I found this interesting

150 Year Old Photos......If you are a history buff these will be interesting to you. THESE PICTURES ARE VERY PROFOUND It is fortunate that these have survived. Most probably a million wet plate photos were made during the civil war on glass plate. Popular during the war, they later lost their appeal and many were sold for the glass. Many used in green houses. Over the years the sun caused the images to disappear. These are pretty amazing considering they were taken up to 150 years ago: A collection of photos from the era of the War Between the States. Run the cursor over the photograph and the picture caption will pop up. Click on the photo to enlarge and to read the story. Click Here Please

Field Trip Photos

 These are some of the photos I took during the field trip on April 2. It was a beautiful day and perfect for exploring with your camera. Enjoy.

Mendota Bridge overlooks the flooded parking lot.

Another view of the flooded parking lot

This is the head of a trail just past the bridge. There is a patch of snow patiently waiting to add to the flood waters.

No Parking!

Wish I could have had a better shot of this river otter that ran across a log and quickly slid into the water.  

These two followed me along the Snelling Lake trail for a little while. I think they thought I had some food.

A lonely picnic table stuck between flood waters.

Smithsonian Museums annual photo contest 1-8.  Here is the link to the 7th and a photo I really like.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/7th-annual/7th-travel-9.html#IMAGES

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.