More Steller's Jay

This is another photo I took of the Steller's Jay when we were out camping. The shutter speed was to slow to freeze the wings as the bird was moving so you end up with this blurred effect on much of the body. It was a totally unintended look but I thought it looked pretty cool. ***By the way, in case you don't know you can click on the picture for a little larger view.

Flower on a Light Box

I was doing a little experimenting with back lighting a flower by setting it on a light box. With a subject that has a little bit of transparency to it you get a nice effect with some light filtering through the subject and a nice white background.

Steller's Jay

This Steller's Jay was photographed a couple weeks ago while we were camping up at Eagle Lake, just north of Susanville. We lured it in by tossing out some peanuts for it to come get. We took several photographs as we tossed a peanut out time and time again for this bird to come back for and by the time we were done there was 3 or 4 of them coming to get there free lunch.

WATER DROPS

Another blog I read had a post about photographing water drops and the pictures looked interesting so I thought I would give it a try. I had a container filled with water sitting on the kitchen counter then over it I hung a zip lock bag with water in it that I poked a small hole in to provide dripping water in a constant location. Next was to set the camera on the tripod and focus on the spot the drops were hitting and then take several shots trying to time it just right to get the drop impacting the water. I also had a flash set up just to the left pointed at a piece of foam core behind the container so it bounced the light back at the drops from behind. The blue look is from changing the in camera white balance to incandescent lighting. Then a little bit of typical post processing and some cropping to get the images above.

Snow Flower 2

Here is another photo I did of a Snow Flower when I went out again a couple weeks ago. There were a lot more popping up this time and I had a macro lens with me so I tried a little more of a close up approach on this one.

Snow Flower

One morning while the girls were getting their schooling with Grandma Poole I went for a hike along Galena Creek. The Snow Flowers were really just starting to poke out of the ground and this was the largest one I saw that day. I am hoping to go up there again maybe next week and see if I can find more to photograph.

Here are a couple close-up photos of a moth we found in the backyard today.