A few flowers and such from the neighborhood.
To see a higher resolution version of the one above:
Flowers and Such
Category Archives: Photography
DeCordova Sculpture Park
Visited the DeCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln recently. It was a nice day to get out and walk around with the family. Here is a selection of the art we saw:
Some of the art wasn’t:
You can cycle through all of the pictures:
Latest Fleet Additions
Finally got around to photographing and uploading my latest set of 1/2400 ship miniatures. I cannot claim that I painted the ships. That honor goes to gak8346 who has a far better eye for painting small modern ships than I do. I’ll stick to other miniatures.
I played with focus stacking and using HeliconFocus got a number of photos of ships at oblique angles. Some post-Cold War GHQ ships:
I based the Arleigh Burke IIA destroyer as the USS Hudner, which I photographed when it was being commissioned in Boston.
And one from Dutch Fleet Naval Miniatures on Shapeways:
As well as some Cold War era ships:
Some of the mini-carriers nice and based:
Finally finished the Tarawa-class LHA:
Bill’s Models was nice enough to create some ships at my request, so I had to get them, including some USNS RO-ROs:
They are all decent ships, but if you are starting out with adding merchant or RO-ROs to your collection, I recommend getting some of the US ships from Viking Forge such as the Sealift Pacific, Cape Isabel and Algol.
There are more pictures from this upload in my 1/2400 Naval Miniatures photo album as well as pictures I shared in the past. You can just cycle through them below:
NEOWISE
In July, my sons and I went to Danehy Park in Cambridge to see Comet NEOWISE. We got there before sunset to find a good position on the hill in the park.
It wasn’t the best location, even besides the mosquitos that came out after dusk, but it was a good opportunity to try time lapse/astro photography.
It wasn’t easy to find Comet NEOWISE with the naked eye, so I pointed my camera in the right direction, took a long exposure photograph, then checked if the comet was in the photograph. Whether it was there or not, I repositioned the camera to either find it or get a better picture of it.
It was an iterative process.
I played with the duration of the photographs experiencing that long durations at high focal lengths result in star trails. Some had a good balance.
The next day, clad in bug spray and long pants, my son and I tried photographing the comet from the top of the Alewife MBTA stop garage in Cambridge. The combination of the clouds and the bright garage lights hindered my efforts to get decent pictures. It was a good scouting opportunity. Unfortunately, the weather since hasn’t been great so it was good we went out the earlier night.
Flowers and a Spider
Photographed flowers in the yard recently. No use of focus peaking this time, but I used HeliconFocus to stitch the sharp part of images together. Click on the images to view them in more detail. You can then zoom into them further.
Also found this spider in our house. It was a mostly willing model, but eventually it had had enough.
All images taken with my Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens on my Nikon Z 50 via the Nikon FTZ adapter.
Rhododendron flower
With the warmer weather of Spring, our Rhododendron is blooming. I continued my adventure with macro photography and focus stacking by taking multiple images of some of the flowers. This one was the best:
I zoomed in on my camera’s screen and manually focused the lens for each photograph. Next time I will try using focus peaking.
Blue Jay gathers material for a Nest
Another local picture of a bird in our neighborhood.
Robin Nest with 3 eggs
Found a robin nest in the crook of a tree and had to take a picture. Six as it turns out each with a different focus point. Focus stacked them in Helicon Focus.
Blue Jays and Squirrels oh my!
A week behind in posting this, but here are some more pictures of animals in our yard. The Nikon Z50 is really a step up from my D3300 and the 50-250mm lens is fantastic. Not regretting getting one at all.
For more animals, check out my Spring 2020 in the Pandemic album:
Robins in the Rain
I played with my new camera yesterday by photographing the birds that gathered in our back yard. Due to the rain and a desire not to scare them off, I took most of them through the back door window, which wasn’t as bad as I expected.
The ISO of the images is higher than it should be and they may not be as sharp as I would like since I haven’t learned the autofocus system well. Rather impressed by the camera, though. A noticeable improvement over my Nikon D3300.
At least the birds are free to move about even if we aren’t during the pandemic.
