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bug on a blade of grass
bug on a blade of grass
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Sep, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I shot this in my neighbors yard, in the small community of Canyon Ferry Lake about 20 miles east of Helena Montana. This is where I live in the summer and now spend my winters in Arizona.Time
On August 5th 2015 Going over to shoot the breeze with the neighbors I noticed some small wildflowers. After our talk I told them not to be alarmed if they saw me crawling in their lawn as I would only be shooting the flowers and bugs with my camera not my rifle. Returning with my camera and while shooting the flowers, some with bugs, I noticed this little guy climbing on a blade of grass. Took several shots, this one at 2:44 pm.Lighting
All natural lighting. Looking over my other shots and data from that day, it appears there was light overcast or perhaps smoke from nearby fires at that time. The lighting is not harsh yet the exposures were 1/160 to 1/250 seconEquipment
Nikon D3200, Minolta auto bellows III with a Minolta 50mm macro lens. The shot was handheld. With this setup I have to use manual settings. I normally set the ISO to 100, the aperture to minimum, f 22 for maximum depth of field, and the exposure to 1/30 second. I will take a test shot for exposure, if too light I will decrease the shutter speed. If too dark I will open up the lens, but generally no more than f8. If still too dark I change the ISO, trying to stay under 400. I will still take the shots if under exposed, then correct in post-processing. To focus for this kind of shooting I move my head and camera to and fro until satisfied, sure wish they had the split screen focusing of old 35mm SLR's. For this particular shot, ISO at 100, 1/160 second exposure. Don't record my aperture setting or length of bellows extension, but analyzing the photo I suspect I used about f8 (very narrow depth of field) and the bellows extended quite far as that bug was on a blade of grass.?Inspiration
Ever hear the old Irish saying about never so drunk as long as you can hold onto a blade of grass to keep from falling off the face of the earth. That's what this little guy reminded me of. But to make a short story long, I was into photography for many years until I retired in 1996 and moved to Montana. I primarily used Minolta 35mm equipment which I still have. About 10 years ago I bought a Kodak 5 mp digital camera, then upgraded to a Kodak 12 mp pocket size camera to take while hunting. When it started having problems I thought about upgrading to a DSLR and doing more serious photography. Being on an extremely tight retirement budget I wanted to know if I could use my old Minolta lenses before spending a lot of money on a DSLR. A friend lent me his Nikon and I purchased a Minolta to Nikon adapter and experimented with it before getting the D3200. The rest as they say is history, or to be more exact mystory (and I'm sticking to it).Editing
On this particular shot there was no post-processing applied. I do various types of photography, including: macro (that should be obvious), wildlife, landscapes, night, sun rise/set, action, abstract objects, people and events. Something I have noticed about my Nikon's is that the color will be on the dull side when viewing on the computer. As soon as I find my old Macbeth color chart I will be doing some testing. I will use windows photo gallery to make changes, quite often using shadow, highlight, and or histogram controls and occasionally contrast. I use color saturation and temperature. I try to capture the scene I want with my lenses, but it is not always possible, therefore I will use cropping, and stitching for panoramas. When done for the day or trip I transfer to my PC using Nikon's View NX2 software. It is set to change file names to reflect the date shot in "yy/mm/dd_#" format. They are transferred to subfolders that also reflect the date transferred "yy/mm/dd" followed by subject matter. Sometimes I will backup immediately onto an external hard drive or do so after my sort and edit procedures. I am trying to get in the habit of doing bulk tagging of the photos. As I go through each photo I will edit and give a rating to the ones I may wish to upload and share on my Facebook page. After this is done I will create a subfolder "to fb", move the rated photos and do a final sort for upload. After they are uploaded I will change to subfolder name to "on fb". All these procedures are done so that I can quickly locate 1 photo from the more than 40,000 I currently have. I will also copy the photos to my laptop so I have 2 backup copies.In my camera bag
I think you mean bags. My main bag contains my D3200, Nikon 18-55, 55-300, Minolta bellows, 50mm macro, 100-300 with 2x converter, small tripod, wired and wireless remotes, extra batteries chargers and cords, extra 32gb micro SD cards with adapters, and of course cleaning accessories. Also keep my old Vivitar 5600 flash for night time shots in this bag. I have 1 bag with most of my old Cokin filters, haven't used them on my DSLR yet but plan to, and different adapters. I keep an old fishing vest with various duplicate accessories handy for hiking. I recently purchased a Nikon S9900 for taking into the field while hunting and have a small bag for extra batteries and accessories. Always keep at least 1 large tripod in the truck.Feedback
Don't be afraid to crawl through the grass like a snake. Heck I've even stripped down to my skivvies and waded and knelt in a creek to get a shot (done the same in a bar, but that was a shot of whiskey and another story). Another benefit to having a 24 mp DSLR is that I have digitized about 25,000 old photos, slides and negatives of mine, along with my dad and uncles old photos dating back to the early 1900's. I am still relatively new to DSLR photography and have an awful lot to learn. I always try (not always successful) to take my macro shots in their natural environment. I take into consideration the background, the colors and the desired focus. I often take several shots with different angles and f-stops. Sure do love the price of film these days. Some parting thoughts: "If it's beauty captures your eye, how will your eye capture it's beauty?" "I take pictures that are pleasing to MY eyes, not YOUR eyes. But I will not hesitate to share them hoping they please your eyes also." "Use your mind and eyes as you would your camera and lenses, constantly zooming in and out to frame YOUR perfect shot."
