Above

I then found another of the same type of flower resting above some moss. Like the last picture, I added the same warm filter to this picture. With these last two pictures, and many others, pictures you can tell where the focus begins and ends. I feel this is both an advantage and disadvantage to having a lower aperture lens. The lower aperture allows for crisper focus and better night pictures. But, if you keep the focus on f2.8 the entire time, there will only be a small portion of the picture that is in focus.

Yellow Flower

When I found this flower, I was in awe by its size. It was so small! I instantly knew that this picture had to be taken with a macro lens. Then during editing, I applied a filter. The filter is a yellow/orange color, making the picture have an overall warmer tone to it. I wanted to complement the flower while also adding some subtle tones around the picture.

Sun Flower

This was one of the more complicated shots just because of all the moving parts. There was a current, making the flower flow downstream, trees were blocking the sun, and the flower just barely fit inside of the shape of the sun. But, I feel the result is well worth it. I ended up turning the picture black and white, because even in color, you couldn't see much of the purple-ness of the flower.

High Above

I really like this flower! Most of the time, when I am taking pictures of a flower, or any object, I will move it around from one spot to another. I like to try and take a picture from every possible angle. And like the last few pictures, I kept my camera just barely hovering above the water. For this picture, I positioned some rocks between me and the flower. I like having some out of focus rocks and other objects scattered around the picture to make you 'guess' what they are.

Lone Flower

I then took a few steps away from the flower to capture the surroundings of it. For most of these pictures, I kept a very low vantage point. A strategy I use to make sure I don't accidentally place my camera into the water is to hold my camera from the bottom. I will wrap my hand around the camera lens, and when my hand touches the water, I know to not go any lower.

Little Purple

After taking some pictures of the flower in some flowing water, I positioned the flower to rest on a rock in still water. What made the picture for me was the sharp focus. Without the focus being on the flower, I feel the picture wouldn't be nearly as interesting. Instead, now there is a brown blur in the background and the shape of a reflection and a very crisp picture of a flower.

Slow Purple

I then returned to the creek and placed this purple flower on a rock. I kept the macro lens to create a sharp focus on the flower, and have the rest of the rocks and background out of focus. When I placed down the flower, I was specifically was looking for some streaks of water to surround the rock. The exposure was relatively high, which is why the water looks somewhat glassy, but not nearly as much as it does in a long-exposure.

White Dots

Next, I took my macro lens and found the white flower-like objects that sometimes kids blow. This was the first time I had ever seen this flower this close up. I've said before that the macro lens shows a whole new world, and I think this picture is a perfect example. Who knew that this is what that flower looks like?

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.

Urban Nature

Next, I traveled about seven miles south to multiple parks. At this first one, there were three big, circular pipes. Using my new neutral density filter, I set it to 6x (maximum darkness), and a higher aperture of f22, I was able to slow the shutter speed enough to capture a long-exposure during the day. I also wanted to highlight the graffiti inside the pipe. You can barely see it in this picture, but in the coming pictures, you will be able to see it more clearly. It was intriguing to see how these pipes had now turned into graffiti hotspots.

Resting

Following the pictures of the flowers in the tree bark, I moved the flowers to lay on this bridge. Like the bark picture, I kept the aperture at f2.8 to only have the focus on the flowers. I wanted to keep the walls of the bridge recognizable, but clearly out of focus.

Hanging

After seeing the flowers in the water, I wanted to experiment and place some flowers into some bark hanging off a tree. Originally, I tried taking pictures of the flowers standing straight up but found that it was simple and boring.  I then positioned myself underneath the flowers with an aperture of f2.8. This allows me to keep a sharp focus on the flowers and to have the rest of the tree and sky out of focus.

Urban Canal

As I kept biking, I found this canal with a little bit of water in it. Above the water was a bridge that was used as a connector from a house to the alley. Like the flower pictures, I wanted to capture this bridge with a reflection. Originally, I took the pictures with just the bridge and its reflection but soon realized that it looked plain. I then sat on the bridge to add another element but kept my head behind a pole to also make it seem a little mysterious.

Reflection

After taking a few pictures of the dandelion, I continued my bike ride. At the next puddle, I found this white flower. Using the new feature on the lens, specifically the 24-70mm zoom range and the f2.8 aperture, I was able to take this picture closer and in greater focus. I wanted to highlight the flower close, and in the center of the picture, while keeping the background well out of focus.

Floating

While I was biking in an alley, I found this dandelion floating in the water. At first, I was taking pictures from directly above. They weren't very interesting, and you could see me reflecting in the water. I then moved to a much lower vantage point, which is how I shot this picture. I positioned my camera inches above the water, hoping to capture the reflection of both the dandelion and the dirt/grass wall behind it. 

World Chaos

I like this picture mostly because it is a simple representation of our world right now, but also because it gives me a chance to talk about my new equipment! As I said earlier, I purchased a 24-70mm f2.8 lens. This will likely become my main lens as it has a large capacity for taking pictures. It will work well with landscape, long-exposure, and night photography. I also purchased a 1x to 6x neutral density filter. What this filter does is it either keeps the picture as the camera would see it (on 1x) or darkens the image (on 6x). It is a little hard to explain, but it will help me take long-exposure pictures during the day because it will allow me to have the shutter speed lower for longer shots.

Sunset Colors

With the threat of becoming sick to COVID-19, I found myself biking around the neighborhood. I found these flowers on the front lawn of a neighbors house. The flowers had bright colors such as oranges and reds. For most of these pictures, I switched my new wide-angle lens for the micro lens. I wanted to capture the flowers closer up and in sharper focus.

Night Time Lights

After I took this picture, I looked at it from the little LED screen on my camera. I noticed the lights above downtown and wanted to continue shooting them. I went down to the banks of the lake, where I found this branch sticking (pun intended) out of the water. I wanted to give the picture a green tint to make the picture look a little eerier and to highlight the downtown lights.

Dallas

Like the last White Rock Lake series, I took another picture of downtown Dallas. When I was taking this picture, I did not expect the lighting to turn out like this. With my eye, I could only see grey clouds, but the camera picked up some lights just above downtown. I believe that these lights do add to the picture because they make the background look better. Also, I wanted to include the trees and lake to add another element to the picture.

Docked

This image is one where you can see the difference between the old lens and the new one. With this lens, the dock is in crisp focus, while with the other lens, the focus wouldn't be as strong. Also, with the f2.8 aperture, this new lens allows for better night pictures. The wider aperture allows more light to enter the camera lens, thus brightening the image.

Watching

Like yesterday's picture, this is also a self-portrait. Recently, I bought the Tamron 24-70mm f2.8, a wide-angle lens. I bought it to replace the kit lens that came with the camera body. Even after taking the lens out once, I have noticed that it is much sharper in focus. Objects look much better, and there is a greater difference in the depth of field.

With the Flowers

There was a change in the plans regarding Colorado. Due to the COVID-19 virus, I ended up not going to Colorado. Yes, this was a major disappointment, but I am making do with places in Dallas. For instance, this first mini-series is back at White Rock Lake. I am only here for about a week's worth of posts then I am traveling to Ennis, Texas to take pictures of bluebonnets.

Rocking

This is my final picture from White Rock Lake. After this, I am going to take a short break until Monday. Starting on Monday, I will be posting pictures from Colorado!! It has been hot recently, but snow is in the forecast. I am greatly looking forward to pictures of mountains, obviously snow, and I am hoping to take some long exposure pictures as well.

Solitary

This is my favorite picture not only of this series but also one of my favorite recent pictures. I love how the light casts down directly on the man fishing. How the pier is on one side, and there is water on the other. One of the things that still confuses me is that if you look at the first picture I took of this man, the light was off. Now, it is on. I don't know if it was just the angle of the pictures or the light was off then turned on, but I still love this picture.

Distant Night

I then proceeded to walk onto the pier and photograph different objects from there. This first picture is of a light shining down on the walkway. I like the simplicity of that the objects create. It has a rectangular platform continuing to the back of the picture, cylinders on either side of the platform, and another cylinder with a light on it towards the back. Also, if you look closely, there are the sailboats again in the back right of the picture. I thought it was cool that they were in the picture, but didn't feel they were important enough to highlight.

Waiting

This next angle is lower and almost equal in height to the pier. I wanted to include the wood columns on top of the walking surface because I like the way that they look. On the right, the columns look new, but on the left, the columns are split and broken. I like the cylindrical shapes in this picture and how most objects have round edges.

Alone

I then continued my bike ride and found a pier with a guy fishing on it. I took the same general picture of this man fishing from multiple angles. The first was this wide-angle picture. I wanted to include the landscape around him, the water, pier, and land behind him. What I like the most in this picture is his flashlight reflecting on the water. The two lights are from his fishing, and the reflection leads your eyes right to him.