Travelin' About

The sudden popping of beautiful spring flowers always calls to me for macro photography. So, my lenses of choice for this past week have been my AF-S Micro Nikkor 105mm 1:28G ED (both flowers above taken with this lens) and my old workhorse film lens AF Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 D which is ailing but still has a sharp focus and provides me some damn decent images. (see both flowers below) After a week of experimenting, I stumbled on this article by Tony Sweet which I found very informative.  So, I see where he tells us that the longer lenses can bring about a softer bokeh. Oh how I love that pastel effect in the background! I also discovered that my 105mm works great as a portrait lens as well as for macro.  I shot a mature but bawdy female comedian this week who made it difficult for me to focus on my settings as she ripped off nonstop one-liners. So, after listening to Zach Arias telling me to "know my lenses, know my lenses," I am really getting to know them...

Got slammed by a bad cold last weekend, but life provided me a great remedy - a FREE 3 day webinar with Zach Arias thanks to CreativeLIVE.com. I only chanced upon this opportunity because a BFF photographer posted it on FB and I am so glad she did! It was an awesome, creative way to spend a beautiful weekend while I felt like crap. Arias is a good teacher, repeating mantras like "head in a clean spot, head in a clean spot, head in a clean spot" and "know your equipment!" "KNOW KNOW KNOW  your camera," and "don't do what other's do - find your own way." Great inspiration. But now I'm left with wanting to change up everything I've been doing. He showed examples of his own work where his compositions were filled with triangles, repeating lines, great use of negative space. A former catalogue artist, he told of how he hated the job of putting transparencies over images for cover shoots but how he now realizes what a great learning ...