Hummers!

Thanks to a good friend who has hummingbirds visiting her feeders, I was able to finally get some photos of these little guys.  I used shutter priority (1/1500 of a second) on my Nikon D7500 and most of the time still got motion on the wings.  Amazing.  Luckily, they did sit still for me once in a while.  My ISO was high in order to keep my speed up and I did have to crop pretty extensively so many of my photos weren’t as sharp as I’d like, but hey, I had a blast photographing and working with them once I got home to turn them into art.  I can now cross hummingbirds off of my photography bucket list.

 

 

 

Canna Lilies

Flowers are one of my favorite subjects to photograph  – I’ve amassed nearly 2,000 flower photos of flowers since taking up photography four years ago.  What I’ve discovered is that some flowers are more photogenic than others!  Maybe it is because the petals are oddly shaped or gangly or, often, it’s because there is lots of space between the petals and the leaves.  Red is always a tough color to get right in camera, too.  Who knew flowers could be so difficult!   Canna lilies seem to be one of those problem flowers for me,  but luckily  I ended up with a few good shots this past May when I spotted some growing wild by a pond.

 

For this photo, rather than using the pond as the background,  I decided to use a texture, made by duplicating and blurring another shot of the same group of flowers.

My First Soccer Game

This summer The Villages Soccer Club (a USL League Two soccer team) reached out to my Camera Club inviting members to come out and takes photos at their home games. Sports photography really isn’t my thing, but, hey, who am I to turn down a free press pass!

I was totally out of my league since 1. I know nothing about soccer 2. I didn’t really have the  right equipment and 3.  Those guys were zig-zagging all over the place so that getting a shot in focus was quite the challenge.

This was my favorite shot of the night.  I just happened to be at the right place so that when this player was preparing to kick, I was able to get down low behind him and reel off some clicks.

Hello – Is anybody out there?

Oh, wait a minute.  I’m the one who has been absent for half a year.  But I haven’t given up photography.  Far from it, I’m still going out with my camera as often as I can, trying to improve and learn new things.  Since I last posted, I’ve added a lensbaby to my bag and I am really enjoying the wonderful selective blur it produces.

Truth is I’ve just been spending more time showing off my photos on Facebook and Instagram.  In fact, I now have two IG accounts.  One where I just post the photos taken with my iPhone and edited either on the iPhone or my iPad.  You can find it here http://www.instragram.com/vedaeddy.  My new site – http://www.instragram.com/vedaeddyphotography – will feature more of my other photos.

But, I am going to start posting more here too because I miss blogging about my photography adventures.  So please stay tuned……

BTW, the photos above is one I found this past week as I walked downtown Spanish Springs, here in The Villages, looking for interesting shadows.

Roses Are Red

In one of those happy coincidences, I happened upon a patch of roses in front of one of the Recreation Centers in the community where I live the same week roses were the theme in a flower photography group I belong to on Facebook. I would have never spotted them if I hadn’t been turning around in the parking lot.  They provided me an hour’s worth of fun with my Lensbaby as I tried to capture perfect and not-so-perfect specimens

 

Horsing Around

There is a premier equine center not too far from where I live, Grand Oaks Resort, which holds various events throughout the year.  It’s a fun place to go, see some beautiful horses, do some people watching  and practice shooting big moving objects!

Check out the pretty white lashes on this big boy.

 

I really, really dislike cluttered backgrounds, and that’s one of the challenges at this place as some of the jumping is done in an arena setting with lots going on. Fortunately, there was also a cross-county event taking place where, even though I had to do a little walking, I could take photos of the riders more out in the open.

 

I decided to try a little panning.  Definitely rusty in that area.  But I did like the way it gave my photo a painterly look, straight out of camera.

 

Of course I always come home with one or two photos that I like to use for some texture work.

 

Silhouettes

One of my camera clubs has a weekly theme, with the challenge being to take a photo during the week that complies with the theme.  This week the goal was to shoot a silhouette.  Here’s my “bird in the sky photo” I posted for the club.  Yes, I definitely fancied up the sky. In fact the sky was pure white, which made adding a texture (I used the screen blending mode in Photoshop) the perfect solution.

I decided to look back and find some other silhouette photos I had taken. I was surprised I didn’t have more.  Of course, you have to have the right light to shoot a silhouette; your subject has to be backlit, definitely.  But you also need the right location (not too much clutter) and the right subject (easily identifiable, with separation so you aren’t photographing one big, black blob.)   Here’s a few more from my archives.

 

Polo – Behind The Scenes

It’s polo season again in The Villages, Florida.  It’s a good way to spend an afternoon with camera in hand.  Below are some shots I took of horses and grooms before, during and after the game. I spent a little more time with these, trying to give them a more artistic feel.

This polo pony was tied to a tree next to a horse trailer, and the way he was standing, looking at the grandstand on an adjacent field, just caught my eye.  I thought “wonder if he’s anticipating being saddled and heading out to play?”  A little Photoshop magic removed the rope.

Polo – On The Field

It’s polo season again in The Villages, Florida.  It’s a good way to spend an afternoon with camera in hand.  Below are some shots I took during the game.  I’m also got a separate post going up right behind this one with some behind the scene shots I worked on.

Fun with My Little Orange Truck

Spent most of the day today playing with this cute little Chevy truck I bought at Walmart.  What can I say, it doesn’t take much to keep me entertained.

Luckily the side street I live on isn’t too busy so I was able to use it for this shot.  I loaded the bed of the truck with some flowers and shot with a wide open lens for a narrow depth of field.  I added the bokeh in Photoshop.

Switched out my cargo with some small dried leaves and sat the truck down on our driveway in front of a bush.  Added the motion blur in Nik’s Color Efex.

Another street shot and more Photoshop work, adding a texture and some light leaks.

A close up and lots of blur thanks to Topaz Impressions.