A few days ago, I was taking macros of an amaryllis on the windowsill. Then I went outside to play with my new monopod. I didn't stay out long; maybe 5-7 minutes. When I came back in, the amaryllis had done a full 180° turn to face the sun.
Today, I decided to try and time-lapse it. I set up my tripod, got everything in order, and waited for the sunrise to begin. It started getting slightly lighter, so I started shooting at 1 photo per 8 seconds. Long story short, it was too cloudy for the sun to be seen at all, so the amaryllis pretty much stayed put. Even the slight movement you can see through the movie is due to heater vents blowing on it. I couldn't cover them well enough to prevent all movement.
Today's post is early because I'm going to be gone all day. The district honor choir of which I'm a part is performing Mozart's Requiem in Provo today, under the direction of Mack Wilberg! Yesterday I had a 7-hour rehearsal with him, and I'm leaving to an all-day rehearsal in about 10 minutes.
Yesterday when I was doing indoor macros, I got this shot, too. Not as satisfying, but it's one of the better indoor macros I've done.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/2.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 80
Tripod
The flower area that I'm primarily interested in is sharply in focus. But the pollen is only somewhat in focus. This is, of course, a result of my f/2.6 aperture, but when I tried the same shot at wider apertures, I found I had the same problem. I discovered that the problem is actually my macro lens. It does great close-ups, but the widest depth-of-field I can get with it is roughly equivalent to f/2.8. So this may be another photo that requires two exposures with different focuses, and some careful masking in Photoshop, a la this post.
I feel like people are probably getting sick of bad attempts at stereo, kind of bad attempts at stereo, and guitars around here, so I decided to mix things up with a super creative nature macro.
click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr Aperture: f/2.6
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 80
Gorilla Pod, wrapped around a leg of my Tripod. Which is appropriate, if you think about it.
I actually like this photo a lot. The colors came out perfectly with no need for white-balance adjustments or added saturation. I'm learning to use the histogram more practically in my image optimization.
Andrew Broekhuijsen has been living in Utah since the age of -9 months. He enjoys long walks on the beach, and flexing shirtless in the mirror. Oh, and photography. That too.
