Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Hummingbirds

A few weeks ago I spent my Sunday morning at the nature preserve near my house. I was sitting on the bank of a pond under the shade of a large tree, photographing birds that were hanging out on the opposite bank. (Stay tuned for those photos soon!)

While I was sitting there I heard a noise behind me and turned around to find another photographer standing behind me looking into the tree I was sitting under. When I turned and looked at her, she began talking to me and said that there was a hummingbird in the tree. I began looking and saw it flying around, but from my position sitting under the tree there's no way I could get any photos. Plus I didn't want to encroach on the other photographer. She continued to take photos until the hummingbird flew off and then she left. I continued sitting there watching the larger birds across the water, but noticed that the hummingbird kept returning overhead. I'm assuming there was a nest in the tree, but I never saw it.

I finally decided to stand up and see if I could capture any photos of the hummingbird since it seemed determined to stay near the tree. It wasn't until I returned home and began looking at the photos that I realized there were actually two hummingbirds there! I never saw them both at the same time and just assumed it was the same one every time I saw one...


I really have no idea if these photos are all of the same one or some of each of them. Regardless, I was excited to capture these photos. I love hummingbirds - something I've acquired from my mom over the years! She loves them, and puts feeders out for them.










I love this one, with its wings spread out!...


I hope you enjoyed the photos as much as I do!

Michele Whitacre used to be a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona.  Now she just takes photos for fun when the mood strikes.
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© 2017 Michele Whitacre Photography LLC

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Dragon Flies

I'm not feeling overly creative with my blog post titles, can you tell?

Recently I went shooting at a nature preserve near my house and captured some fun shots while I was there.  I was hoping to spend my day taking macro photos of dragon flies and other bugs, but I really didn't see very many.  Those that I did see where too far away for me to use my macro lens, so it ended up being a day of shooting with my zoom lens instead!

Here are the photos I did mange to capture of the few dragon flies I spotted:


I really liked this one in black and white!...


This is the same dragon fly, just a few color shots...



The next three images are all of the same dragon fly.  The first image is my favorite...


I missed getting the his (her?) body in focus by a little here, but included it because I love how you can see the detail in the wings where the image is in focus...



I have a lot more photos from the adventure that I am still editing, so stay tuned for more photos soon!

Michele Whitacre used to be a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona.  Now she just takes photos for fun when the mood strikes.
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© 2017 Michele Whitacre Photography LLC

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I'm still experimenting with some macro shots and having a blast doing so. I decided to try my hand at taking some photos of a dripping faucet using my macro lens. Last time I played around with this I used a flash and got some fun effects. This time I opted to use a different light source to see what kind of images I could create.

I can't decided if I would have liked the images better with a faster shutter speed suspending the water more, of if I prefer the blurry effect of the water dropping.  Either way, I thought these photos were fun and wanted to share my favorites:




This one is my favorite of the bunch...





This is another favorite....





Here I turned the water on full force just to mix it up a bit...


The rest of these were taken with a different faucet that has a sprayer function, so the water is dripping out of multiple openings in the faucet:




As always thanks for stopping by!

Michele Whitacre used to be a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona.  Now she just takes photos for fun when the mood strikes.
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© 2017 Michele Whitacre Photography LLC

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Photo Project | Water + Oil = Fun Photos

May has turned into the month of macro photography! I've been enjoying experimenting with it, and I still have a handful of macro photo projects on my list, so I expect my macro trend will continue for a little while longer.

I'm still getting the hang of my lens, plus I have limited experience with macro photography in general, so it seems like I'm still at the bottom of the learning curve.  However, I know it takes time and practice to improve, and I can tell it's getting a little easier with each sucessive attempt.

I have been struggling to get my images in tack-sharp focus, which is apparant in many of today's photos. Of course, I'm hand holding the camera instead of using my tripod (have I mentioned how much I despise using a tripod?), so that's probably the majority of my problem. I suppose I need to just bite the bullet and start using it instead of complaining about out of focus images, huh?

I really had a lot of fun taking and editng these photos.  I just love the bold, bright colors in many of them.  I had a hard time narrowing down my favorites for this post, so I went a bit overboard.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!







These next two are favorites.  I just love the in focus area inside the oil bubbles...














I had to include these next two for my hubby, since orange is his favorite color...





If these images look vaguely familiar to anyone, it might be because I took similar ones a few years ago when I was experimenting with a macro lens I had rented.

Michele Whitacre used to be a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona.  Now she just takes photos for fun when the mood strikes.
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© 2017 Michele Whitacre Photography LLC