And worms REALLY made this?

This is a shallow depth-of field shot of a silk painting that I did last year with my sister Jessica.  It was a fun activity.  Silk takes paint really well, and creates these beautifully muted colors.  We used stamps to create more defined images.  I cannot comprehend how worms make silk.  It is just a mystery to me that something so beautiful can come from a bug.

Nikon D90
Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6
50mm - ISO 400
1/50s - f/1.8

Pulleys...in....space!

I was doing some photography for an instruction manual today, which included some shots of all the little parts and pieces required for assembly.  I have used a lighting tent before to shoot small objects, but suspending them appropriately in mid-air has always been a challenge.  A lighting tent gives you a seamless background to shoot items against, and five surfaces to shoot lights through to create nice even lighting.  My husband had an ingenious idea of placing the objects on a piece of glass.  We went to Lowe's to get some kind of supports to hold the glass at an angle, and found two brackets which have 45-degree angled slits.  The glass fits perfectly inside of the slots, and is held at the a great angle to show small objects.  I used some glue dots left over from a scrapbooking project to attach the parts to the glass.  

I used a 50mm prime lens at a wide aperture to make the background as blurry as possible, since there were some wrinkles in the fabric.  You can see the amazing depth of field in the far edges of the brackets, which disappear into nothingness.  It will be very easy to crop closely into the object, or remove the background entirely, as the project warrants.  It is a pretty great technique.  You don't even really need the lighting tent either, just something to keep the reflections off the glass, and a nice white (or black, depending on the object) background underneath.

Canon 5D Mark II

Canon 50mm f/1.4

50mm - ISO 100

1/200s - f/3.2

Going Green, Red & Yellow

My friends Jason and Angie are adopting a child from Ethiopia through All God's Children.  They are holding fundraisers to defray the expenses of an international adoption, including a hot dog sale this afternoon.  They are truly great people, and I know they will be wonderful parents to this orphaned child.  Check out their blog here. 

Nikon D90

Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6

32mm - ISO 400

1/1000s - f/4.2

More peanut butter

I totally know that I already did a picture like this, but I made a ton of these peanut butter popcorn balls for a fundraiser tomorrow, and didn't have time to take a picture of anything else!  It was a very sweet evening!  I wanted to get more detail and texture on the popcorn, which is why I chose a tight aperture at f/14.  On a side note, I think peanut butter is now tied with my pets for the greatest number of blog posts this year! 

Nikon D90

Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6

30mm - ISO 400

1/14s - f/14

Nikon SB900

1/8 power - 30mm zoom

Bounced up and backwards

Midnight snack

This chocolate bar might be worth getting up at midnight to enjoy!  I liked the way the gold foil glows in the dim light.

Nikon D90

Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6

58mm - ISO 200

1/20s - f/5.6

Snow?

I had been hearing all day about the 1-2" of snow that we are supposed to get today, so I had hoped to get some photos of the white stuff tonight.  However, anyone living in Topeka knows that at least by 10 p.m., we hadn't seen a flake.  I headed out to take a long exposure of the "snow sky" to encourage it along.  I wasn't excited about the results, so was playing around with the photo a bit in Nikon's editing software.  I accidentally hit the wrong button, with some surprising results.

For all you Nikon shooters out there, the top picture was created using the D-Lighting HS tool in View NX.  It is basically a shadow-recovery tool.  Here is a good article about the basics.  The bottom picture was the picture prior to the D-Lighting "snow."  Pretty interesting effect.  It only affects the shadowed area of the photo - which you can see if you look at the tree trunks.  Pretty interesting.

So, not a good picture today, but an interesting discovery nonetheless.

Nikon D90

Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6

18mm - ISO 200

20s - f/5.6

Autumn blaze

The title of this post sounds like the name of a soap opera heroine, but all I have for you today is a pretty picture of a fiery red bush. I wish I had spent more time on the framing so you could see more of the green grass in the background, but I was in a hurry.  I'll keep an eye out for a passing soap star tomorrow...

Canon 5D Mark II

Canon 24-105mm f/4

105mm - ISO 200

1/500s - f/4