Photographs by Frank

10 December 2010

Massachusetts Wildlife

Back in September, I entered ten images in a photo contest sponsored by Massachusetts Wildlife magazine, a quarterly publication of Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

I had pretty much forgotten about the contest and my entry. However, I was pleasantly reminded about it when I recently received email informing me that four of my photos have been given awards!

According to the email from Peter Mirick,  the editor, there were “1,137 entries received from 183 individuals living in 149 cities and towns, some as far away as Florida and Arizona.”

No large cash prizes! Just a subscription to the magazine and a few extra copies of the  issue in which the images will be published.  However, it is nice to have ones work recognized this way.

Here are the four images that were selected:

[nggallery id=38]

And here are the other entries:

[nggallery id=37]

Thanks for “wandering by”.


26 June 2010

Flowers At Close Range

Filed under: The Yard — Tags: , , — Frank @ 12:00 PM

After my experience with using all three extension tubes for photographing ants and aphids, I decided to experiment a bit more with using all of the tubes (36 + 20 + 12 mm) on both the 70-300 mm telephoto lens and the 90 mm macro lens. In all cases I used the “dragonfly rig” for the flash.

To conduct this experiment I headed out the backdoor and explored Joan’s flower beds. My basic conclusion is that this is hard work!

The depth of field is very small, the range of distances that can be focused is also small and small movements of the tripod make huge changes in what you see through the view finder. No wonder serious macro photographers using focusing rails!

Anyway, here are some of the results…

[nggallery id=18]

Note the mottled white/gray background in a couple of the images. One problem with flash is that sometimes the backgrounds “go black” which is usually not desirable. When this occurred, I used a crumpled up tissue that I happened to have in my pocket as a background. I hand held it behind the subject as I tripped the shutter. It looks pretty good in my opinion… “interesting but not distracting”.


Powered by WordPress