Moss Rock

When I first found this park, I was biking around and stumbled on this little creek about 20 feet down a mini hill. I didn't think much of it at first, but ended up spending multiple hours there and continue to go to the park weekly. The park reminds me of some old pictures I took in Raleigh, North Carolina. If you recall, in the woods, with lots of trees. This park is more open then the forest in Raleigh, but still reminds me of those pictures.

Standing Tall

This is my last picture of Ennis, for real this time. It was very dark when I took this picture. I took it after the long exposure and the sunset, which meant there were not lights. I ended up using a flashlight to light this one last bluebonnet before I left to return home.

Backcountry Lights

I then moved the bluebonnet off of the road and waited for a few cars to pass. I had to wait until the sun was setting and had set, to allow for better long exposure. I also ended up combining three different car light trails to give the effect that there were more cars. In the background, there were some slight sunset colors, but the clouds blocked out most of the sunset.

Lone Road

I then moved one of the bluebonnets to the middle of the road. I thought it would be interesting to have the focus be on the bluebonnet, then the open Texas backcountry in the background. I think this could be even better if I was able to apply some filters on it, but my ability to do so is left at school, which has closed until mid-May.

Floating

Next, we moved on from the first park to in the front yard of someone's house. Due to the virus, most of the parks were closed. The spot where I took bluebonnet pictures last year was closed because of this. So we improvised in front of a house. It wasn't as good as being in the park, but it satisfied my bluebonnet desires.

Resting Spot

Next, I moved the flower to a spot in a tree where two branches met. I ended up adding more water to the flower to make the flower look more interesting. I just took some water out of my water bottle and flicked it onto the flower. This picture is a prime example of the different apertures and resulting focus lengths. For this picture, the aperture is f2.8, and you can clearly see the focus on the bark on the tree. Especially on the right side, you can see the bark go from well out of focus to moderately in focus to in crisp focus.

Cobwebs

Next to the bluebonnets was this small yellow flower. I didn't think much of it at first, but after a closer inspection, I found some cobwebs and water on them. I used my macro lens to keep a crisp focus on the cobwebs. One of the great features or problems with the macro lens is its very sharp focus. When taking pictures with this lens, you want to be very cognizant of what you want in focus. If you want only a very tiny section of the picture to be in focus, then you will likely use f2.8. While if you want the more of the picture to be in focus, you should use a higher aperture like f8 or the entire picture to be in focus with f48.

Symmetrical

So I made a little mistake and forgot to post the rest of the Ennis pictures :) So, welcome back to Ennis! For this picture, I wanted to capture the bluebonnet in a very symmetrical way. I tried to position the center of the bluebonnet in the center of the frame and have the rest on the sides of the picture.

Still Water

Welcome back to Dallas! After my trip to Ennis, I spent a few days biking around town. I found a new favorite spot to take pictures, its called Davis Park. My favorite part about it is that it has a small creek running through the middle of it. Over the next week or so you will see some pictures from there.

Blues and Greens

For the majority of these pictures, I was using my microlens. I want to use my new 24-70mm wide-angle lens, but its minimum focus point is too far away to take these types of pictures. The minimum focus point is the closest an object can be for it to be in focus. It varies on the type of lens, but there is a specialized lens for much a much smaller minimum focus distance.

Bluebonnets

Welcome to Ennis, Texas! I drove about 45 minutes south of Dallas to try and take pictures of bluebonnets. Of course, the night before, I told myself to research and find the best bluebonnet viewing spots, but I forgot. So when we drove down there, we were driving around searching for the perfect spot. We ended up settling in front of someone's house. It was positioned on a small, backcountry road, but had tons of bluebonnets, which ended up being very cool!

Small Flower, Big World

Next, I placed the same dandelion on a bridge. I used my macro lens to create a very sharp focus on the flower and to keep everything else well out of focus. I started taking pictures from far away, but I felt the flower wasn't close enough to the camera. While it did sacrifice some of the bridge, the position of the flower was closer, which I like.

Glass

After taking pictures of some flowers, I went down to the creek. In these next two pictures, I want to highlight the dandelion. For this picture, I positioned a dandelion in between some bricks. I then used my neutral density filter and a long-exposure technique to take this picture. I wanted the water to have more movement, unlike some other pictures, when I have wanted to freeze the water in the air.

Micro World

While I do say that most of the time, that grass isn't something special, for this picture, I felt I could make it seem special. In the small stream, I found some grass growing. I positioned my camera very close to the water to maximize the reflection. I like the way the water forms itself around the grass. Because of its surface tension, it sticks to itself, causing it to create 'bends' in the water.

Yellow

As I walked down the stream looking for anything interesting, I found this tube. It is used to separate the stream from a driveway that is above, but I used it as a tunnel to my subject. I took a small, yellow flower and placed it at the end of the tunnel, with the walls of the tunnel leading up to the flower.

Unique

On the day after the last series' bike ride, I went on another one! I started off biking around my neighborhood. I found this flower resting in a stream in front of a house. I liked how the purple color stood out among the green grass. Then, using my f2.8 aperture, I was able to have an extremely crisp focus on the flower.

Mirror

After I took yesterday's picture, I felt I should add something else. I decided that it would look more interesting if I reached down and grabbed the ball. Mostly, I wanted to add something else to look at, and something that would look especially cool as a reflection. Because the puddle was so small, there weren't many ripples. This allowed for a cleaner surface for this reflection picture.

Play Ball

I continued my bike ride, this time heading home. If you recall the graffiti water tubes, this is at the same park. I had been biking by this baseball field for weeks, thinking of a way to take pictures of it. Then, on this ride after some rain, I found a baseball and placed it on home base. The best/worst part about taking this picture was that the dirt around the base had turned into mud. While it wasn't that deep, it still was deep and sticky enough that it stuck to my shoes.

Micro Reflection

Due to the much smaller minimum focus distance, I can take pictures like this. For this image, I wanted to make sure that the focus was perfect. To ensure that I switch from autofocus to manual focus. Most of the time I prefer autofocus because it allows me to take pictures quicker and is one less thing to focus on. But, during dark conditions (night time long-exposures) or when I am trying to focus on an object (such as this picture), I will switch to manual focus.

Mini World


After taking the long-exposure pictures, and pictures of the different parks around Dallas, I traveled even further south to my third and final park of the bike ride. For this park, I focussed more on the smaller detail such as these droplets of water on this flower. For many of these pictures, I used my macro lens. What I like about the macro lens is the minimum focus point (how close can you be to the lens before it is out of the lens focus) is much smaller than my other lens. This allows me to get incredibly close to objects, such as this flower.

Graffiti

As you may recall from a few days ago, I posted a picture of this same pipe with graffiti in it. After taking the pictures of the waterfall, I decided I wanted to mess around with the pipe. I was taking long-exposures, and I walked a few steps into the pipe to give the appearance of a 'ghost' figure (or something like that). Like adding the flower, I wanted to add a random/mysterious element to the picture that you can look at.

Time Flies

After taking a few pictures of this flower in front of the waterfall, I wanted to move the flower much closer to the water. I put my camera on an angle (similar to the picture of the flower on the bridge a few days ago) to capture both the flower and the moving water in the background. Unlike yesterday's picture, for this picture, I used the f2.8 aperture to create a strong focus on the flower and to have the water as an interesting background.

Slow Motion

After taking a few pictures with only the waterfall, I added a flower into the picture. I wanted to give the picture another element and your eye something else to look at. With this picture, the idea was to have the flower be the main focus, but I had to decrease the aperture to f22 to capture the long-exposure aspect. This made most of the image in focus, or just slightly out of focus.

Waterfall

When I first saw this, I was surprised that in urban Dallas, there was a waterfall as interesting as this one. I have seen some that were only a few feet tall, this one was about 5 feet tall, but this waterfall had more structure than many I have seen before. Using the same tactics as the last picture, I was able to capture a long-exposure shot of it.