Cropping #1

From time to time I will crop some of my photo's. Below is the original photo plus several cropings of the original. What do you think?

 

Too much stuff in the background. It did not blur out as much as I had hoped.

 

I cropped out as much of the background as I could. But that left the eye's of the skull in the center of the photo. Not sure if I like that.

 

Here I cropped out some the back of the skull. That left the closest eye on one of the thirds. I like this version best.

 

Still life in the dark

I setup a space in the basement this weekend to try some still life photography. I placed a large sheet of black acrylic felt on a table and tacked it up on the wall also.

Black felt backdrop

The basement is normally lit by the long tube florescent lighting. But they produce more light than I wanted. So I was going to try some of those spiral florescent lights in some small lamps so I could control the angle of the light. But those produce an orangish light. Looks interesting but not what I wanted.

Orange glow from spiral florescent lighting

As it turns out the long tube florescent light produces the whitest light. So I turned them all off except one. The one I left one was on the other side of a partition, so most of its light is blocked. None of its light is direct. The light only came in through a doorway. Looking at the photo of the black felt backdrop setup, the light came in from the left side of the table.

First up is the deer skull I found a few weeks ago. With the light coming in from the side I was able to play with shadowing. The last photo shows the skull using a clamp-on light with the spiral florescent bulb.

Next is a couple of photo's on a possum skull. I hate possum's for some reason. I am glad this one is dead. It was living in my garage.They were all done with a spiral bulb.

Next I tried leaving on one one long tube florescent light that was in front of the backdrop. As you can see not much shadowing.

For the next test I will be making some LED spot lights of different colors. Since they will be spot lights I will be able to control the light better. Hopefully LED's will photograph well. Here is a link to my Flickr page with the rest of the photo's from last night session.

Wildlife Along the Wabash

Destination: Wabash Heritage Trail, north end / Wabash Heritage Trail, South end
Miles hiked: 8/9.5
Camera: Nikon D40
Lens: Nikkor 50mm 1:18 non DSLR lens.

This weekend I came across more wild life than I normally due on the Wabash Heritage Trail. Saturday I drove to Battleground and walked the south end of the Wabash Heritage Trail. While there I hiked a small trail called Prophets Rock Trail. Its a short trail up a small hill. Its maybe about a mile or mile and a half loop. Its mostly just a steep climb.

After Prophets Rock Trail I continued on to the south end of the Wabash Heritage Trail. This trail follows and cross's Burnett's Creek which feeds into the Wabash River. At the begining of the trail off to the side is an open area with some wild flowers. Here are some shots of the flowers.

In the creek I spotted the remains of a turtle.

A green frog in a small swamp.

Some moss on a log

Sunday I walked from my house to the trail. I passed through the Downtown area and took a few shots.

This "beach" is where I was headed. It has gotten bigger since the last time I was here. This is the same place that I found all the dead fish. This time I found a skull of some kind. I am guessing its from a deer. I packed it up a brought it home. An other addition to my Halloween collection.

This was a surprise. It was moving along the edge of the river off of the beach. I have never seen a mussel in action.

Just a log in the sand.

Next are some photo's of some mushrooms I found. They were on a small mound leading up to a old tree stump. I took about 20 pictures but I was not really happy with most of them. I failed to capture the scene. Here are a few OK shots.

I found this molting Cicada..

And finally, this Garter Snake had just finished swallowing a small toad or frog. All I saw was the legs sticking out of the mouth. But by the time I had the camera ready the legs were gone. I got off a few shots then it stuck its tongue out at me and zipped off.