Last week, Anya and I took Friday off to celebrate my birthday. Since I wanted to go somewhere to take photos, and we had just recently visited Phipps, we ended up at the National Aviary. So I am just going to provide a teaser set of photos from that trip...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/250 sec at f/2.8. Image Stabilization on. ISO 400. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw (mouseover for original). National Aviary, Pittsburgh, PA.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/60 sec at f/4. Image Stabilization on. ISO 400. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw. National Aviary, Pittsburgh, PA.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/5. Image Stabilization on. ISO 400. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw (mouseover for original). National Aviary, Pittsburgh, PA.

We ended up buying a membership, so this will be the first of many trips to the Aviary, I'm sure.... especially since I made plenty of mistakes that I need to correct in subsequent trips.

- Bill

For this shot, I asked my lovely assistant to position my flash behind the orchid to produce a different view and get those nice highlights along the edges of the petals...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/22. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

This year, I started a "Project 52" to keep myself motivated to take photos on a regular basis. I've already hit some rough times getting good ideas of things to shoot, but last week I came up with the idea to shoot a blue jay feather with my new super-macro lens - the Canon MP-E 65mm.

The results were not nearly as good as I wanted, and I almost dumped the whole lot of them. Instead, I kept them and I will use them in the future to refer back to in order to correct the mistakes I made.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, bottom-left with Kenko Teleplus PRO 300 "DG" AF 2x Teleconverter, top-left with Canon Speedlite 580EX II, others with Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. Assorted exposures. ISO 100.

The shot in the bottom-left is actually a 10x magnification as I had my 2x teleconverter combined with the MP-E 65 set to 5x magnification. The clarity on it isn't as good as I would have liked, so I'm sure I will be retrying that at some point as it certainly is an interesting shot.

- Bill

I'm getting anxious to get back in the water... I wouldn't even mind taking photos of more fireworms...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion in Photoshop CS5.

There you can even see a little of the variety of colors with the white and green ones...

- Bill

Yes - this little snail is actually called a Flaming Tongue (Cyphoma gibbosum).

We saw plenty of these little snails on a lot of the dives on this trip, and while they certainly weren't moving much, they were difficult to photograph.

One challenge was because of their diet, which consists of the polyps of soft corals. The soft corals are often branching off in many directions (much like a small bush with no leaves) and thus getting a good angle to shoot through those branches was not always easy.

Exposure always seemed to be difficult too - here you can see I ended up with some weird shadows and a still somewhat darkened shot. I'm not sure if it was the soft corals or the mantles of the Flamingo Tongues that caused the problem, but I definitely struggled getting a good clean exposure.

Regardless, they certainly are interesting little critters. While they are snails, the colorful pattern you see is not the shell which is actually white (or off-white) with no pattern - it is actually the mantle of the snail wrapping up and over the top of the shell. It can be retracted back into the shell, and for whatever reason, Mike (our dive master) always seemed to find the retracted ones while we always found the regular ones.

Also visible in this shot is the damage these snails cause as they eat the polyps on the coral - leaving whitish scar tissue. The polyps do grow back, so the damage is not permanent.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 200. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion in Photoshop CS5.

- Bill

Another visit back to that set of photos I took with my father-in-law's resin sculpture robots...

Like the first photo I shared of this set, I really like how the lighting and the perspective sets the scene. Again, the way the flash light fell on the scene, it produced that dark shadow inside the archway - which definitely adds a layer of depth and mystery to the scene. On top of that, the way 35mm macro lens provides magnification while keeping a wider view of the scene really produces a perspective that allows the viewer to get lost in the scene without feeling that it is miniaturized. Additionally, having the robot looking out of the scene to the left allows the viewer to explore the shot without getting stuck in only one spot (and adds to the feel of the scene in my opinion).

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Tokina AT-X M35 Pro DX AF 35mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1, 1/100 sec respectively at f/8. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

I still need to get some more shots with this subject - perhaps in the snow would work....

- Bill

Anya bought me a Rogue FlashBender for Christmas, and I finally got around to trying it out the other day. In this case, the photography started with trying to capture a shot of the dogs chasing the laser pointer, but after several attempts, I decided it was something to table for later.

After running around, the dogs were laying around, and I decided to see what kinds of shots I could get of them. They continued to fidget, but I did get a couple keepers.

I used the FlashBender to act as a reflector to spread the light from the flash and soften it as well. This produced a nice even lighting over the whole portrait, while still producing a bit of a catch-light in Luca's eyes.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, 1/100 sec at f/2.8. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode. ISO 100. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

Such a cute pup!

- Bill

Here's a couple more of those faux smoke shots...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/22. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing and edits in Adobe Camera Raw (mouseover for original)

- Bill

Ok - I think we'll stick with the abstract stuff today.

A while back, I saw this video from Adorama:

I decided to keep things a bit simpler than Mark did. My setup (which I forgot to take a photo of) consisted of just a clear drinking glass inside our light tent with a single strobe. I used my 100mm macro lens to allow me to move in close enough to eliminate the edges of the glass.

What do you think of the results?

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec at f/22. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode and wireless control. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. RAW processing and edits in Adobe Camera Raw (mouseover for original)

This one reminds me of an abstract painting of some bonsai. Regardless of what you see, I think the technique is pretty fun, and I'm sure I'll try it some more in the future.

- Bill.

One of the things that happen when you start working with macro photography is that you often lose perspective and cross over into a realm of abstract. Magnifying things we don't normally see, and some that we can't even see with the naked eye can certainly put someone in an unfamiliar, alien world.

To me, at least, that is part of the fun...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Obviously, this is a very close-up shot of an orchid. The way the light from the flash and the intentional "over"-exposure produce an unworldly realm - almost like some glowing cave to my eyes - really seems to draw me into this photo.

- Bill