Couple Flood Pictures

The one of the Visitor Center is Tues 29th and one of Pike Island Bridge is Sun 27th

Ice

On Sat sitting on Pike Island enjoying the Mississippi, I noticed some ice melting underneath 1 of the benches. Below the ice was a lone blade of green grass and on top was a drop of water. Looking at it at home I noticed the water had some color to it, so I zoomed in and noticed shapes in the image. So with cropping and rotating I captured what I was looking for. Do you see what I see?

Before the flood

I took theses pictures on Thursday, March 17th. John

Macro Boxelder Bug

Just wanted to mention that I appreciated the good humor and great questions at the macro discussion at our last meeting.

While chatting with you, I took a few quick shots of the boxelder bug in the insect studio and thought I'd post one of them. The fact that I just got around to processing the photos says something about how busy I've been.

This photo was taken with:

Canon 5DmkII
Canon MP-E65mm macro lens
Canon 430 EX flash

Aperture f10, Shutter 1/160, ISO 250

As a recap, I shoot on manual allowing the TTL functioning to set the amount of light from the flash. This is really a nice way to do it as I get to set both to my parameters. As a result, I choose depth-of-field and motion stopping shutter speeds (although the flash stops most movement as it is the main light source). The flash and camera act in concert then to set the amount of light from the flash.

I like the background in this shot. It was just far enough in the distance that it's nicely blurred but still light enough that the dark boxelder bug is nicely set off against it.

The River

Two photos for "The River" photo assignment. I decided to play with my flash later in the evening during the last snow storm to see if or how I could capture falling snow. Although the darker of these is considerably under exposed, I like the gritty, dark feeling of it and how it puts a little more focus on the falling snow.