Hold very still while I do a 6 second exposure…

I’ve been playing around with macro the last few days. Here are a few for your viewing enjoyment.

I took this in 2003 with my old Olympus C4000. It was hand-held with a 1 second exposure. I think I might have been walking at the time. The fire is like 150 feet away and the tree silhouette on the left is like 75 feet away to give you some scale on the size of the bonfire.

I have done no editing (other than the watermark), and I really like how it looks almost more like a painting than a photograph.

 

A lot of photos don’t turn out. They have various technical problems like focus, exposure, etc. However every once in a while you get one that is technically bad, but it still works. Here is an example:

I don’t think any part of the flower is in focus, it was probably inside the minimum focal distance for the lens (I don’t have a macro lens), and some parts also look over exposed, but I still really like how it turned out. The colors are so vivid, it kinda screams at you. It almost has a painted quality to it. For some reason, it just seems to work. I’m currently using it as a desktop background.

Or it’s just a bad photo that I’m rationalizing into a good photo. 😉

 

The iPhone HDR camera feature has it’s uses. Here is a prime example:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The HDR version is clearly much better, just don’t look too closely, it’s still an iPhone camera.