Week 12: Oil and Water

As you know, oil and water don't mix, so I can take cool pictures of it. This is not my own idea...I did find it on Flikr and YouTube but I've been dying to try it. I made up my own little setup at home, as I don't have much fancy equipment at my disposal, but it worked. Here's the setup:

Basically it's a Pyrex dish with a little water and oil in it put on top of 2 paper towel rolls. I lit it from underneath with my nifty college desk lamp. You see Owen's Halloween book underneath? That's what is producing all the nice colors you see in the drops. Voila! Here's more...

Week 11: Bloom

We've had a few nice days here. I'm starting to see some tiny buds and daffodils coming up. I bought myself some flowers the other day to make the house more spring-y.

Week 10: Up Close and Personal

First of all, here's this week's photo. It is actually a super-close up picture of a dead weed. This week I got a package in the mail with my extension tubes.

Allow me to explain for the non-photo nerds. These are basically plastic rings of different sizes that allow you to get super close macro-type shots. You can use them together, or one at a time in any combo that you wish. Basically, you attach them to your camera and then attach the lens to the tubes. Everything you see in the camera is super blurry until you get very close to something.
Here's a test I did combining different tubes:

This is using the smallest tube. It's a newspaper article. The really difficult thing about using these is you lose some light, so getting the correct exposure is more tricky. Focusing is also very hard!

Here's combining 2 of them together. Ironically, I focused on the word "small." I decided to try some shots with things around the house.

Here's my African violet. It's suffering this winter as you can see. The flowers are dead, but what I wanted to show is this is how close I am able to get with my 50 mm lens alone. Any closer, and I can't take a picture.

Put on 31mm + 13mm tubes, and here's how close I can get. Cool huh?

Fuzzy leaves

Clementine

Dead cherry

Leaf buds on the tree

Ice on the deck.

I hope I didn't get too dorky for you here, but I think the tubes are pretty cool. I should have some great flower shots come spring!

Week 9: Masterpiece

It's another yucky winter week. I have had to scrounge to come up with more indoor photo projects. It came to me yesterday...I have a beautiful musical instrument in my closet. This is much easier to shoot than a toddler. It stays still!
Yes I have played the violin since I was about 10 years old. I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't even taken it out of the case in about 5 years. What a waste. It is true that it comes back quickly. I took out some music and remembered how to play, although it didn't sound as nice as when I'm in practice.



f/1.4 on this one with the new lens (eek!)