Hanging


Towards the end of the adventure, the rain subsided, but the clouds remained. I was beginning to walk away, preparing to leave, when I saw these plants dangling over the water. I positioned myself as low to the water as I could and took a few pictures. There was very little color, but I feel the black and white aspect only adds to the picture.

Lily Pad


As the rain continued to fall, more and more leaves were becoming covered in water droplets. What caught my attention to this leaf was the number of droplets on the leaf. I have never seen so many droplets on a single leaf. I positioned myself such that the front of the leaf was facing the camera, and the background was composed of green plants, and I took the picture.

Urban Nature

White Rock Lake, as a public park, probably has some of the most trash out of any park in Dallas. It is hard to walk 50 feet without seeing a piece of plastic or trash. Even in this picture, you can see an aluminum can in the back of the picture, but I have seen pieces of trash ranging from the size of dimes to a shopping cart dumped into the lake. 

Floating


The rain continued to fall as I looked back at the lake. When I finally did look back, I saw this other duck just floating as the family of ducks ate. I am not sure what that other duck was doing. If it was the father, or if it was just protecting, or if it too was hungry. When editing the picture, I added some blue and green tones to it. I added to make it feel as if the water created a blue scene (the water was a very pale and dark blue, almost black) to accompany the rain.

Ducks in a Row


This reminded me of the statue in Boston about the mother duck and her ducklings following behind her. Although the mother duck is not leading her ducklings in a stroll, as she is looking in the wrong direction, I am still reminded of that statue.

Baby Duck


I think this is the best picture of this series. It is close to the subject, the subject is in focus, and the exposure is correct. The background has an interesting circular pattern in it. I believe that it is the leaves, and that's just the shape of the openings, either way, the mosaic of circles affixes to the appearance of the picture.

Food


As I said in yesterday's post, the ducklings ran around searching for food. It was a fun challenge taking pictures of them. Not only did I have to shield my camera from the rain, but I also had to keep an eye on the ducks as they were running all over the place. One second, they were eating in a grassy area, the next, they moved 20 feet away. But, it still was fun to be surrounded by the ducks.

Observing


As I switched my lenses out and started observing the ducks again, the mother duck kept a constant eye on me. Most likely trying to protect her young, the mother duck stood her ground on this log while her little ducklings ate. I think that this is quite a unique image, not many times do you see a duck, standing on a log.

Little Nature


Next, I found this even smaller lily pad. I believe that the trick to taking pictures of water droplets is to show a perspective that most people don't see. When most people see water on a leaf, they see it from above, since they are likely standing over it. I have taken these types of pictures before, and they are not that interesting. I like to get almost level with the leaf. I want to show the three-dimensional shape of the water and a different perspective of the leaf.

Nature's Droplets

After taking a few pictures of the ducks, I turned my focus to the nature around them. Most of the time, when I take pictures of water droplets, I have flicked water on them. But, because of the rain, these droplets were entirely natural. I'm not sure what it is about water on leaves, but they have always fascinated me. I'm not sure why, but those little, clear droplets are very interesting.

Baby Duck

These pictures were pretty fun to take. The first major hurdle was the moving ducks. The ducks were very scared of me and kept running away whenever I tried to get close to them. To overcome this, I moved slowly and patiently and made sure to keep my distance from the ducks (but I still can take close up pictures with the 300mm zoom on my telephoto lens). Another, more serious, obstacle, was the rain. I went out taking pictures knowing it was going to rain, so I brought my raincoat and a cover for my camera. When I got to the lake, it started pouring. But that only made it more fun!

Sitting Duck


Welcome back to White Rock Lake! I ended up going back to the lake a few weeks later, but of course, it was still raining. When I first arrived at the lake, I drove around for a bit, looking for interesting picture opportunities. I have taken pictures at the lake multiple times, but I haven't taken many pictures of the wildlife around it. For these next 14 pictures, I will mostly focus on a group of ducks and some of the nature that surrounded the ducks.

Mother Duck

Lastly, for this White Rock Lake series, I found this duck family swimming near the banks of the lake, looking for food. I positioned my camera as low to the water as I could and took pictures of them as they swam by. I achieve the focus on the mother duck, I used my wide-angle lens, and it's f2.8 aperture. This made only the mother duck in focus, and the rest of the picture blurry.

Water's Edge

Next, I moved to another part of the lake, where I found this pier jutting out into the lake. The main reason why I took this picture as a long exposure was that birds were flying around, and I wanted to capture their movements. They ended up being too fast to be captured in a long exposure, but the picture still turned out pretty decent.

Fisherman's Walk

I soon found a puddle, but it didn't create any interesting reflections. But, it was on the walking path and could create reflections of those who walked by. I decided to position myself near this puddle with my neutral density filter (the filter that makes the image darker to allow for the shutter to be open longer) and tripod to capture a long-exposure. I waited for some people to walk by, then these two fishermen walked by.

Fish

I then walked a few steps to my right, where I found this family of three fishing. I hoped to find a collection of water that I could use as a mirror to create a reflection of the family, but all the water had already been absorbed into the ground. I decided to position myself in line with the center line and capture the guardrails of the bridge.

Lone Stick

After taking many pictures of the flowers, I walked over to the lake's edge. That is where I found this bird resting on the one log sticking out of the water. I have taken many pictures that are very similar to this one. What makes this picture different is how I edited it. I added some blue and green tones to make the overall picture have an interesting color. I also made it such that the bird was almost completely black. I wanted to create an interesting contrast between the bird and the water.

Nature Walk

As I said a few posts ago, the path was surrounded by flowers that were a few feet tall. I wanted to capture this scene in a picture. I had to wait before someone came walking on the path, but once they came, I tried to capture them from a decent ways away. I moved the focus from the center of the picture to where the person was and lowered the angle of the camera from pointing directly at the walker to lower on the path.

Standing Tall

Most of the flowers were a few feet tall, but this bunch was as tall as I am. I kept my macro lens but took a few steps back to create a background of flowers surrounding this one. Then, using the f2.8 of the lens, I took the picture with these flowers as the main object. I really like how this picture turned out. I love how there is just a sea of flowers and the focus is on just one of them. Overall, I feel the sharp focus makes the picture. If the focus was weaker or not on this bunch, the picture wouldn't be the same.

Sea of Green

Most of the flowers were either white or pink with green stems, but this flower had bright red and yellow colors on it. For most flower pictures, I like to capture the flower from as close as possible with the macro lens. But for this picture, I wanted to include the surrounding flowers with it. These flowers help show the depth of field. They show that the red flower is not the only flower there and that it is a bright light in a sea of green.

Miniature World

I found these flowers right below the scene of the last picture. Some of the buds had bloomed into white and pink flowers, while some others had died. On these dead flowers, the rain formed little water droplets. Then, using my macro lens, I focussed on the single water droplet that was just barely hanging onto the flower. I was trying to capture the miniature reflecting world formed inside the droplet, but it was just too small for my camera to capture it.

Little Reflectors

Next, I moved over a few flowers to this one. I liked the flower for two reasons. First, the flowers that are on it were incredibly small, which allows you to look at more than one flower in a single picture. Second, there were many water droplets were hanging onto the flowers. The droplets reflect the objects around them (which was the flowers), but in a  morphed and different way.

Little Yellow

After taking some wide-angle pictures of the flowers, I decided to focus on individual flowers. So, I took out my macro lens and took some close-ups. For this flower, I centered the picture around the middle of the flower. I wanted to capture the flower while also having some of the rain droplets in focus.

Rain Walk

Between the flowers was a path to walk/run/bike on. My goal for this picture was to create a reflection of the walker as they moved on the path. While the reflection was not as great as I would have liked, I feel the way the path looks makes it up. I like how the flowers surround the path, and the gray sky highlights the walker.

Summer Flowers

A few weeks after taking pictures of the moon, I adventured to White Rock Lake. It had rained that morning and afternoon, and I hoped to capture some macro flower/water droplet pictures and reflections from the water. When I first arrived, I was shocked by the number of wildflowers. Not only were the flowers as far as the eye could see, but some flowers were five feet tall.

Moon Light

I think this is my best picture for a long time. I first started taking pictures of the moon, then thought of adding a lightbulb. This final picture is two pictures that I Photoshopped together. The first was a picture of the moon. The second was a picture of the lightbulb with a strong flashlight lighting up the lightbulb from the top. I then merged these two pictures and made blended the moon so that it didn't look too Photoshopped.