Good subject, bad subject

Some friends of ours, Janet and Wayne came by for drinks tonight before dinner.  A hazard of being our guests is that you may very well end up as a blog subject.  Janet, photogenic and beautiful, was a very cooperative subject.  Wayne....well, not so much, but I finally got a pretty good shot of him anyway.

Test mobile blog

This is a test to see if I can post to my blog from my iPhone.  

Test blog

My first blog post

Baby pokeberries

You can just see the pokeberries forming in the center of the flowers.  I'm really short on time today, so a weed and my macro....the best I can do....(100mm macro, f2.8, ISO200, 1/200 sec.)

Birdfeeder

Our birdfeeders have been very active recently so I thought I'd get a shot of one of our visitors.  I intended to capture a goldfinch, but after I looked at the images, I liked this little guy better.  He was really working hard for his lunch!

Mushroom

I've been noticing this nice mushroom in our side yard and thought I should get a shot of it before it disappears in the dry weather.

Head shot

I needed to submit a "head shot" for an organization I'm volunteering with, so here's my image for today.  Sometimes the experience I've had with self portraits comes in handy.

Winston

Another easy shot today.  This is our neighbors' dog, Winston, visiting us at breakfast this morning.  He's a very sweet Welsh Corgi and with his short legs and stout body he reminds us of Suzy.

Honey three ways

After taking over 200 photos yesterday, I wanted something quick and easy tonight.  Since I'm still trying to learn about lighting, I decided to take an object and photograph it in different light and evaluate the results.  This is a honey jar on our dining table, left over from breakfast this morning.  Some info I've read over the years says to put the light over the photographer's shoulder and let it fall onto the subject, and that's what I've done a lot in the past when taking photographs.  Only since I've been doing this blog have I started reading about and learning more about changing the angle of the light to better enhance the subject.  So here are three images of the honey jar.  I've taken one with the window light coming over my shoulder and the results were pretty flat and ho-hum.  The second one has the light coming from the side and that is much more interesting.  The shadows darken the background and side and give the subject much more depth.  The third image is with the sun backlighting the subject.  Again, a much more striking image.  I'm sure there are times when lighting the subject straight on will be the best choice, but as this shows, it pays to shoot from all sides.