Day 32: It's Them Birds Again!

Greetings! It's a new month and a new day so here's some new photos! I spent the day at home because we were supposed to get some nasty, icy weather that never really came. Although it did rain, and depending on how fast the temperature drops tonight, it may still happen. Either way, I stayed home so here's what happened.

The first photo I took in my bathroom again. It's the perfect place to shoot where I can completely control the amount of light influencing the photo. I took in a small tealight candle on a dish and shot a couple of times. I was also using my diffusion filter (thus, the slight "noise" quality to the image). At first I only shot using the light that the candle was producing, but then I decided to use ye olde trusty flashlight from some of my other posts. I like that it gives it the blue color partially, giving it all three primaries (the red candle, the yellow flame, and the blue light).

1/25 sec. exposure at F/5.6. ISO 400.
Click image for larger version.

Eventually I think I'd like to mess with this some more in Aperture to really highlight one color over the others to see how much it changes the tone of the photo. And I still don't know how I feel about the diffusion filter. I do like the look it gives some photos, but I feel like I'm not using it as effectively as it could be used. Ah well, that's why I'm doing this thing, right?

Later on in the afternoon, a fog started rolling in behind our house. Those of you that viewed my blog in its first few days might remember the background image on the site. That was taken last November (I think) during a thick fog. There's a great treeline back there that looks awesome in the fog, particularly when the trees are bare, as they are now. Anyway. It was foggy back there again this morning, and since it had stopped raining, I went out to that patch of shrubbery where I spent some time with the smart birds from a couple weeks ago. (Post is here.)

1/50 sec. exposure at F/5. ISO 200.
Click image for larger version.

As you can see I was actually able to capture the birds this time. Well, sort of. I like a couple of things about this image, but still think it could have been better. The things I like: 1) The three layers of "depth". There's the brush in the foreground, the birds behind that, and the treeline in the back; 2) The color. It has an almost sepia feel to it, though this is a color image. The only thing I did in Aperture was turn the Temperature setting in White Balance up a little bit. I think the fog helps give it that softer feel as well. This one was shot without the diffusion filter (using it in fog seemed redundant).

I wish a couple of the birds had come out a little sharper though, so you could definitely tell what they are. I don't know. Maybe that's just me being picky about myself and my photos. Enough about me though. I'm dying to know what you all think, so please leave comments below.

Tomorrow is Groundhog's Day. I really want to try and make the trek up to Punxsutawney to see the big to do, but it'll mostly depend on the weather (and by weather I also mean, whether or not I want to wake up that early). I wanted to go last year but just couldn't get motivated, and I figure since I'm so close I need to experience it at least once. We'll see. You'll either get pictures from Punxy tomorrow or you'll get some other random crap from around here. In other words, hope the weather breaks and doesn't get too bad. Adios muchachitos!