Plasma Filaments

Been rather busy lately, so I haven't posted in a while. Here's an extremely cool picture (well, I think it is). Now, I assure you, no editing was done on this picture after I took it. This is a picture of one of my fingers pressed against the glass of a plasma lamp. If you don't know what a plasma lamp is, look it up.
The focus on this picture is not fantastic, but I still really like it just because it's an amazing picture.

An Important Background

This is a Chrysanthemum. One thing I particularly like about this flower is how at the base of the petals, the edges of the petals fold in. This is caught very nicely in this picture. Also, the base of the petals have a slight yellow-green tinge, which - I'm guessing - is due to the green colour of the centre of the flower. The focus on the petals at the far end of the flower is very nice, the focus on the petals nearer to the camera is a fair bit more blurry, which is good, but I would say it's the slightest bit too blurry. I really like the background in this picture, it makes big contrast with the Chrysanthemum in the centre of the shot. It's a very dark, sort of forest-like background, it's rich and a very nice contrast with the central flower, except for a couple of other Chrysanthemums that are just opening.

Monkey Magic

I took this picture using a Nikon D3000. I was at a zoo, and managed to snap this through the gaps in the cage. The exposure was 1/20 of a second, and the ISO speed rating was 400. This picture isn't quite perfectly in focus, which annoys me slightly, but it was the best I got. I like the way the monkey is looking away from the camera, it gives the photo an interesting affect. That branch coming in above and to the right of the monkey gives the picture a nice look in terms of perspective. And the background is comfortably blurry.

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Photography

These are (I think) mostly Harley Davidsons. I've put a sepia effect on this picture. I was going to post a colour version but it seemed too bright, and too vibrant. Putting the sepia effect on it gives it an old fashioned look. The perspective in this picture is very important. Also, the trees in the background (combined with the sepia effect) give the picture a peaceful feel, as though the picture was taken in the middle of nowhere, almost like it's a painting.

What Light Reveals

This is one of my favourite pictures, I've been wanting to post it for a while.
This ring, in bright light, isn't very attractive. But here, in this soft, genuine light, and at this distance, the intricate design is shown more clearly, and the brilliance of the stone set in the ring is much more pronounced. In most of my pictures that are taken at this sort of distance, I like the main part of the image to be in good, clear focus, and then I like the picture to grow less and less defined as you go towards the less important parts of the image. But here, the ring quite suddenly comes into focus just as the metal is starting to thicken (as it goes up towards the stone), and I like the effect that results. Also, the scratches on the wood give the picture a defined look. I didn't put any effects on this picture, it is not edited in any way.

Perspective, Focus, and Reflection

I'm not sure what type of frog this is. I really like the perspective in this picture, the focus on the frog is quite good, and the reflection of the sky in the water is quite attractive, also the murkyness of the pond gives the photo a homey feel.

Flying In Sync

I think I took this picture a little to far away from the birds. The focus isn't quite perfect, and that smudge on the screen is rather annoying, it's a smudge on the lens of my camera.

A Bronze Sky

 The clouds in this picture are amazing, they're what catch my attention. What's bad about this picture is that, it's slightly crooked, and slightly off centre.

Rolling Hills

I've put a shadow effect on this picture, it was a bit too bright for my liking originally. In this photo I really like the way the hills sort of tumble over each other, and also how the shadows of the clouds overhead drastically change the shade of green on certain sections of the landscape.

Shadowed Park

 

 I put a slight darkening effect on this photo, because I felt that that grass and the lighting would look better if it had a warmer, glowing look about it. I like the fact that the focus on the trees isn't quite perfect, it gives the picture a soft look.

A Spiny Leaf Insect

The is a picture of a Spiny Leaf insect, of the species Extatosoma. To get the species and the name of this insect I emailed an entomologist working at the University of Queensland (UQ). The focus on the insect isn't quite perfect, but it's good enough. The level of focus on the background bush is fitting I think, reasonably out of focus in the far background, and better in the close, but not anywhere getting as sharp as the focus on the lower parts of the insect itself.

Mid-Air Murderer

I'm not sure what sort of spider this is, but guessing from the golden colour of the legs, I think that it's a Golden Orb spider. I took this picture in the back yard of a house in Sydney, Australia, Golden Orb spiders are common in Australia. The lush green of the vegetation in the background adds to the shot, and also the sun shining onto the spider pronounces the gold colour of the spider's legs.

A Mock Orange

This is a Mock Orange, but it's not orange. The flower in my blog post titled "An Uncertain Illusion" is also a mock orange. I really like the nonexistent (well, not quite nonexistent) focus on the background, which turns the little bit of light into separate pale, slightly translucent spheres.

One thing that particularly irritates me about this picture is the right most petal of the mock orange, it's too blurry, and it obscures the centre of the flower. Also, the bud to right of that flower petal is too blurry as well. But all in all, this is one of my favourite pictures of a flower.

A Deep, Dented Blur

This is a picture of a water strider on the surface of a very murky creek. These creatures fascinate me, the way they rely on the cohesion and surface tension of water to survive, it's truly amazing, and I find it hard to believe how anybody can believe that a creature so extremely intricate and detailed as this one could possibly be formed by the process of evolution. Anyway, back to the point of this blog. I'm beginning to realize how extremely important the focus in a photo is, when I got to type into a post "what I like about this picture is...", I always think, "oh, it's the focus, again." And so it is with this picture, but, of course, that's not the only major point. Also, the rich, lush green colour that results from the reflection of the trees, combined with the deep, brown colour of the water. Coming back to the focus, the main point is how it's all blurry and not quite visible (in fact, so blurry it irritates some peoples eyes), and then suddenly there are those little dips in the water, the dents created by the pressure of the weight of the water strider on the surface of the water. But, if you zoom in, you'll see that the focus on the water strider is not perfect. But I don't think this is my fault, I was holding the camera extremely steadily, it was the vibration of the water and the constant movement (you can hardly ever get them to stay still) of the water strider. So, yes, there are my views on this picture.

A Lush Green

Well, I have been on holiday for about a month, and so didn't get a chance to post, but I'm back. I got many, many, pictures while I was away, and hopefully many of them will be appearing on this blog in future. This is not one of the pictures I took while I was away, I took this quite a long time ago, in mid 2010. This is one of my pictures that I took using a Canon Power Shot A470. One of the things that I absolutely love about this picture, is, of course, the focus. But also I like the leaf itself, it has such a brilliant green hue. The focus is very nicely defined and the focus on the leaves is contrasts immensely with the focus of the background, which is, of course, what I want. A few things that could have been better about this picture: You may notice that on the biggest leaf, the focus decreases as you go towards the point of the leaf, that's good, but I think it gets blurry too quickly and so by the time you get to the far edge of the biggest leaf, its too blurry, it's almost as blurry as the background, which is bad. Also, on the little leaf, to the right of and just under the biggest leaf, I think on the right edge, the focus is a bit too blurry. For the three tiny leaves in the bottom-left corner of the picture, I think they are too out of focus. Oh, and one other thing that I just noticed, on the biggest leaf, on the edge that is nearest to the bottom of the picture, I the focus is not quite enough. But apart from all that, I do like this picture.

A Wireframe Volcano

I love this picture, the way it looks a lot like a volcano. I took this picture in the front yard of a house, it was fortunate that the yard hadn't been mowed for a while. It's amazing how the spider web is drenched in dew, if the dew hadn't been there, the web would be practically invisible. I very much like how the sun lights this picture, the light of the sun reflects of the droplets of water that outline the web giving a bit of a shine, and the light also gives the grass a very bright shade of green. That blade of grass sticking out of the bottom-right corner is very annoying, the picture would have been better without it. I like how the focus gets blurrier and blurrier as you move towards the top of the image.

It Just Doesn't Seem To Fit

I haven't been able to post for a while, sorry about that (to the few who ever look at my blog) . I took this picture in Melaka, Peninsular Malaysia. I'm not completely sure, but I think I took it in the late afternoon, I may have decreased the shutter speed as much as I could (making it darker), but I can't quite recall. What I like about this picture is its depth. Because lower parts of the mosque poke into higher parts of the mosque (from a 2D point of view), which gives a weird look. In fact, it looks like two different photos put together, the tower in the background being from one picture, and the corner of the building and the windows above it being from another picture, an interesting effect results. But I assure you, this is one picture, there was no photo shopping or shafting together two different photos, this is the original photo. Another good thing about his photo is the clouds in the sky, it gives the mosque a sort of dominating look, and the dreary and gloomy looking weather affects the building in a dark way.

Focus On The Clutter

This is a picture of a type of jumping spider in the family Salticidae. These are very interesting spiders that have excellent vision and are able to jump large distances to capture prey or escape. I didn't know that information off the top of my head, I emailed an Entomologist from the University of Queensland, and asked what sort of spider this is. I took this picture on the wooden frame of a mirror. This picture was originally zoomed out a lot. But I thought it looked better up close where you can see all the details, so I cropped the picture to this zoom. I love the detail of this picture. The way you can see the little hairs on the legs and the fangs, the six visible eyes, each separate joint on the legs. Such a small creature, but a truly amazing creature, and one of perfect design. As for the bad things about this picture, well, the focus on the main part of the spider is very good. But the focus to the left and to the right and on the back of the spider isn't very good. As I've said on other pictures, it's too blurry. But it's important to note here, as I've said on other pictures, areas to the sides and the back of the main subject of the picture should (generally) be a bit blurry so as to emphasize the focus on the main part of the image (in this case, the main part of the picture being the front half of the spider) but here the focus, I think, is too blurry. Notice that the focus on the wood to the sides of the spider is the same as the focus on the back half of the spider, that's not good, the back half of the spider is more important than the wood, the wood is just the background. The back half of the spider is less important than the front half of the spider but more important than the front half, that is why the front half is in so much better focus than the back half. The back half is more important than the wood and therefore there should be slightly better focus on it. Now, I should say, when I talk about that stuff about where the focus should be and all that, I don't really know the rules about getting the right focus in photography, I'm just saying what I think is best judging on my experience with photography, I'm saying that I think this is how you should handle your focus (within photography of this sort, that being macro/super macro photography) in order to make the picture look as good as you possibly can.

A Leafy Incline

I'm not sure if pictures of water are getting a bit boring, but I couldn't not put this picture on my blog. I think the focus on the edge of leaf in the bottom-left corner of the picture is quite bad, I think that it should be a bit blurry, so as to make the focus on the middle of the photo stand out more. But here I think the focus on the bottom-left corner of the picture is a bit too blurry. The main focus is on the middle of the picture, and that focus is good, it fits with the rest of the picture, and the focus becomes blurrier and blurrier as you go towards the edge of the picture, which is good, because it emphasizes the focus on the middle. But I think, in the middle of the picture, just above the biggest lump of water, the focus goes blurry very abruptly, and I would say too abruptly, it should get slowly more blurry, not just suddenly jump from perfect focus to completely blurred. I can't quite say what I like about this picture, it looks kind of like one of those wallpapers that are already there when you install an operating system on a computer. Oh, did you notice that little bubble of air in one of the droplets of water?

A Gold Flooded Sky

I cannot decide weather this picture would be better with or without the aeroplane in the picture. Anyway, this picture was taken in Singapore airport, it was taken through the window of one of the lounges where you sit and wait for your aeroplane. I very much like how the light of the sun reflects off the yellow on the ground very nicely. One thing that really annoys me in this picture is the dark thing in the top left corner of the picture. Something about the picture that I could not have changed is about the trees. Just below the sun, where the trees rise in height, I think the trees get too close to the sun (in a 2D perspective), the sun should be more isolated from the trees. And the trees at the far left of the picture are to indistinct, I would have liked better focus there. But apart from that, this is among my favourite sunrise/sunset pictures.

Caught In A Web

I very much like this picture, the perspective is unusual, and it almost looks like there's a pane of glass that the water droplets are sitting on. But no, those droplets of water are caught in a spider web. Now, first for the criticisms. The focus on the bottom left corner of the picture is too blurry. I think it should be a bit blurry, so as to make the center of the picture more the focus of the photo, but here it's a bit too blurry in the bottom left corner. Also, although I haven't edited this photo, it looks a bit like a 5 year old tried to edit it and was on for about 5 seconds and then he was called away from the computer. What I mean is, there are little bits of the photo that look as if they don't really fit, as if they were taken from another picture and added in. As for the good things about this picture, the focus on the middle of picture is close to perfect, and the focus gets slightly more blurry as you go towards the outside of the picture, which emphasizes the focus on the middle of the picture.

A Golden Path

I took this picture in Melaka, Malaysia. It was actually in a cemetery. This was the path leading up the hill that the cemetery was on. I have edited this picture, because there were some large wooden objects sticking up out of the ground to the left of where the brick path is. And also to the right of the path, where the branches of a tree are bending down into the view of the picture, those branches are mostly not there. I edited them in because there were some buildings in the background that were visible through the branches, and they kind of detracted from the image. What I love about this picture is that even though it's just a reddish brown brick path, the sun gives the bricks a brilliant golden shimmer. And you can't really tell what the bricks look like in real life, they might be made of stone, or wood.

The Earphones

Now, usually I post pictures of natural creation, but I really wanted to post this picture, and so here it is. This is a picture of the "earphones" sign and the earphones plug hole on the side of a computer speaker. I like this picture because of the focus, this picture is almost all about the focus. The strip of perfect focus going down the middle of the picture is what makes this picture look good. If the focus was on the far left part of the picture, and the earphones sign and the plug hole were blurred, this picture wouldn't look good. It's a rare thing that I take super macro pictures of this sought of thing. What sort of title of are you supposed to give to a picture like this?

Mist and Shadow, Cloud and Shade

I took this picture on the Gold Coast in Australia, from the top of a Norfulk Pine. This is one of the pictures that I took using a Canon Powershot A470. One thing I don't like about this picture is how the pine fronds (the ones coming from the bottom of the picture to about halfway up) kind of intrude into the view of the mountains. But apart from that I particularly like this picture. I love how at the bottom of the picture it starts out dark and gradually, as you go up the picture, it gets lighter and lighter until it's a clear, blue sky. And the slightly indistinct focus on the mountains makes the picture look somehow more natural, as though the picture was actually seen by the eye, not taken by a camera.

An Empty House

I took this picture on a wall a the back of a house. The focus is not quite perfect, the shell itself looks quite blurry. The little twig kind of detracts from the picture, but not terribly. It would have been better if the focus on the shell was better and the twig wasn't there.

Drops In a Canna

This is a very peculiar picture. This drop of water is sitting in the petals of a flower called a Canna, or as some call it, a Canna Lillie. I love the effect of having the air bubbles inside the droplet. I have edited this photo, because there was a little white blur at the left edge of the picture, and it kind of detracted from the image. I used a program on Linux called Tuxpaint, and the program Picasa, to edit it. Something I don't like about this picture is that the red blur right at the front (the front, meaning the part of the picture closest to the screen) that goes almost halfway up the image, that blur just hits the edge of the droplet and it doesn't look good. But otherwise, I quite like this picture.

The Seeing Droplet

This is a picture that I took recently. I really like the magnification effect that the water droplet has on the leaf. On the down side the drop of water is not quite round, and also the focus on the bottom third and the top third of the picture isn't very good. If the biggest droplet was rounder and the focus was better overall, the picture would be better. But otherwise I very much like this picture.

A Mellow Yellow

I love this picture. The focus is almost perfect, and the flower has such a brilliant, warm, yellow hue. The only thing that's bad is those dead spots on the petal pointing towards you, and that the focus on that petal is bad. Also it would have looked better if the other 3 petals weren't folded at the sides that way. And another thing is that the cracked leaf to the right detracts from the image a bit. But otherwise, I think it's a very nice picture.

Clouds From Above

I took this picture from, as you can guess, an aeroplane. I would have liked this picture better if the if there were distinct clouds in the far distance. But I do like this picture. It looks kind of like a sea of mist with islands of clouds.

Drops After Rain

I did not get this picture to this stage using only a camera. I've edited it, using picasa, I've put a shadow on it, which makes it much more defined and, of course, darker.

Four in A Row

I took this picture very recently, using super macro. If you observe carefully you may notice the reflection of a palm tree in the droplet that is second from left. I went out side one day to take some photos, and I saw lots of water droplets on the leaves and flowers, so I let fly, I took about 50 pictures of water droplets. Water droplets are often very difficult to get a good picture of, because when you're taking a picture of a water droplet that's on a leaf, it's very hard not to shake the leaf or the camera or both. You don't want to shake the camera because then the focus will be bad, and you don't want shake the leaf because then you will upset the water droplet or make the picture out of focus. You can see in this photo that although the 2 center water droplets are perfectly defined, while the 2 outside ones are a bit blurred. I like the effect that the blur has on the water droplet at the far right, but the picture would have looked better if the droplet at the far left was more defined.

A Study In Scarlet

This is a picture of a Heron, and what I think is a Scarlet Ibis. I had never heard of the Scarlet Ibis until I saw this one. I really like this picture, partly because my favorite colour is red, but also because the subjects in the picture contrast with one another very strangely, and that contrast is added to by the forest green leaves to the right and the murky water in the background, actually, not so much the water. I didn't get this picture just anywhere, it was as you might have guessed, at a bird park.

A Contrast In Itself

This picture is a shot of a bougainvillea, a common plant, using the super macro setting. I really like how brilliantly the white contrasts with pink. Flowers are my favorite photography subject. I find that natural creation is much more satisfying to photograph than man made stuff is.

An Uncertain Illusion

What I love about this picture is that you can't tell how big the flower is. Even I can't remember how big it is. It could be 3 cm across, or it could be 1/2 cm across, it has a bit of an illusion to it. And of course everything in the back round is to foggy to compare to. What I find annoying about a lot of my pictures is that I don't remember taking them, I don't even know where I took this photo, although I think it was at the back of my house, because this picture was taken 2 or 3 years ago. I would have liked to get the whole flower and have overall better focus.

In The Light

I took this picture in Sidney, Australia, in the city center. Sidney is a great place for photography. It has all the elements needed for pictures of buildings, scenery, and close up shots. Sidney has a lot of old fashioned looking buildings, like this one, it's a beautiful city. I took this shot just in passing, walking through Sidney, saw the perfect angle of the sun, and snapped the shot. The brilliant thing about this photo is that even though the light is so bright, it doesn't make everything else too bright, and it gives the leaves a brilliant green hue. I think this is my best picture so far.

In The Beginning...

I took this picture when I was eleven. For all my pictures I'm using a Canon Power Shot A480, 10 megapixel, with 3.3x optical zoom. It was at the back of my house, just sitting on a leaf.