Last weekend I spent a few hours exploring the gardens at Chartwell challenging myself to capture things with just a 50mm prime lens. It was really fun to experiment with depth-of-field and bokeh to capture these shots.
Experiments in macrophotography
Recently I’ve been having fun experimenting with exploring the world at the macro level and seeing what I can capture. After much research and consideration I decided that I probably didn’t want to invest in any specific macro lenses for now as I already have quite a collection of lenses and you can only carry so much around.
So, for this first foray I’ve settled on a fairly simple setup – Canon 7D with a 12mm Kenko Extension Tube and the EF 50mm f1/8 II. For the second two shots I also brought my trusty 580EX II into the mix because there wasn’t enough light in the kitchen to get any good shots otherwise. The shallow depth of field and narrow distance window at which the lens will focus in this setup make taking these photos a challenge.
I really love how the shallow depth of field in the first image really draws you into the Kingfishers eye while the background just blurs away.
Kingfisher ornament
The other two photos that I want to share from this experiment come from a recent days baking. These rocky piles of sugar have a magical sparkle, maybe they can be mined for diamonds ;).
Sugar mountains
This close up of the brownies came out really well. I love the bokeh and shallow depth of field.
Brownie Landscape
The texture of Barcelona
Textures interest me and capturing the experience of textures themselves and how materials are used is an obsession of mine. When photo walking I am just as likely to pause and spend a few minutes trying to capture the texture of the bark of a lonely city trapped tree as I am to try to sneak candid photos of people enjoying themselves by just firing off the camera at random without bringing the viewfinder up to my face. Our recent trip to Barcelona resulted in enough of these photos that I thought it was worth highlighting them in a separate post. So here they are in all there glory.
Everything was captured using my Canon 7D and 16-35 f/4 IS L pairing and processed from RAW using Aperture.
Exploring Barcelona
One of the perks of working for a full distributed company is that when we get together for team meet-ups we don’t end up stuck in side a meeting room in an office block instead we get to share a few days together working and playing hard. Recently I was lucky to be invited to another teams meet-up which was to be in sunny Barcelona a city of Tapas, Gaudi, and Leche de Pantera. Here are a few of the photos I took during our visit.
