After 10 PM Assignments

After 10 PM, is the only time I get to play with my camera, since my daughter has become so very active and engaging.

Also since the weather is so bad, we didnot get to go out so much to take any "real" pictures. So the only way to stay in touch with my camera is to play with it after 10 PM, when I am officially retired for the day and that is when my ME time begins.

So a few of them I captured in the past 2 weeks after Sujaya's bedtime are in this post.





Those were the "oil shots" assignment that I found in one of the photography forums and decided to try it. Not a bad try, but since it was shot in low light, one can see the pictures are so noisy. Now that I have got my lightscoop, may be I should try this again. (?! May be, since I have a long list of to try items)



Again a moon shot.

And then the ones that I have been thinking to take for a long time. Flowers in absolute black background. With a little bit of setting up, I got "not so bad" shots of the flowers. Though the flowers clearly look a little tired, since it was raining so badly for the past couple of days and they were completely soaked/drenched.





Since I also got my lightscoop, just this afternoon, I dint want to miss taking a picture with it. Also I dint want to miss macro of the flower. So right before I cleared things, I tried macro with lightscoop, and it was great, since the pressure for me to hold the camera steady with a slower shutter speed was fairly reduced with flash. I loved it. And here are a few of those.











Hoping to come up with real pictures in the next post and not any "table top" , "from the kitchen counter", or "after 10 pm assignments" kind. Wishing the weather would co-operate too. 

10 Best Pictures of 2010 - from me.

Here I am compiling 10 pictures that I like the most, or the ones that are close to my heart, that I took in 2010.

Pretty late with the list, but better late than never. I just got a chance to look at the pictures that I took last year and I barely got a handful for the list, since I turned in to the worst critic ever for my own pictures, and not many were good to my eyes. Hope to improve the quality and style of photography this year.

Technically, its just a few months more than an actual year that I have been roaming around with a DSLR. Say from Nov 2009. And I can account the first 2 months towards "getting a hang of " my Canon Xsi. So, 2010 was my first year and so compiling doesnt make much of sense ;)



This is  very close to my heart. It was taken in a park when my daughter and my husband  were playing or when my husband was teaching my kid to walk on a bar. Lovely evening and lovely moments.



My very first attempt at capturing a flying bird. It was just not easy - but one thing to feel happy about is, it was a remote place with absolutely no one other than my family, which gave me enough courage and confidence to practice without feeling shy.



Beaches and waves have always been my favorite, and this picture is so special to me just the way a beach is.



My first ever attempt on macro. It was fall and I was stuck at home. How else to capture the colors of fall? So on one fine afternoon, a bunch of colorful leaves, macro ring and natural sunlight gave this shot.



A very normal waterfall in a small theme park, with slow shutter speed and little bit of steadier hands.



My little Suji. I like this picture, since I tried it from a different angle and wow, I tried it, I caught the beauty of her eyes so well and the light source (from sky) is reflected in her eyes which is a plus in portraits, I think.



This was on my kitchen counter on a rainy bored afternoon, in artificial light, while I was still cooking some Peas Curry.



Again on a rainy bored afternoon, and again on my kitchen counter, with no natural light.



When you absolutely run out of subject and very badly want to take a picture of something.



Dandelions- my long time "to try list" topper, under a macro lens.

A lot of them are taken from the kitchen counter, or at my living room (macros), and not many are outdoors, since we went out a very few times last year, since Sujaya was still young.

But hoping to take and practice some landscapes and more outdoor pictures this year. S.M.I.L.E.S

Lunar Love

Capturing a Full Moon was a dream for me. Again one of those on the "To Try" list.

After having put away the camera for about 10 days, today I decided to take "something" before I hit the bed.

Ok, here it comes, the idea of capturing the craters of moon - the lovely moon. But I havent really thought of what the settings that I might have to try or start with.

Well, I started off googling, which actually dint give me a clear picture of the settings that I might have to try. Always "trying" it gives a better idea than to reading anything to me.

So here, collecting my courage I stepped out to the patio - not bad -the weather was at 50s. Though I was a little shaky, I did a few trials and errors. Thank God, I dint have to use slow shutter speed. Otherwise, it would have been a failed attempt with my shaky shivering hands and without a tripod.

Not bad, I got a shot that actually made some sense to me, though not perfect, after very few trials. I dint have to do anything with the picture -absolutely no editing, except cropping it to tight. So, it is almost a straight out of camera image.

Now the settings part:

There are several "Moon picture Rules" that are available on the net. But I cared less, since I wanted to explore it. And what I learnt was - higher the shutter speed, once can get more details of the moon. Lower shutter speed, opens the shutter for longer time, which intakes a lot of the moon light making it glow and get a dreamy effect and not a "crisp" moon.

So my settings goes like this:

ISO : 200
Aperture : anywhere between 14 - 18 or even 20,
Exposure : 1/120. I kept increasing slowly starting from 100. The higher the shutter speed, the more details were captured.
Lens : Obviously - Canon 55 mm - 250 mm

One thing I learnt later was - I should be shooting such shots in RAW, which I didnot. Had I taken this shot in RAW, I could have got a bigger moon after cropping. Otherwise, other than cropping - this is plain and simple - Straight Out of Camera Shot.

I wish I had known taking a picture of the moon was this easy. It has always been a "big assignment" for me, which I kept postponing.

And here it is... the lovely lunar..

Dandelions - spooky but pretty

Dandelions - I have been eyeing them for a few months now. But it just escaping. But this was a surprise.

Again on a lazy afternoon, while roaming around the house, looking for something to put under the macro lens, I found these beautiful lavender colored flowers. They were so tiny, that I decided to collect a bunch of them and spread them out on a white piece of cloth.

Now when I looked through the lens - again there was surprise. This lens always brings out a surprise from its subject, everytime you attempt it. This time, I was amused to see more tiny flowers clustered together to form this big yet tiny flower.








After a bit of editing. I made a mistake, I had set this white dandelion on a white piece of cloth. Instead I should have placed it on a darker color of cloth.





As I was winding up, this guy just popped in to say a hai, like a bonus to me. Though he looked old with broken wings, he was pretty swift and quick to capture and gave a hard time.

Flowers - where are you?

Flowers were gone on a vaccation for this season of winter and rain.

I was so very tempted to take a macro of a flower, but to my surprise, I wasnt able to find interesting flowers anywhere near by.

All I found was this little white flower- whose name I am yet to find out. I wish it had some color in it, rather than plain white. It looks awesome as it is, but for a macro, which I wanted to attempt, I wish it had some more colors that would reflect in the picture. So I added a leaf or two, to the sides to get some "background" and had set the entire setup on a yellow piece of cloth.

Now I should mention about this yellow cloth - it was my daughter's shirt, so she came around every time and kept pulling saying it is her shirt. It was more fun. :)

Some of the pictures turned out well and with a little bit of editing, I got them fixed. The macros of a beautiful white flower.



This crystally texture really amazed me and still amazes me every time I look at this picture. I was excited to see the texture and the unexplored beauty of this tiny little flower, through the macro lens. I know I am going to put so many more things under the macro lens in the forth coming days to actually KNOW it or SEE it.


The super-cute tip of the flower.


The inside swirl.


The glassy porous delicate petals.

On a bored afternoon

Had been to India for about 40+ days. Days were so busy running around the kids, being an adult and being a child - to my children and to my parents.
It was LOVE and FUN overloaded. Never forget the Laughter part.
With all this happening, I rarely found time to play around with Canon. But still on few lousy afternoons, when everyone would catch up with a nap, I refreshed myself with my Darling.
On a rainy afternoon, where I couldn't step out, I somehow got a few clicks of the raindrops on the leaves. I had a picture of something else in my mind, but since that failed, I just went roaming around my house, and I got this bunch of pictures.








Just fresh enough to give some oxygen to my brain - like the rain.

Halloween 2010

Sujaya was dressed up as a Ballerina Dancer. 


She was wearing a white tee, with a pink tights and a Tu-tu, that I made. 


I found an interesting page in the internet which gave a step-by-step procedure of how to make a tutu, which I thought, I would try for the Halloween costume for Sujaya.

To my surprise it turned out well, and I was glad that I could be crafty too. So was my husband. Apart from the happiness, the satisfaction of dressing up our baby doll, with a handmade special costume, was bigger. 

Here are some pictures that I took on the Halloween day, of my daughter - Sujaya.

The pictures are taken with my new EF 50 mm f/1.8. I am still getting a hang of it, particularly with an excited toddler, as what she is in the pictures as the subject.

I told : "God Bless this child for looking at the camera and SMILING". Seriously, she wanted to get off and run around to see her new tutu swirl with her. She would not sit still in once place. 

She was getting off the setup in this shot.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

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