Winter macros - inside and outside...

On a particularly nasty day, I gave my new iPhone macro lens (part of an "Olloclip" set of three lenses for iPhone) a try and photographed an Alstroemeria blossom up close and personal.

A couple of days later, I ventured outdoors to capture some icy, snowy macro images in my garden since the snowy mix we'd had earlier in the week hadn't melted due to two days running of cold temperatures. Clockwise from top left below: Rosemary, Camellia in bud, Vinca covered with ice and snow and a faded Hydrangea blossom encased in an ice and snow mix.

I'm posting this to Macro Monday over at Lisa's Chaos... come on over and join the fun!

Montana images... beautiful in Winter too!

I went to Montana to attend a pajama party given by friends on New Year's Eve. It was great fun but I'm not posting pictures from that here! ;-) When I go to Red Lodge, I fly into Billings, rent a car and drive the ~60 miles to Red Lodge which is south-west of Billings. The first image below is from a roadside stop along route 212 between Roberts and Boyd, MT. I watched the clouds over the mountains from the time I left Billings on I-90 (no place to stop there) and finally found a "scenic" and safe stopping spot from which to shoot them.

The image below is from a favorite spot on the West Fork of Rock Creek outside of Red Lodge. Silver Run is a cross country ski trail in winter and a biking, hiking trail in summer. I go to the parking lot there every time I visit Red Lodge and am always inspired to take yet more photographs. This is the first time I've been there in winter and I experimented with my Singh Ray VND (variable neutral density) filter with this as the result. Only the fastest running part of the creek was not frozen.

I have recently created an account at iPhoneArt, one at Twitter (toryporter) and one for Instagram (also toryporter) which is a camera/uploading app for iPhone. So I am in even more overwhelm than usual but I have resolved to work out a schedule where I am blogging AT LEAST one day a week and can devote time to posting on other sites/social media services on a rotating basis as yet to be determined. I am also on Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. I think I'm in overload mode!

Holiday Greetings... Cardinal Collage and Poinsettia Images!

This will most likely be my last post for 2011 since I'm expecting family tomorrow and will be visiting over the next few days with them. On Christmas Eve, I will be cooking dinner for them, myself, friends and cousins who live locally. For your viewing pleasure during the holiday season, here are a couple of Poinsettia images and a collage of cardinals... my favorites in winter! Wishing everyone a joyous holiday season and a healthy, happy new year.(wrote this on Dec 22nd, had difficulty posting but here it is finally... I'm sharing this on Macro Monday (Jan 2, 2012) over at Lisa's Chaos... come on over and join the fun!)

Close-up of a miniature Poinsettia taken with iPhone camera, sharpened and cropped with PerfectPhoto, run through AutoPainter with Aquarell effect. Photo and paint layers blended in Iris with 35% opacity for the paint layer.

Image taken with Nikon D7000 and Nikon 105mm macro lens at ISO 250, f/3.5, 1/60 sec. Sharpened using Topaz In Focus plug-in in Photoshop... AMAZING! Text added in Photoshop.

Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal on snowy winter days. (Some of you have seen these before but I just love Cardinals in winter so here they are again, freshly put together as a collage in Picnik.)

Sharp-shinned Hawk revisited... from the winter of 2011.

In March, as some of you may recall, I posted a single image from a series of images captured while photographing a Sharp-shinned Hawk perched in a neighbor's silver maple. He was EXTREMELY interested in the House Sparrows that he could see and hear cheeping in fear while 'hiding' down below him in the brambles of a wild rose bush that is about 10 feet in diameter and over 7 feet tall. The sparrows were either gathered on the ground or perched on the lowest limbs of the rose bush and were inaccessible as far as the raptor was concerned.

I was having breakfast when I spotted him on a cold day in March so I grabbed my camera and dashed outside, hoping to not spook him. He was clearly more interested in the sparrows than any silly photographer and I snapped pictures until I nearly froze because I'd run out without putting on a coat or gloves! While revisiting these images the other day, it occurred to me that some of them tell a story so here you go.

Is this my best side?

Or is this?

OK, I can hear the sparrows... but where are they?

What? Those sparrows are hiding in the rose brambles???

That's too bad... I think I'll see what's on the other side of the garden.

Aren't you tired of taking pictures yet?!

Between the previous perch and this one, he landed within 10 feet of me on the fence... I don't know who was more surprised between the two of us... the hawk or me! He didn't stay long here and by the time he landed here, I'd been out for 20 minutes or more in freezing cold so was finished taking pictures anyway!

I'll be posting this to World Bird Wednesday later on... if you haven't found your way there yet, do drop by and have a look!

Post for Tuesday's Around the World

My cousin Jane and our friend Susie were on our way home from a day together exploring the nearby Maryland/Virginia/West Virginia countryside when we pulled the car over to see if we could find a spot from which to photograph the glorious sunset sky.

We had spent the day together, wending our way toward a visit to my favorite potter in Sharpsburg, MD with stops along the way to photograph whatever caught our eye. This was taken in Boonsboro, MD after we discovered we could wander down behind some buildings on the main street and get a mostly unobstructed view of the sky! If you want to read more of the story and see more images from our photographic adventure, check out my other blog starting with this post.

This post is for sharing on "TUESDAYS AROUND THE WORLD" at communal global. I've been writing my own blogs for awhile now and have only recently discovered a community of folks who share images based on a theme. I'm finding it interesting but am so busy that I'm also wondering if I'll be able to keep it up long term. Meantime, it's fun and a good way to meet other bloggers so you might want to give it a try yourself. (my previous post was shared too so check it out for another place to share images if you are into macro photography)

Squirrel portrait... new lens is looking good!

I've been frustrated at not being able to get as CLOSE to my garden creatures as I'd like, so I ordered a new lens recently and am trying it out... this is one of the first really good close-ups of one of the MANY squirrels regularly visiting my garden to raid the feeders. He is sitting on my warped deck rail and taking a break from trying to get in to one of the feeders. He's just picked up some stray seed dropped onto the deck rail by one of the birds.

The lens is a Nikon mount - Sigma 120-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens with OS (Optical Stabilization). This image was shot hand-held from inside through my kitchen window... the lens is pretty well balanced for hand-holding as long as there is plenty of light. I also purchased a 1.4 teleconvertor... using that requires a tripod for sure! One day soon I hope to sit in the back yard with the tripod set up and the new lens + teleconvertor assembly. The birds don't really like me pointing this huge lens at them (even from INSIDE) so I'll have to bide my time until they get used to it AND me in the garden or I won't get any shots at all. My yard is too tiny to set up a blind of any kind.

Orchids, orchids, orchids... at the Philadelphia Flower Show!

I wasn't super happy with ANY of the photos that I came home with from the Philadelphia Flower Show. Between the low light and the crowds, it was very difficult to get into position for "best shots." Because of my experience lugging a tripod last year, I chose to leave the tripod at home... way too hard to position a tripod without causing inconvenience to others... and hand holding was tricky too because of jostling by the throngs eager to see the displays.

That said, I'll probably post another collage eventually but the orchids were phenomenal so I'm sharing this one first. Putting the images together in a collage makes it easier to overlook the flaws! :-)

Raptor in the garden... Winter, 2011

While having my coffee and reading the paper after finishing breakfast this morning, I noticed the absence of birds at my feeders... this usually means a raptor visit! In the past, I've been able to spot a hawk (thought it might be a Cooper's Hawk but have since found out it is a Sharp-shinned Hawk) high up in the trees nearby when I notice the absence of birds at the feeders.

Today, when I looked out the window, the hawk was perched down fairly low in the Silver Maple next door. I grabbed my camera with 70-300mm lens already mounted and stealthily crept out the side door of our house and tip-toed around to the back yard. After snapping quite a few (some quite blurry) images from a respectful distance, I decided to take my chances and creep closer to where he was perched.

I managed to get within 25-30 feet without startling him because he was VERY interested in figuring out a way to get THROUGH the rose brambles in the bush under where he was perched. He could hear the birds hiding there but couldn't get to them. Talk about frustration. If you want to see a few more images of this beautiful bird, there are 22 in a slide show that will take less than one minute to view.

UPDATE to this post... I have recently discovered sharing my blog with others through posting (using Linkys tools or other) links back to my blog on someone else's blog. As of noon Tuesday (Eastern US Time Zone), World Bird Wednesday is open for sharing bird images with like-minded souls. So I'm posting this there today... come join the fun!

Scenic vista along I-270 north of Washington, DC - February 18, 2011

My cousin Jane, our friend Susie and myself decided to drive up to Foxcross Pottery (home and studio of a potter friend) recently and make a day of it... stopping wherever the spirit moved us to take photographs, have lunch and explore the countryside around both Shepherdstown, WV and Sharpsburg, MD.

Not too far from Washington, DC on I-270 before getting to the town of Frederick, MD is a scenic overlook which gives an almost 360° view of the countryside. It was a fairly hazy day and I wasn't happy with most of the images I took... this one pleased me, though, so I hope you enjoy it.

If you'd like to read a bit more about Foxcross Pottery and see a collage of images from our visit there, please see my other blog.

Balancing act while wondering... Which way to the food?

This silly squirrel is another one of the rascals who is constantly trying to crack the code to get into the squirrel proof (mostly) feeders I have... the image was taken through my kitchen window, a frequent pastime for me in winter when it's cold outside. For someone who grew up in Wyoming and Montana braving temperatures way below zero at times, I've become awfully cold sensitive!

About the squirrel... he is perched on one of the arms of the two-armed post on which two different style feeders hang. (both supposedly squirrel proof) I imagine him to be contemplating which one of the two feeders he is going to approach first!

I'm now deeper than ever in learning new software... January 29 found me in a marathon ALL DAY Lightroom 3 class (from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm) and this past Saturday (February 5) found me back in the same classroom for a Photoshop CS5 'level 1' class although I left early due to a slight schedule conflict. I'll be in the level 2 class for Photoshop in another few weeks (again, all day Saturday). One thing I learned in the Lightroom class was how to add the copyright text to my images. This post (and the previous post) now have that information. (I'll be experimenting with alternative ways to include the copyright information as I go along... this is my first effort!)

If you want to watch a slide show of squirrels trying to crack the code to my "Squirrel-proof" feeders, use the link in the News Items box at top right.

Sparrow frenzy at the back yard feeder... December 2010

Just to remind you (in case you think I've lost my mind which is entirely possible given the events of the last few days), when I put a date in the title of a post, it refers to the date the image was captured, not the date of the post. This image is from a sunny day in December of last year when the birds were going a little bit crazy for the food in my feeders. It is also the first image that I've posted where I did quite a bit of post-processing using many of the tricks I learned in my Lightroom class (more on this below).

As for the events of the past few days that have contributed to my absence (as far as visiting YOUR blogs), I took a Lightroom 3 class this past Saturday and have been struggling since then to master a few simple things that are FAR from intuitively obvious.

This is where the internet is a MARVELOUS tool... because one of the things I've been struggling with is publishing images to Picasa/Facebook/Flickr (and maybe others in future) straight out of Lightroom. Let me tell you about the Facebook fiasco... the Publishing Service for Facebook that comes WITH Lightroom 3 has sent my browser into never-never-land more times than I can count... in trying to troubleshoot the problem, I clicked the Plug-in Exchange button (not having a CLUE what it did) in the setup dialog for setting up the various Publishing Services in Lightroom. Voilà! That button took me to Adobe's Lightroom page where I could search for plug-ins for publishing to various web services. And I found a third party developer's plug-in for Picasa... the developer has already received a donation from me to support his efforts for Picasa. (and I suspect he will be receiving one for his Export to Facebook plug-in although I haven't set that service up yet because I wanted to send some images to Picasa first so I could blog this one today!)

And in case you are wondering... why Lightroom? I've used iPhoto on a Mac since first starting to use a digital camera almost five years ago. As much as I LOVE my Mac and the ease of use of iPhoto, I hate the way iPhoto 'hides' deep in the iPhoto library, images representing my originals AND another copy of the SAME image representing any editing changes thus increasing overhead as far as storing multiple copies of the same photo. And, IF I want to use Photoshop (either Elements or the full version of Photoshop) to further edit an image that I've put into iPhoto, I have to EITHER export it OR go find it (there are ways) where it is buried in the library and put a copy somewhere outside of the iPhoto library where Photoshop software can 'see' the image.

As you might expect, after awhile working with iPhoto gets awfully old and tiring and it is also limited as to the editing changes one can make if one starts to get REALLY serious about post-processing. So, I'm trying to learn Lightroom and hope to eventually stop using iPhoto altogether. The learning curve is quite steep!

Cardinal Collage... Mr. and Mrs. in snow... Winter 2011

I just cannot resist the cardinals... especially in winter when their colors stand out so beautifully in the gloom. Later in the week, I'll post some full size views of these beautiful birds but thought you might like to see them enjoying my newest squirrel proof feeder and posing on my snowy deck rail.

Tropical Butterfly... something warm for a cold day...

In the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, a little bit of snow often results in school closings... and when schools close... many other things get canceled as a result. Our garden club meeting has been canceled for today because of a little bit of snow falling overnight. It has changed to rain (maybe freezing rain) so roads might be slippery... but out my window I can see our street is mostly clear and cars going up and down.

The above is a long way around to introducing this image... something to warm us all in winter... an Orange Tiger (Dryadula phaetusa) butterfly! Also known as Banded Orange Heliconian and the sole representative of its species according to Wikipedia, it is "native from Brazil to central Mexico, and in summer it can be found rarely as far north as central Kansas." I photographed this one in the Butterfly Conservatory of the National Museum of American History in New York City during a December visit.

A snowy winter collage... January 2011

Another collage experiment! These images are, clockwise from top left, a small portion of Leucothoe during our recent, light snowfall; masterful Mr. Cardinal strutting on our deck, an extreme close-up of Rosemary with snow and another extreme close-up of Nandina berries with snow.

The extreme close-ups were taken with a 105mm macro lens and the 36mm extension tube (from a set of 3 Kenko extension tubes) on my Nikon D90.

The snowfall the other day didn't amount to much but still lent itself to experiments in photography. Next time it snows, I hope to make it out before the snow stops falling and starts melting... would LOVE to capture some individual snowflakes one of these days.

Pink Cattleheart or Transandean Butterfly... December, 2010

After quite a bit of "googling" around, I believe I've identified this as Parides iphidamas whose common names are Pink Cattleheart or Transandean. As near as I can tell from having studied several different web sites and images, this is a female of the species.

There seems to be quite a bit of variability in the coloring and markings of this species and I'm by no means an expert! So I trust someone out there will correct me if I've misidentified this one. :-) It is resting on a Pentas blossom cluster... and I do know that Pentas blossoms are a favorite of butterflies everywhere they bloom so have vowed to have more of them in my garden in 2011. (Unfortunately, they are an annual flowering plant and are fairly expensive but I simply must find ways to attract more butterflies to my garden and don't have the room for a butterfly bush!)

Greetings of the Season... Winter, 2010

Here's hoping everyone has a joyous holiday season ... whatever holiday you celebrate! This is my first experiment at creating a photo collage. (next experiment will be to figure out how to make "live links" to allow you, if you are so inclined, to click any one of the images in the collage to show a "full size" of it in a new window)

With thanks to Ginnie of In Soul for the hint to use Picnik to create photo collages. :-)

Sparrow at the feeder... February 10, 2010... snowing and blowing...

The sun is shining at the moment... but they are telling us more snow is on the way... 1-2 inches at most is what they are telling us. I sure do hope they are right because I cannot take another blizzard! The birds are sure happy to be fed during all this mess but I'm out of patience with the mess AND almost out of bird seed!!!

A blizzard of snow AND robins in our holly tree...

Robins, desperate for food during out back-to-back blizzards of earlier in the month, came by the hundreds to dine on berries in my huge holly tree. I'm not good at estimating heights but can tell you that our holly tree is as tall as our two-story house plus A-frame attic (which adds at least 8 feet to the height of the house). There are three main trunks to the tree which we've trimmed to allow walking underneath and kept it mostly rounded above that point. Unfortunately for the tree, the heavy wet snow of the Feb 5-6, 2010 storm broke one minor branch and one of the major trunks about 2/3 of the way toward the top of the tree.

Are you taking my picture again? Female Cardinal at my feeder... February, 2010

We have had SO MUCH snow this winter that we've reached a record since snowfall has been recorded in our area... 55.6" (141.224 cm) so far this winter of 2009/2010 in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

We had SUN today and everyone is digging out... but patience is wearing thin with the mess left behind by two blizzard category storms that dumped huge amounts of snow on us in less than one week's time.

The good news for me in all this MESS is that the gallery where my photography show is happening was able, in spite of the storm, to meet with me today to organize hanging the show which is now advertised on the gallery web site.

Red berries... sunlit in snow and ice... February 7, 2010

We saw the sun this week... in between what might be the worst February in history for snow storms in our area. This is a very common landscape plant and I can NEVER remember the name of it!

We are currently experiencing our third snowstorm of February and the second to be classified as a blizzard! Snow has been coming down for almost 24 hours now and MAY stop when predicted... in another 3 hours or so. It's been blowing quite hard along with the snowfall so it's very hard to tell how much we've had... best guess is about another 8" on top of the nearly 30 inches from the Feb 5-6 snowstorm.