Engulfed By Nature


After a blistering hot run around White Rock Lake, I decided to bike around the lake and take a few pictures. Five minutes into my ride, I found this older looking structure that wasn't occupied. And, right next to it was a patch of tall flowers. I positioned myself in the flowers, then took this picture. When editing, I put it in black and white because I wanted to make the picture appear older. Like this was an abanded building that was engulfed by nature.

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.

Supermoon

As I was looking online, I saw something that stated that the last supermoon of 2020 would be on May 7. I then looked at the weather forecast and saw that May 7 would be rainy, but May 6, it would be clear. So on May 6, I went outside to take pictures of the supermoon. This picture was okay, but I had a great idea to take a picture of the moon inside a light bulb.

Stillness

These butterflies constantly move from flower to flower and flower patch to flower patch. For a few seconds, they stay on a flower drinking the nectar and reenergizing themselves. Maybe you can see it, maybe you can't, but I took this picture with my telephoto lens. Can you tell a difference between this picture and the last few? I like the others better because the focus is sharper and due to this sharp focus, I feel the picture looks better.

Flying In

Eventually, I was able to partly achieve this goal of freezing a bee in the air. Unfortunately, I believe my shutter speed wasn't fast enough to completely stop the bee's wings. I took this picture with a shutter speed of 1/2,500, which is the second-fastest shutter speed for my Nikon D5500. And after a quick Google, most cameras stop at a shutter speed of 1/4,000 (my camera does), but some can achieve speeds of 1/8,000 and the fastest is 1/32,000.

Honey

For all of these pictures, there was a lot of hope. Yes, you could set yourself up for success by choosing the correct camera settings and lenses, but you cannot tell the bee what to do and when. Taking pictures of bees is very much a waiting game. I had the camera constantly taking pictures because I didn't know when the perfect shot would line up. That perfect shot would be the wings of a bee frozen in the air as it flew to or from a flower.

Glistening

After the short bluebonnet session, I turned to face the bees again. I took pictures of bees before and wanted to make sure that these pictures were different than the older ones. To achieve this, I used a combination of the telephoto and macro lenses. The telephoto lens is good for taking pictures of bees because of its zoom. But, it struggles in keeping a crisp focus with the lowest aperture of f5.6 at 300mm. The macro lens is good because it allows for a constant f2.8, but it's set 90mm zoom means I have to be closer to the bees.

Tall

As I said in the class post, this flower patch featured some bluebonnets. Between taking pictures of bees, I decided to snag this shot. What I like about this picture is the out of focus bluebonnets you can see in the background. When I take pictures of flowers, most of the time, I keep a sharp focus on one part. For this picture, I also wanted to capture other bluebonnets in the background.

Hanging Around

After leaving the stream, I biked a few miles north to a flower patch. In this flower patch were bluebonnets which bees landed on, and purple flowers where the butterflies landed. It was interesting to see how the bees and butterflies interacted. They didn't bother each other, and they stayed on their specific flowers. I ended up biking past a few weeks later, and the flowers were gone. I am glad I took these pictures when I did!

Floating Away

After the butterfly detour, I went back to the little purple flower. I wanted to capture the flower floating away. I think the picture came out okay. If I were to change anything, it would be to lower the angle of the camera and place it closer to the water. When editing the picture, I made it so that my hand and the flower are in color while the background is in black and white. I think this turned out decently well and adds to the floating away effect.

Hiding

After the butterfly left this first flower, it flew to this other flower. I like this picture better than the last one because the green leaves look better. The actual picture of the butterfly might not be the best, but with the butterfly hidden in the leaves, I think it looks pretty good.

Butterfly


As I was walking from taking pictures of the flower to another spot, I saw this butterfly. I quickly switched my macro lens for my telephoto lens so the picture could be close, but me standing far away. The butterfly was only on the flower for a few seconds. I am not sure if I scared it away, or it drank all of the nectar, because one second it was there, the next it wasn't.

Moss

This is the last picture I have of this purple flower. I placed the flower on a mossy rock to change the background. The reason why I like this flower because the entire face of the flower is in focus. Every single water droplet is in focus. When I edited this, I focused on keeping the flower bright to not lose any detail.

River Flower

I like this picture because of the colors from the flower, water, leaves, and trees. Like the last two flower pictures, I used my macro lens to keep a crisp focus on the flower. Now that I am thinking about it, this picture would look incredible if it was a long-exposure. If you could see the water flowing over the rocks, it would look much better.

Five Leaved

This picture is very similar to the last picture, except for this one, I positioned myself further away from the flower. I kept my macro lens and the water on the flower. Unlike the last picture, I didn't want the background to be mostly black. To achieve this, I moved back, allowing the glistening rocks to shine.

Droplets

Welcome back to Davis Park! I ended up going back to Davis park two weeks later, but the pictures from the first visit lasted until this second visit. Anyways, this picture is a macro picture of that purple flower. To take it, I took the purple flower and dropped it into the water. I then flicked a few water droplets on it to give some texture and shape to the flower. Then using my macro lens, I took this picture. I wanted to be extremely close and have the sharpest focus as possible.

Down Below

I have to take as many pictures as possible of the same object from different angles, so I moved into the middle of the creek. I wanted to highlight the rocks and creek that were underneath the bridge. In a perfect world, there would have been a reflection of the bridge in the creek, but there was no still water to achieve this.

Nature's Bridge

After the pictures at Davis Park, I started biking home but found this bridge hiding in some trees. Then when I started walking down into the stream, I saw this picture. I have seen other people take this type of picture, but I have never had the opportunity too. The older looking bridge, surrounded by trees, and with some water flowing underneath, never the type of picture I would have expected to take in an urban city.

Biking

I applied the same style of filter to this picture as I did the last one. I made the top half look bluer, while the bottom half was redder. The technique of this picture is also the same as the last one. I wanted to use a low vantage point to capture the bikers biking. Thought I wish you could see the bikers a little better, I still think the picture is quite interesting.

Roots

Next, as I was walking around the stream, I found these roots. Originally I didn't think much of them but decided that I should attempt to catch a picture of them. When I took the picture, I took it from a low angle to make the roots appear as steps. When editing, I added an interesting filter. I only had it apply to the top half of the picture but turned down the saturation on the lower half. Overall, I really like the picture and think it came out much better than I was anticipating.

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.