I'll start off with another crane shot from March where the pattern kept catching my eye, taken with my Canon 70-300mm telephoto zoom:
ISO 400 | 1/400 | f5.6 | 300mm
My daughter is a big fan of horses, so this one made it into a frame on her bedroom wall,taken with the same 70-300mm lens:
ISO 100 | 1/1000 | f/4.0 | 70mm
I splurged and got a macro lens in April, so I had to give it a try on some spiders. You learn real quick that getting enough light is a huge issue with macro photography, so when shooting indoors a flash (or flashes) are a must. Especially when you want a smaller aperture and larger depth-of-field to get your entire subject in focus without using fancy post-processing techniques.
ISO 100 | 1/160 | f/22 | 100mm
ISO 100 | 1/125 | f/13 | 100mm
On May 20th the Fontenelle Nature Associate Photography Club, of which The Professor was the president until recently, held a meeting where some captive/rescued raptors were brought in. The following is of a Peregrine Falcon taken with my Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro lens. The position of the falcon's head and how it makes a backwards "C" shape with his beak and neck feather pattern is why I like this one. The light in the background right above his head is a bit distracting, but I can live with that for now:
ISO 800 | 1/30 | f/2.8 | 100mm
The Henry Doorly Zoo here in Omaha just opened an awesome Madagascar exhibit this year, so on June 13th we had to go check it out and I took my 70-300mm. There isn't exactly much of a challenge getting pictures of captive animals at the zoo, but you can still get some fun ones. There is an outdoor exhibit for the Lemurs, and this guy had that defining pose with the S-shaped tail that looked pretty cool:
ISO 200 | 1/100 | f/5.6 | 235mm
June was a record-breaking month in Nebraska for rainfall, and we had some spectacular storms. On June 22nd there was an awesome lightning storm where I captured the following two shots using my 28-135mm lens with the aid of a tripod and a remote shutter switch:
ISO 400 | 12 sec. | f/16 | 28mm
ISO 200 | 8 sec. | f/11 | 28mm
ISO 100 | 1/400 | f/11 | 28mm
On July 3rd was a fireworks show in our neighborhood by a guy that arranges about a half-hour show every year. This gave me a great opportunity to practice taking fireworks photos. It seems the basic idea is pretty simple, but the hard part is getting other elements in your photo to make it interesting. I chose the following photo because it had some cool fireworks in the distance although the main bursts in the foreground weren't too spectacular:
ISO 100 | 5 sec. | f/11 | 35mm
On July 8th I captured some cool sunset pictures. The following image is 12 separate images merged into one with the aid of Photoshop. ISO, aperture and focal length were all the same, but the shutter speed was a little different among all of the individual photos. I'd recommend clicking on the image to view it larger and get a better sense of scale:
ISO 100 | 1/30-1/80 | f/10 | 28mm
Well that's it for now. I'll try and post a little more often if, for no other reason, so I don't have to go through so many photos and make a huge post all at once.
