CLICK IT BACK

This is a photo of a bird that I shot while on my recent vacation to (undisclosed location).

The significance of the bird is this... in bullet point form

5 of us went on a boat ride

a small boat, with no life preservers (3rd world countries and regulations dont mix)

1 of the 5 of us can not swim (not me, i can get my swim on)

it was cloudy (as pictured), and had been raining on and off all day

rain + ocean = motion

a few birds are hovering above us

these are the same birds we saw back in the lush green area when we were in the river

those birds were vultures

seeing vultures hovering over your head is discomforting ... suddenly i had this strange feeling the vultures knew something i didnt

 that is all... i wonder if the vultures saw us and just said "look at these stupid motherf**kers" and then immediately went into "hover over the barely living soon to be dead dinner in my beak" mode

fun times

Over the weekend I ordered the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 wide angle lens.  Eagerly awaiting its arrival.  Every review I've read said this is THE wide angle lens to get so hopefully it lives up to the hype.

Experiment with water drops.

This is my very first attempt at time lapse photography

Firstly, apologies for doing the most cliche of all time lapse subjects... clouds... but they suited my purpose and I think it turned out pretty good for my first attempt

All the gear and settings can be found toward the end of the video.  There are 2 versions of the same clip here, 1 with out any color correction, the other with color correction done in Final Cut Pro X.

I'm also currently learning color correction and I do think the corrected images are better than the original, but I think I might have crushed the blacks a little too much since I lost all details in the tree... but I do kind of like the silhouette look of it all, so maybe its not a bad thing

Id like to try and time lapse stars but I dont think it gets dark enough here (lights from street lights, homes, etc) but I might give it a shot anyway or take a short road trip to someplace darker

All in all the time lapse is 500 photos and took about an hour and a half of shooting time

Fun with "macros"

I picked up some cheap close-up lens filters today for both of my lenses just to mess around with until I can afford a real macro lens... the quality is surprisingly decent... they work better for video than stills but still impressive for the price of $15 for a set of 4 different stackable filters of different magnifications... these pictures were all taken with all 4 stacked for 17x... there is a 10x, 4x, 2x, and 1x... all with the 18-55mm kit lens

I'll be trying some more macros with my 50mm f/1.8 soon

i only messed around taking shots of things within arms reach with a table lamp as my only light source... things might get more interesting when i shoot outdoors or with proper lighting