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

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

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

A Day at the Office

I took my camera and macro lens into my office last week to take some close ups of my equipment. (I am an optometrist, for anyone who doesn't know.) Then I played around with adding a fun contrast-y black and white edit to the images, and I'm quite pleased with the results. I think these images are a fun and different representation of what I spend most of my life doing.

I'm not sure there's much to say about the individual images, so I'll let them speak for themselves:

I've really enjoyed getting back behind the camera and I have been shooting a ton! I even have several sets of photos stacked up waiting to be edited. I have to admit that I'm really enjoying the freedom to shoot whatever I want, whenever I want, and editing the images in whatever order I please. It's kind of fun shooting just for myself (and my dedicated fans and readers, of course! Thank you to everyone who has returned to following me now that I'm back. I appreciate all of you so much!)

Michele Whitacre used to be a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona.  Now she just takes photos for fun when the mood strikes.
Like Michele on Facebook | Follow Michele on Instagram | Follow Michele on Twitter

© 2017 Michele Whitacre Photography LLC