flower

Day 27…

Posted by Arno on July 3, 2013

Posted in: color, flower, lightroom, macro, nature, photography, Photoshop, wildlife. Tagged: anemony, ghost pipefish, golden cowry, macro, nature, nudibranch, ocean, sea, seaslug, underwater photography. Leave a Comment

I guess I was lucky. We hit the tail of the third typhoon, but got a few nice days still anyway.
These are the pictures of my last dive (for now). I’ve already planned my return.
Just can’t get enough of it!

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO100, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm, Ikelight DS161 strobe

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO100, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm, Ikelight DS161 strobe

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO100, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm, Ikelight DS161 strobe

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO100, 1/1000 sec @ f/4, Tamron 90mm, Ikelight DS161 strobe

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO100, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm, Ikelight DS161 strobe

Day 24…

Posted by Arno on June 28, 2013

Posted in: color, flower, macro, nature, photography, Photoshop, shapes, wildlife. Tagged: clownfish, glass shrimp, lionfish, starfish, underwater photography. Leave a Comment

… during the day (Night dive coming up after this post).

I’ve seen plenty of colors during the past weeks. It’s amazing down there (I know, I start repeating myself). I’ve seen probably 2-3 different kinds of starfish around here in one or another variety, but the other day, when we were out for a skill set and did a short “tour” just off the shore, we ran into some crazy colorful ones that I hadn’t seen before. Only at about 5 meters deep, about 200 m from the beach.

I decided to come back for pictures.

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO1600, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO1600, 1/1000 sec @ f/4, Tamron 90mm

I shot only three, but there were six or seven of them in different colors. Unfortunately I failed to attached the flash connector properly to the hotshoe of the camera, so I had to shoot without flash. Luckily this was only at shallow depth, and there was enough light coming in to shoot without flash, but the colors were completely off.

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO1600, 1/1000 sec @ f/4, Tamron 90mm
And the obvious color adjustments in Photoshop.

And then there’s the time where you just sit in the sand, camera at the ready, waiting for that right moment. It may come, or it may not. But with patience…

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO1600, 1/1000 sec @ f/4, Tamron 90mm

People have destroyed already way too much, both on land and underwater, but it’s beautiful to see how people haven’t (yet, let’s hope it will never get that far) screwed up the underwater world and haven’t managed to scare the wits out of everything living there.
At first you’re just a big strange creature, but if you “sit down” (not literally, at least not everywhere or randomly!!) and stay calm, the life around you will start going about their business within minutes and you get to see the most beautiful things in their natural environment 🙂

On the way to the place where we saw the starfish we encountered a few other things as well.
Very common, the clownfish:

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO1600, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm

Very cute, but actually they are very feisty. They will protect their home against anything that comes close. A couple of times it bumped against my mask just to shoo me out of the way.
And of course the lion fish, it comes in so many varieties, with wings, and feathers and stuff, and it’s so gracious, I could take pictures of it all day!

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO1600, 1/500 sec @ f/4, Tamron 90mm

Glass shrimps are also very cute, but very small. The one in this picture is about 3 mm “big”.

D800 (in Ikelight underwater housing), ISO1600, 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm

More to come!

Day 11…

Posted by Arno on June 12, 2013

Posted in: color, flower, insect, lightroom, macro, nature, photography, Photoshop, wildlife. Tagged: drop, droplets, flower, leaf, leaves, monster, rain, spider, splash, water. Leave a Comment

When you’re in a country where the rainy season has just started, chances are good you’ll find yourself sitting on the open patio (or if you’re in luck, somewhere outside without any cover 😀 ) watching the rain come down.
Over here it’s like the sound of static noise on the radio. But during and after you could get some nice pictures…

D800, ISO6400, 1/2000 sec @ f/2.8, Nikkor 70-200mm, burst series

D800, ISO6400, 1/8000 sec @ f/3.5, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO6400, 1/2000 sec @ f/2.8, Nikkor 70-200mm

And of course, it may happen so, that in this kind of weather (or any kind of weather, for that matter) other *little* critters may come out to have a look as well…

D800, ISO100, 1/320 sec @ f/4, Tamron 90mm, on-camera flash

D800, ISO100, 1/320 sec @ f/5, Tamron 90mm, on-camera flash

The beauties of cultural differences

Posted by Arno on September 13, 2012

Posted in: color, flower, insect, macro, nature, photography, shapes, wildlife. Tagged: bug, intricate, ladybug, leaf, nerve, nerves, pattern, texture, vein, veins. Leave a Comment

Last week I spent a few days in my other home country. I had planned to go out at least one day, even just for an hour, just me and my camera, to shoot some pictures. A little bit of me-time. There was that one day, and I took camera and tripod and took off into the fields. I was mainly looking to dive into some more (and other than bumblebees this time) bugs, and maybe some nice flowers. I think it was too warm with 28°C, because there wasn’t much activity.
Save for all of a sudden a dog that came running at me and jumping against and around me. Its owner came walking towards me with a second dog, apologizing for the first dog’s behavior (“It usually never does that!”), but I didn’t mind at all.
I guess in the end I’m more Dutch than I am Finnish. This wouldn’t usually happen in Finland, where people are typically so private towards strangers that they wouldn’t even greet you when you bump into them. We kind of fell in chit-chat mode and I walked up with the lady, who -coincidentally- appeared to be an amateur photographer and member of the local camera club. We spoke about photography in general, about the places she had been, where I had been, what I’d done (“actually just published an article in a Dutch magazine about HDR and cross-processing”, “oh, really? Are you here still next week? Our camera club has a meeting and sometimes we have guest speakers. This would be a subject a lot of our members would be interested in!”), and so on and so forth. We walked and talked together for probably 45 minutes, when I noticed I had to take a different turn, back to where I came from. Time had passed in the blink of an eye, and I kind of had forgotten how much more open people really are, especially in the part of the country that I’m originally from.
I didn’t get to shoot too much pictures, and I didn’t get too much me-time, but I really enjoyed my walk and talk with this lady. I hope (going back into Finnish mode now) she wasn’t offended by me accompanying her on her walk with her dogs. I hope she enjoyed our talk as much as I did…

D800, ISO100, 1/320 sec @ f/8, Tamron 90mm, on-camera flash

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/8, Tamron 90mm
(loooooove the intricacy of this one 🙂 )

And finally, my favorite

Posted by Arno on September 7, 2012

Posted in: color, flower, insect, lightroom, macro, nature, photography, Photoshop, wildlife. Tagged: bug, close, close-up, crop insect, D800, dung, fly, golden, macro, Nikon, reflection, up. 1 comment

This was a bit of a surprise, I must say.
I seem to have been slightly lucky with flies in the past, and this time there was another one that was very willing to model.
Typically this wouldn’t be a fly I would warmly welcome. In Dutch it has the very unflattering name “strontvlieg”, literally translated “shit fly”. The golden dung fly (a slightly more becoming name), named after – exactly – the location where it can commonly be found.
Only I didn’t find it on a pile of dung. Where I did find it, was on one of the late blooming colorful flowers in the garden. The combination of colorful flowers and equally colorful fly made for – I think – a few fantastic images.

And oh my… Do I love my D800. Check out the 100% crops. Is that great or what? Not only the hairs on the fly, but also my reflection on its back. Wow! 🙂 🙂

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/4.8, Tamron 90mm

100% crop of the image

D800, ISO100, 1/500 sec @ f/4.8, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO100, 1/125 sec @ f/5, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm

100% crop of the image

And then these…

Posted by Arno on September 4, 2012

Posted in: color, flower, insect, lightroom, macro, nature, photography, Photoshop, wildlife. Tagged: aster, beauty, bug, butterfly, flower, insect, peacock butterfly, vulnerable, yellow. 1 comment

I’ve missed them before. Used to see them way earlier in the year, at least the Admirals. But now there were a lot of them (and thus I shot a lot of them, to make up for the lack of pictures in early summer 😀 ). They were a little skittish at first, but after I introduced myself and we got more acquainted…

D800, ISO400, 1/125 sec @ f/11, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/4, Nikon 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/4, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 70-200mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/4.2, Tamron 90mm

D800, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Nikkor 70-200mm

More bugs…

Posted by Arno on September 1, 2012

Posted in: color, flower, insect, lightroom, macro, nature, photography, Photoshop. Tagged: bugs, bumblebee, crane fly, garden, Heteroptera, insect, insects. Leave a Comment

Going out of the city means going into the wilderness meaning you get more bugs bugging you.
I shot a good number of bees in the past months, and they get boring at some point (yeah, they do). But I still shot a few more, just because they were s o o o o o s l o w. They were just sitting there. And they were still sitting there in exactly the same spot the next day. And no, they weren’t dead.

D800, ISO400, 1/500 sec @ f/4,5, Tamron 90mm macro

But now that we’re a bit further into the summer… Or actually, now that summer’s pretty much on its end and we’re going into fall, some other bugs have come out that I -for some reason- haven’t seen around so much during summer.