Saturday, February 5, 2011

Morning Jewels

God's beauty can be found in nature, even in early February when everything appears to be dull grey or brown.   It rained overnight but the skies cleared at sunrise and stayed clear long enough to get out and find something to shoot.

I went out intending to get shots of the early morning sunlight shining through a light fog in the woods next to our house.   I couldn't find any angle that worked that didn't include the neighbor's house in the picture.  I wandered around a bit and found a couple trees that still have some of their leaves hanging on.  The leaves are a golden yellow, which makes a great background, especially when the sun is just coming up and back lighting the leaves.  There were raindrops clinging to many of the small branches on these trees.  I had found my subject for this morning!


The cool thing about photographing water drops is the image of what's on the other side inside the drop . In these photos you can see trees, leaves, and houses inside the drop. Look closely (click on a picture to zoom in) and you'll see they are upside down! That's caused by the way the light is diffracted in the water.








This last image is a little different.   I used a small aperture to create the star burst in the drop.   The angle was such that I didn't have any of the golden leaves in the shot and instead got the woods in the background.  I used Lightroom to tone down the background a bit and brighten the twig to make it stand out.  I also used Nik Color Efex Pro to blur the edges.



As I finished up the wind picked up, the clouds rolled in and the day turned grey and blustery.  Today I was at the right place at the right time today to capture some of nature's jewels.

These are all shot with a Canon 7D, Canon 100mm Macro lens with the camera on a tripod. 

These and other photos are available for puchrase online at http://www.thesiggins.com/Macros/Macros/   In addition to prints, you can get any photo printed on a number of different items such as mugs, t-shirts, puzzles, coasters and more.

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