Photos: Colorful Water Drops

Canon XSi, 100mm macro lens, f/2.8, 1/320 second, ISO 200

Lately, I've been experimenting with various water drop pictures.  Here's one that I did that involved using some color.

Comments, criticisms and critiques are welcomed, appreciated and encouraged.

The Wolf

Photos: Tiger

I recently took a trip to the Bronx Zoo and, of course, I took my trusty camera along.  I managed to get a number of good tiger shots.  Here's one:

Canon XSi, 75-300mm lens at 300mm, f/5.6, 1/400 second, ISO 400.

Comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

Photos: Fly

As long-time readers of this blog know, I happen to enjoy photography.  One particular type of photography that I enjoy is macro photography, otherwise known as "close up" photography. 

I own two macro lenses which I use for my macro photography.  One is a Canon 100mm macro lens (the older, non-L lens, for you photo geeks).  This is a great lens which provides up to life size (1:1 magnification) pictures.  This is also a nice portrait lens.  Despite the name, it can be used for non-macro work as well and is my favorite lens among the ones that I own.

Canon, however, also makes a specialty macro lens, called the MP-E 65.  It's a 65mm lens that is exclusively a macro lens.  It cannot focus on anything more than a few centimeters away.  This lens, however, is capable of providing up to 5x magnification.   This lens, however, has some unique challenges, such as the lack of an auto-focus feature.  It's all manual focus and the only way to get your subject in focus is to manually move the camera (or your subject) back or forth until the focus is right.  In addition, the higher the magnification you chose, the more challenging the shots become.  As a result, I find myself most often using it at 2-3x. 

I like to shoot insects with my macro lens.  Or, rather, I should say, I like to *try* to shoot insects.  The little buggies, however, rarely stand still long enough for me to set up with my manual-focus macro lens.  Needless to say, taking such pictures, while fun, is sometimes quite challenging and when I do end up with a nice, clear image, I like to consider it a victory.

Which brings us to this picture.  I set up a plate on my back porch with a piece of apple and some honey, hoping to attract some bees or wasps.  All I got was a very young fly.  As it turns out, that was a blessing for me.  Since the fly was young, he(?) hadn't yet learned to be overly fearful.  As a result, he was willing to sit on the apple and pose while my camera lens got thisclose to him.  The result:

Canon XSi, MP-E 65mm lens at 3x, f/8, 1/20 second, ISO 800

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

Photos: What Is It?

I haven't posted a photo challenge in a while, so perhaps it's time for a new one.  Here's the pic:

Canon XSi, MP-E 65mm lens at 5x, f/16, 15 seconds

The only clues I will give you is that the image you are seeing is magnified 5x its normal size and the subject(s) was (were) found in my home. 

The first one who guesses correctly the subject of the picture receives twenty Wolf points.

The Wolf

Photos: Yellow Tulip

Here's a shot that I took a short while ago.

Canon XSi, 100mm macro lens, f/16, 4 seconds.

Believe it or not, this shot was much easier to capture than you might otherwise imagine.  If anyone's interested in how it's done, feel free to drop me an email.

You'll notice that I used an aperture of f/16.  I did this because I wanted to make sure that the picture was going to be in focus from front to back.  Of course, because I used a narrow aperture, I had to use a longer shutter speed -- in this case, I left the shutter open for four seconds. And yes, I used a tripod.  :)

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf


To see all my photo posts, click HERE

Photos: What Is It? The Answer!

Earlier this week, I posted a photo and asked people to guess what was the subject of the photo.  Here again is the photo:

Canon XSi, 65mm macro lens (5x magnification), f/11, 20 seconds.

The answer is that the photo is the middle of this flower:



The first Anonymous poster said "a plant." While that's technically true, it is very vague. "Fort," however, was the first person to come up with the correct, specific answer -- the inner part of a flower. So, he wins the 20 Wolfish Points. :)

The Wolf

Photos: What Is It? Take A Guess!

I took this picture this week. 20 Wolfish points to the first one who can guess what it is.

I'll put up the lens, exposure settings, etc. with the solution later this week.

The Wolf

(My RL friends who have seen the photo already are not eligible. :) )

Photos: Autumn Highway

Back in October, I spent a day up in Harriman State Park, taking pictures of the fall foliage. Here's one of the shots I took that day:

Canon Xsi, 39mm, f/5, 1/60 second.

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcomed and appreciated.

The Wolf

Photos: Ghostly Stream

I spent just about all day yesterday in Harriman State Park, taking pictures of fall foliage. While I got a number of nice foliage shots (some of which I might post here), my best shot of the day (IMHO) was of a stream. Here's the pic:

Canon XSi, 100mm macro lens, 30 seconds, f/32

As you might imagine, the stream did not really look like that. It was simply water flowing down and around the rocks. So, how did I get the water to look like that? Did I use some Photoshop magic? No, I didn't (as a matter of fact, I don't even own Photoshop).

The trick to taking "ghostly water" shots like that is to use a long exposure. If you look under the picture, you'll see that for this shot, I left the shutter open for 30 seconds. That's quite a bit of time. Because the water was flowing at a nice pace (had it been flowing faster, the water would have looked even more "ghostly") leaving the shutter open for so long allowed me to capture much of the movement, resulting in the image you see.

Of course, it's important to remember that if you're going to leave the shutter open for that long, there are two things you MUST do:

1. Use a tripod. I don't care if you're the best surgeon in the world -- no one can hold their hands still for 10 seconds, let along 30. You absolutely must use a tripod to keep your camera still while the shutter is open.

2. Change the f/stop on your camera. I stopped the camera all the way down to f/32 -- the smallest aperture I could get with the lens I used. If you don't do this, your entire picture will be completely overexposed.

3. Although not a must, a filter would also help to reduce the amount of light coming into your camera. This will allow you to keep the shutter open longer.

As always, I welcome all comments, critiques and criticisms.

The Wolf

Photos: Daisy In Drop

I can't say this is one of my best shots ever, but it's the beginning of an experiment in macro photography.

Canon XSi, MPE-65mm macro, f/16m, 15 seconds.

As always, comments, criticisms and critiques are welcome and appreciated.

The Wolf

To see all my photo pictures, click here.

Photos: More Water Drops

Lately, I've been experimenting with photographing reflections (or perhaps more correctly, refractions) of images through water drops.  I posted one such picture a few months ago.  Here is another photo of that genre:

From Wolfish Musings Pictures

Canon Xsi, 100mm macro lens, f/5.6, 4 seconds

If I may say so, however, this picture really need to be viewed larger than I can display it here on this blog   I encourage you to follow this link to the picture in my Picasa gallery to see it larger and get a better look at the refracted flowers.

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are encouraged and welcomed.  Hopefully, this time no one will have any moral objections to my choice of subject.

To see all my photo pictures, click here.

The Wolf

Photos: Anticipation

I work close to the Hudson River in Manhattan and often go there to take pictures.  Many of the pictures that I put on this blog were taken in Hudson River Park. 

In the park there is a dog run where dog owners can take their dogs to play.  While there, the dogs get to run around, frolic in the pool on hot days and chase balls thrown by owners.  I snapped this shot while a woman was tossing the ball around for the dogs.

Canon XSi 75-300mm lens @ 130mm, f/4.5, 1/125 second

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

For my other photos, click here.

Photos: Waterdrop Reflection

I recently decided to try something new in my photography -- water drop photos. These are photos where the subject is viewed inside of a water drop. Here's a recent attempt I made.

Canon XSi, 100mm macro lens, f/2.8, 0.8 seconds

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

Photos: Macro: Pink Azalea Blossoms

I took this one with my macro lens two weeks ago. There is a shul in my neighborhood with a beautiful azalea bush growing in the yard. So, I snapped on my macro lens and fired away. Here was the result:

Canon XSi, 100mm macro lens, f/7.1, 1/100 second.

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

To see all of my photo posts, click here.

Photos: Tulip and Sky

I took this shot while walking around my neighborhood this past Sunday. I happen to enjoy taking pictures of flowers. However, at the end of the day, a rose is a rose is a rose -- we've all seen flowers before and we're all familiar with the more common types.

The question then becomes, how do you make a picture of a common flower (such as a tulip) more interesting?

One way to do it is to take the picture from an angle that we don't often see. More than 99% of the times that we see tulips, we see them from the top or the side. We don't however, look at the from bottom up. Since we don't often see them that way, that's the angle I chose for my photograph. I laid down on the ground beside the tulip and shot the picture.

Canon XSi, 100mm macro lens, f/2.8, 1/2000

As always, comments criticisms and critiques are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

See all my photo posts here.

Photo: Sunset Over The Hudson

I took this shot last night as the sun was going down over New Jersey. I took it by Pier 42 (that's the crumbling pier in the picture) in Hudson River Park.

Canon XSi, 18-55mm lens at 18mm, f/5, 1/200 sec, circular polarizing filter.

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

To see all my photo posts, click here.

Photos: Purim, A Still Life

I had a bit of time on Purim, so I decided to attempt a still life.

I tried this concept back in 2008, but I just couldn't get it right. At that point, I hadn't mastered the relationship between aperture and depth of field, I was still learning the basics of composition and I was using a less sophisticated camera. Last year I didn't have the time to try and correct it, but this year I had an opportunity on Purim afternoon. So I took out my tripod, arranged the elements of the picture on the dining room table and snapped away. This was the result:

Canon XSi, 18-55mm lens at 27mm, f/22, 1/4 second, ISO 800.

Critiques, comments and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf

Photo: What Is It? (The Answer)

So, I put up the picture shown below and asked people what they thought it was. One last chance to take a guess before looking at the answer below:

Canon XSi, 75-300mm lens at 75mm, f/11, 30 seconds.

Last week, I was riding in a car on the Belt Parkway at night. I looked out the window and saw the crescent moon hanging in the sky. I decided to try to get the picture.

In reality, I knew even before I started that it was a futile effort. The road was bumpy, it was late at night and I didn't have a tripod to steady the shot (not that it would have helped because of the bouncing the car was doing). Nonetheless, I decided "what the heck," attached my zoom lens, pointed the camera out the window and opened the shutter.

I kept the shutter opened for 30 seconds, hoping to catch some part of the moon. The picture above is the result. The lights you see are streaks of light* from street lights, headlights and various buildings in the background as we drove by.

As it turns out, I *did* manage to get the moon in my picture. It's the wispy, smoky part of the image in the lower right corner.

The moral of the story: You never know what you're going to get and (at least with digital) it always pays to shoot liberally. I knew I had no real chance of getting a nice moon shot, but because I decided to try anyway, I ended up with a very different type of image.

The Wolf

* I discussed how to make light trails in this post.

Photo: What Is It?

Last Saturday night, I took this photo. I gave my Facebook fans first crack at figuring out what it was this morning. Now it's up to you. I'll put up the right answer on after Shabbos.

The only clue I'll give you is that I did not intentionally set out to take this photo.

The Wolf

Photos: Iguana

On a cold day like today, I like to remember warmer times and climes.

A few years ago, Eeees and I had the chance to spend a few days in St. Thomas and St. John. This was when I was just beginning to get into photography. I didn't have an SLR yet, but I did have a fancy point-and-shoot.

Anyway, we were enjoying a morning at Coral World on St. Thomas. At Coral World, the iguanas hang around the food court, having learned that they can get the food that people drop.

Sometimes, however, they didn't always wait. Eeees and I watched as one of the lizards jumped up on an eleven year-old kid to grab his slice of pizza!

Even though I didn't have any food, they didn't seem shy at all about allowing me to get close enough to take some shots, such as this one here:

Canon Powershot S3 IS

The Wolf