All of the tips and tricks of photography I’ve learnt that are fit to print!
Right Said Fred could have been singing Fortitude's praises...those red leaves are absolutely captivating! Enjoy them while they last which won't be long now... :)
Now we're starting to see some proper fall colours... :)
Another signature spider takes up residence with a massive web anchored across the driveway. It may not have been the best location for catching food but it was certainly not for lack of effort! :)
Even a relatively mundane trip through White Oak shows the beginning of fall colours... :)
A beautiful web woven by a yellow garden spider shows that the iPhone 8 Plus is actually amazing at doing macro photography! :)
Miguel and Jessica show their new neighbourhood the shock and awe campaign of fireworks we've enjoyed these past few years in the cul de sac! :)
After topping off the petrol tank of my neighbour's truck which I was finally going to be able to return to him, I ducked through the car was where he has a unlimited monthly pass. Thanks to it being dark outside, I was able to really capture the neon coloured accent lighting as well as the spinning brushes which ended up with a surprisingly spectacular result. It might be worth getting one of those passes…
I've had the D850 for a year now and finally got to play with a feature I knew the camera had but had never used...the WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Up to this point, I hadn't needed to mess with that built-in networking functionality because the workflow to get the images off the camera's memory card always started with loading the pictures into Lightroom using a card reader. It's so fast loading directly off the card…
These lovely leaves might well have led you to think of Fortitude doing a big dump of red leaves to the deck but this was actually outside of the Eastern Wake Regional Centre near Zebulon. After getting the booster jab, it was a very welcome sight indeed to see such a beautiful explosion of colour that I couldn't help but to aim the iPhone's camera at the massive pile o' red leaves! :)
Today's gallery is exactly why I love shooting in the autumn and as much as I love those two Japanese Maples in front of the house, Fortitude's colouration will easily be my favourite. Only five days after the previous set of shots and Fortitude is in full-on red colour saturation. These were taken just before noon so the sun was overhead and occasionally peeking through the leaves which gives a lovely backlit texture to the…
The first set of photos were shot after collecting Katie and Alex in Clayton for the morning commute to school. I was loving how the fog was playing in the fields. Unfortunately, this is an example of just how quickly the light can change when you're shooting shots like this. Right before getting to Julia's house, I had spotted some hay bales in a field when it was much darker and you could just barely…
When it comes to full-on obnoxious colour saturation, no season comes close to the autumn for colour that practically explodes off the frame. These pictures were taken in the afternoon after collecting Katie and Alex from school. The first set of the trees at the intersection of New Hope and Rogers Lane shows just how glorious the setting sun can show off the colours of the leaves in the trees. The second set shows Patience…
Everyone has "squirrel moments", right? In this case, it was a real life "Mr Nutterbutter" who thought they could evade the reach of the camera lens on the iPhone to nick a nut. Oh, you silly squirrel! :) There's hardly a place on Earth where you won't find at least one camera lens pointed at you and escaping detection of the crime is well nigh impossible! :) The only thing this little critter needs is…
After getting a few pictures of Mistletoe with the sunflowers at Dix Park, it was time to unleash the D850 with the 105mm f/2.8 Micro-NIKKOR lens and get up close and personal with the sunflowers and the bees that were busily pollinating them! This is the combination I wanted to be packing when we came out here a few days earlier for Julia's birthday because the detail the lens is capable of capturing is nothing…
Julia's birthday included an impromptu trip to the large field of sunflowers currently inhabiting Dix Park just south of downtown Raleigh. She was interested in getting some pictures of the kids with the sunflowers as a backdrop and taking advantage of the lovely lighting from the setting sun. As we were between various shots/posing/occasional grumpiness/more posing/SHOOT!, I decided to have a bit of fun with the iPhone's camera and get some nice shots of the…
I've loved my little PlusTek 8200i film scanner...with the exception of medium format 120 film, it's handled just about every set of negatives and slides I've thrown at it. It is designed to scan 35mm (135 format) film and it does it very well...having three trays to hold the negative strips is very nice as you can scan one set of negatives and have two strips loaded and ready to go. 126 format film can…
One of the treasures I discovered in my father's garage was a huge collection of 35mm slides shot by my grandmother and a tray that my father shot whilst deployed to Vietnam during his first tour of duty (1967-1968). What was shocking was how good a condition they were in despite the heavy humidity of the Central Florida area and near the garage door in particular where they'd likely been sitting since 1998 or 1999…
Nicholas had a photo assignment for his digital design class so with all of the online schoolwork done for the day, it was a lovely opportunity to visit Yates Mill Pond Park which has a water driven mill house on site. We ended up doing the full lap round the lake and it was a load of fun to get out and enjoy having a camera at hand just for the heck of it. Nick…
I grabbed the camera hoping to catch a hawk or an owl that was in one of the trees behind the house but sadly couldn't get back in time before it had taken wing. But, that didn't stop me from having a bit of fun wandering the very colourful garden next door at the neighbour's house…now it was time for the flowers and the bees to take centre stage! Enjoy! :)
I had to do a bit of minor surgery on the D810 which developed a cracked viewfinder cover. Fortunately, one was available from Etobicoke in Ontario and the D810 is now happily mended for another 256K photos! :)
I’d rather a $20 UV filter have a bad day rather than the $1,400 lens it was attached to! :) I accidentally lost grip on the camera bag and it hit the bleachers hard enough to crack the UV filter that was on my older 70-200mm f/2.8 lens which I discovered whilst switching from the 300mm f/4. The lens was perfectly fine finishing Nick’s lacrosse game without the filter on it. I’ll transplant a 77mm…
The coolest thing for me is when the moon moves into the umbra, you're effectively getting the reds from every sunrise and sunset simultaneously being bent by the atmosphere toward the lunar surface. These aren't the greatest shots you'll see but I'm pretty OK with them being somewhat noisy considering that I was sitting in a deck chair and handholding the D810 which had the 200-500 f/5.6 lens fitted with a 2x teleconverter and shooting…
A small bit of surgery was required this morning at the house on the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 AF-S VR lens…otherwise known as my absolute favourite lens in the world. Over seven years ago, I lucked out and found this lens on consignment about fifteen minutes after the camera shop had acquired it…and at half the price a new lens would cost! Since then, this 2006-vintage tough-as-nails lens has been an absolute workhorse and the one…
(This was originally posted to Facebook in 2017 and finally made it here in 2021. It's long but if you want to see the backstory to Red Vixen Studios...this is your post!) It's funny how all this started with a seemingly innocuous question from out of the blue from my sister…"you like playing around with your camera, right?" She had started working at this theatre in downtown Fayetteville near the Market House that I had…
But we certainly didn't have any problems with shooting it! Any decent lens will do to really get the colours of the flame to pop...were I shooting on a DSLR, I'd likely have the 50mm f/1.4 lens at hand. That f/1.4 aperture is huge...so large that I can shoot that lens in total darkness without using the flash! But in this case, these all came from the back camera of an iPhone. The technology is…
