Self Portrait

While never a fan of any kind of photo of myself, I was interested to experiment with self portraits. Mainly as a way of practicing with lighting and skin tone. I am reasonably confident with anything nature related, but people photography has never been my thing.

Anyway, this was handheld with natural light, hoping that auto-focus would make up for me not being able to do it myself.

I'm still not exactly a fan of photo's of myself, but I am slightly impressed that the capture is fairly natural and reasonably well composed.

102mm 1/2000 at F4, ISO 3200

Where's the sun gone?!

Sadly the lovely weather of late appears to have gone, for now. This bright shot of a dandelion creates a nice feeling of sunshine, or at least it does for me.

105mm 1/125 at F18

Viola's

Yes, more macro, but this time a mixture of what appears to be two common colour themes on this blog, purple and yellow.

1/125 at F3.5

1/160 at F3.5

Arachnid

Same spider, different angles and ideas. These were shot in low light, and as such are exposed between ISO 800 and 1600. I tried using live view for these, and found it rather difficult to master (and clearly still haven't!). Certainly a technique that I want to make more use of though, as the ability to zoom in 10x into the image for focusing is potentially very useful.

I think this shot benefits from a mono conversion, the sky was nice and blue, but with the spider silhouetted it somehow cried out for a change. 1/2000 at F7.1

A full frame sensor, coupled with a 105mm macro lens doesn't always give the zoom required, but this was a very small spider. I like the composition of this image, the background is dull, but still somehow attractive with the web maintaining some focus. 1/125 at F5.6

I can't decide whether or not I like this one, I guess I must do otherwise it wouldn't have been posted. It's not exactly razor sharp, but I like the background colours, even though the rosemary bush behind the spider is fairly visible. 1/125 at F5.6

Pollination

An image from a few days ago that I wasn't overly happy with originally. A slight crop seems to have made all the difference.

105mm 1/320 at F7.1

Insects and Bluebells

Normal service resumed (EOS 5D Mark II), and more of the same.... I really need to broaden my horizons I think!



105mm 1/320 at F4.5



105mm 1/320 at F7.1



300mm 1/320 at F4.5



300mm 1/640 at F4.5

40D Shots

I was interested to see how my old 40D would compare to my new 5D Mark II, not well frankly, but I'm quite happy with these images.



105mm 1/320 at F5



105mm 1/160 at F7.1



105mm 1/250 at F5.6