Picture Reality: December 2005

Little Furry Animals

Our kitchen table allows us to look through our back doors and into our garden. If you have read Karen's Gardening Blog, you know that a few years ago we had our dying back yard ripped up and turned into a woodland garden. I love watching the birds, squirrels and even rabbits enjoy the yard and its many features.

A couple of days ago I used Karen's new camera and caught this little visitor in the middle of his/her lunch:

Something must have startled it, because the next thing I knew it was gone and it took me a minute to find it again in our Corkscrew Willow:

I cropped the above photo to zoom in and further reveal the perfect hiding spot:

Contrasts

The contrast between the links of the chain on the gravel underneath just seemed to catch my eye.

Flowers at a Macro Level

I take a lot of nature shots. I either like to look for interesting patterns or closeups with lots of detail. Here are a few of my flower closeups.

The first one was taken with my old SLR. I was trying out a roll of Kodak Ektar ISO 25 film which was supposed to be the highest resolution 35mm film at the time. As you can see from the result, the Ektar film had a problem with strong reds and which over saturated the petals of these tulips.

On the other hand, the red in this picture of red pansies taken with our Sony DSC-S70 camera show more detail in the red.

And finally for today, an oriental poppy from our front garden.

I think flowers is the theme for today because out first major snowstorm of the season is upon us and it's nice to think of spring.

Infrared

I always like to experiment with different things. These are a few pictures from the one and only time I tried infrared film. Infrared film is black and white and is very difficult (and expensive) to handle and process. However I wanted to try it. All of these pictures were shot during an overcast day through a dark red filter (so only red and infrared light got to the film).

When I took these shots I had absolutely no idea how they would turn out. I just lined up my shot and took my chances.

In this one, the sky was giving off so much IR light that a good part of the top of the picture was completely washed out.

Infrared film is not very sharp so the images are kind of fuzzy. I find that it adds a very ethereal look to the next shot of the trees.

One thing I did know about infrared film was that living things emit a lot of infrared light. So, green foliage looks white in the picture. Check out the spruce tree in the last shot.