy. I love the isolation of the plant against the completely blurred out green of the backyard. Makes me want to explore this lens more.

Job's Tears 1

Job's Tears 2

Canon T2i getting close.

Fountain heat

While fishing for the “right” exposure for a night view of this local fountain, I took several tight shots. The lights in the fountain were obviously very bright, but while playing with the metering I did manage to get a couple of decent looking, well exposed, completely uninteresting shots. This one, on the other hand, with the super hot, overexposed areas in the splash zone, I like.

Church fountain abstract

Lens: Canon EFS 15-85mm. Black and white conversion: Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Canon T2i liking it hot.

Simplicity

An old Hudson Commodore 2-door hardtop was parked just down the road from our rehearsal space. It’s a very cool looking car. After looking at the photos I took (a couple of which I liked), I figured that there are probably hundreds of similar images of the model readily available with a simple Google search. So instead of showing the whole car within a scene, I settled on this little “abstract” image. I like the simplicity.

Hudson Commodore branding

Canon T2i keeping it simple.