February 2013

Here are a few images I took in February, but never ended up posting them... as always, with just my Nikon D60 and the basic 18 - 55mm lens... Actually, in February I got a 70 - 300mm lens with some birthday money (thanks to the generous family members that made that happen!!). It's only a f5.6, but still quite reasonable with good lighting and helps blur out backgrounds if you take flower closeups using max zoom.  Cheap way around not having macro gear, but works for the moment.  I will post more Spring pictures soon which will display that well.

Fundy National Park - June 2012 (Part 2)

A few more shots from the trip... this time all processed with Picasa though (quicker for me at the moment)... I'm over-using the "vignette" effect, I know - I'll be working on getting away from that, but for now, these images were already processed, please forgive the redundant vignette effect :)  It's all about the kids today! Please provide feedback of what you think...

This is typical for my son :)

Nice view of the bay behind them...

Taken on Dickson Falls trail.

Sitting on a big rock in the middle of the little brook

My daughter peaking through an old rotten tree... the thing was leaning towards me and hanging over my head... I quickly took a few shots and got out of there, didn't feel very comfortable there - my daughter was on the correct side of the tree, I would of got it if anything went wrong...

I think my daughter is a tree huger! 

2012-05-07

Last night I spent an hour trying to get some moon pictures.  Thanks to my generous father lending me his Nikon 70 - 300mm (67mm dia.) lens!  It was challenging enough as it is.  The raising moon was more challenging than when it is higher.  Less light and more movement.  Important to have a camera that produces good results at high ISO (my Nikon D60 is not the greatest in this department).  Fairly satisfied with the end results - but I still have lots to learn it seems!

2012-04-25

Friends and family having a spring walk on my father's wood lot, behind my house...

The challenge here is taking a nice picture even though everything is still bare... I find it quite challenging this time of year (unless you do macros of new plants and tree buds, etc?)

The moon on the kids' play outhouse door (yes, they have a play outhouse, accompanying their playhouse built by their father-in-law)

2012-04-23

A wilting tulip petal - looking oddly enough like somebody's tongue :)

Tree bark than has seen better days, as seen in Green River, NB

With the arrival of Spring, welcome flies and bugs...

Among the first plants to get "spring back to life" in early Spring...

Even though it doesn't really look alive, these plants are busy growing and taking in  the Spring sunshine.

The home of wasps from last Summer: obviously a vacant home now.

A tree that has not bounced back to life for many Springs now - as seen on my father's wood lot behind my house.

2012-03-06

I managed to get my hands on Adobe LightRoom 3 recently (birthday cash + $200 off sale = new software for me!)  Here are my first processed images with LightRoom (instead of Google's Picasa)...

Here's my son Caleb, with his interesting Lego creations... Was conservative with effects on this one...

Here is my daughter with one of her Lego creations... I played more with the effects on this one (a blend of a downloaded preset and my own tweaks).

This is an image which I actually posted in my last blog update.  Seems like LightRoom has more options to offer to process the images.  Conversion from my Nikon D60 RAW files is definitely much superior to Picasa.

This was also a previously posted image.  Noise reduction in this one and colors were also much superior to Picasa.

For this one, the noise reduction was incredible!  This image was taken using ISO400 and was very noisy in Picasa.  I was able to manually tweak noise reduction settings until I get a very smooth and clean image.

Overall, LightRoom is very nice for processing RAW images.  I however don't think I will use it to REPLACE Picasa.  I actually think Picasa is awesome for image management and organization.  I think I may keep LightRoom for post processing images that I want to print or post somewhere.  LightRoom was a good buy for me at $90 instead of the regular $300.  Thanks to very kind photography hobbiest for letting us know about the sale!

2012-02-11

A more colorful than usual sunset in my back yard (was hoping to get some moon pictures, but there were too many clouds that day)

This is a tree that I've taken numerous pictures off... my favorite tree for sure.  We have a nice view of a small valley from our back yard, but the horizon would look dull without it! :)

Self portrait experiment... since I don't have an external flash, I setup the camera on a tripod and bounced the flash on a mirror.  So the picture is of the mirror, but that allowed for side lighting, instead of the usual on-board flash look.

I played with exposure a bit, but it was fairly easy have a decent exposure on both sides...  It was fun either way! :)