So after a couple requests for more landscape photography, I made a point to get out and see what I could find. We stopped at McConnells Mill State Park, and made our way to Kildoo Falls which was mostly frozen, but the water still flowed within a column of ice which really made for an interesting experience. We had visited last year, and you could hear the water rushing inside the column of ice, but I especially liked the little window that was open this time.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D Mark II, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM at 18mm, 1/320th second at f/5.6. ISO 800. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

You can sort of see the water splashing through the mostly frozen waterfall, but the video below really helps to illustrate what a cool effect it was...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D Mark II, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM.

I've got a couple more to share from this little trip, so stay tuned.

- Bill

Ok - so admittedly, I intentionally have not posted in a while, but that was so that I could post my 600th post on the six year anniversary of starting my blog. A lot has happened over six years, and I've taken a ton of photographs (I honestly don't even know how many!). I have done some bigger posts for other anniversaries, so I wanted to do something similar again... but how to do it.

Then it hit me, why not take a look back at my top six favorite styles of photography. Some have been a strong interest since the start (like macro photography of spiders and bugs), while some are pretty new (videography - ok, I know it isn't technically photography, but it still requires a camera!), and some I only enjoy sometimes (landscape), though others I'd do every day if I could (underwater), and some I work hard to get (wildlife), and others that I don't work for but allow it to come to me as the subject warrants (black & white). Of course sometime I am doing multiple styles of photography all at once. But let's take a quick stroll through some examples of each style with some photos that may have gotten over-shadowed or missed for whatever reason throughout the years...

MACRO Definitely my favorite form of photography, macro gives me the chance to show things that most people overlook or never even see. Of course, a lot of the time, those things are the "creepy crawlies" and spiders that most people don't want to see anyway... but I find those things fascinating. Particularly jumping spiders - my absolute favorite macro subject. But macro can be very versatile - spiders, bugs, flowers, abstracts, underwater, fungi, just about anything. And when other forms of photography just aren't feasible because of bad light conditions or such, there are always macro subjects to be found.

BLACK & WHITE This is a style of photography that I have to admit I don't work at at all. I let this one come to me. If the scene or subject screams to me to be shot in black & white, I might see it while I'm taking the photo or sometimes not until I'm home and processing the photos on the computer and sometimes still not until months or years later looking back at the photo. The great thing about B&W photography is it can be merged with any type of photography, and as you'll see, I've tried it on just about every style of photography I do. Actually, that makes me realize that I have yet to ever convert a macro spider photo to black & white... I guess that will be an upcoming project! While I was tempted to process some new photos for this little set, I decided to just dig through the archives to find ones I'd processed previously and get them some due screen time...

WILDLIFE Wildlife photography spans a number of areas for me... birds, reptiles and amphibians, mammals, truly wild, and zoo kept animals. All of it is a huge draw to me. Luckily, Anya and I have moved to a place where we get exposed to so much more wildlife than we did before. As such, I was able to pick this entire assortment from photos I've taken right here on our property or close by (technically the owl and the snake were from the local park where we go to walk the dogs). This is definitely what I probably consider one of my most difficult forms of photography. The amount of patience and luck required are simply staggering at times, and the time investment is one I wish I could devote more effort to. But as I said, luckily all of this is right outside our door, so the convenience factor certainly is helping me to improve and get better shots all the time!

UNDERWATER Well - what can I say about underwater photography other than I wish I could get to do it more often! It is a very challenging form of photography, and quite often by the time I'm getting into a groove and starting to feel like I'm able to get more creative with my shots, that's exactly when the trip is over and it will be another year before I get to try again. Honestly, if I could go diving every day, or even every weekend to hone my underwater photography skills, I would. For now though, I'll just have to be happy with the once a year that I do get to go experience and record such amazing things!

So there you have it... six styles of photography, six years worth of trips, experiences, passion, sights... all recorded and shared here in 600 posts. Amusingly enough, at three years, I made the claim that I looked forward to three more years but figured a site redesign was in order before then and I'm still using the exact same site. I do think that needs to change, but part of my reluctance is the fantastic compendium that this site has become for me. I quite often refer back to old posts to share things again or even just a reference for myself. So hopefully I can figure out the challenge of upgrading this site while maintaining the integrity of all of the history that I've built here. For now though, I'll focus on continuing to capture and share photos like these!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

PS: If you are interested in exploring further into some of these examples, the section headers and the "button" below are links to the history of posts that have been tagged with that label, so if you want to see more of any specific style of photography, just click and explorer!

Otherwise known as "What I did over my Christmas break" - ok, not the whole break, but I did spend a couple days off-and-on working on this video... picking clips, editing them, putting together a sequence, and then finally picking a song to go with it. Take a look and let me know what you think.

For the most immersive experience, I recommend viewing in full screen mode.

Technical Data: GoPro Hero4 Black with Backscatter 3.1 Dive Filters, Edited in Adobe Premiere Elements 11. Music: Keeps Me Breathing by Approaching Nirvana

Enjoy!

- Bill

Alright - it is time to liven things up a bit! Why not come along for a dive today. We'll go visit the site called Thunderdome.

The story is that there was a French TV show called Thunderdome where they would have people free dive down into this giant cage they have at the bottom. There, the free divers would try to collect pearls or something that was being shot out of a cannon. The free divers were able to get breathes of air from "mermaids" who had scuba equipment. The problem was that free divers hold their breath... air from scuba equipment is compressed, so if you try to hold your breath with compressed air in your lungs and you ascend, the air expands and you can have severe injuries and death. The show apparently ran into this problem and people were hurt or killed.

They canceled the show, and left the cage there. It has fallen apart, but still provides for a cool dive site, and you can see how the marine life is making use the structure and making it their own.

Technical Data: GoPro Hero4 Black with Backscatter 3.1 Dive Filters

I've got tons of videos from this trip because I mounted my GoPro on top of my Ikelite housing for the 7D, so I was able to take video and macro stills all week long on almost every dive! So stay tuned, there are tons of other goodies to come!

- Bill

So I made several attempts at capturing a time-lapse video of the recent Perseid meteor shower. I don't think the meteors show up in the video (the streaks you see shoot across the sky are airplanes), but you do get to see the Milky Way move across the sky...

I've posted it to both Vimeo (above) and Youtube (below) to try and figure out which rendering I like better.

- Bill

We were just about to leave to walk the dogs when Anya noticed a commotion out on our pond. As it turns out, it was a pair of snapping turtles mating. I moved in as close as I could and took some photos as well as some video...

These things were absolutely massive - if I had to guess, I'd say at least 60 lbs each - and they definitely weren't very graceful bobbing around in the water. They did make some grunting noises that I tried to capture in the video, but they either weren't making the noises or the camera didn't pick it up well enough. I waited around until they finished and split up, and I was hoping to catch the female hauling herself out of the pond to go lay the eggs, but after some quick research, it appears that she won't lay the eggs right away (and in fact can carry the viable sperm for several years, so they can even lay viable eggs in years during which they do not mate). How's that for a fascinating bit of info?

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM (borrowed) at 400mm, 1/640th sec at f/8. ISO 800. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM (borrowed) at 400mm, 1/640th sec at f/8. ISO 400. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

And be sure to check back this weekend for a special Mother's Day post... I don't want to ruin any surprises but it includes eight eyes and eight legs!!!

- Bill

Ok - I haven't posted in a couple weeks, but I have a really good reason! For the past 5 days, my camera has been taking photographs non-stop. Yes - five straight days of taking photos, once every minute, to make the following video.

After trying time lapse with the moon rise, I thought I should try something else again soon. With the weather being absolutely disgusting of late and really wishing spring would get here sooner, I thought some flowers blooming might look cool. Right around the time that I did the other time lapse, Anya had brought home a single hyacinth in a small pot from the grocery store, but it bloomed before I had the thought to try it. Luckily, the next weekend was Valentine's Day, so I bought Anya another hyacinth and then quickly stole it back.

To be honest, I did not originally expect this time lapse to take as long as it did. Anya's first hyacinth seemed to bloom in about 24 hours, so I was planning on that. What ended up happening was 5 days (and as you'll see, I cut it off a little early too). In order to achieve that, I had to change memory cards three times a day, camera batteries twice a day, and batteries in my intervalometer (the device that handles taking all the photos on the schedule) once a day. Because I chose to make exposures once per minute, I had plenty of time to do each of those maintenance tasks in between images without any problem.

In the end, I had 7228 images totaling 162GB. I tried processing all of them into a video, but it ended up being about 4 minutes long, and that just felt a bit too long, so I decided to drop half of the images to trim down the total length of the video. I might go back into the video processing software (Premiere Elements 11) to see if I can figure out how to either speed up the video or whether the 4 minute video does work. Having more frames in the video would make it smoother, but I still like the shorter running length.

Anyway, here's the current version of this video...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm, 1/6th second at f/8.0. ISO 100. 3614 frames taken every 60 seconds. RAW processing Adobe Camera Raw, video rendered in Adobe Premiere Elements 11.

Oh - something I failed to do on the last time lapse was to accompany it with some music. It took me a while to decide on the final piece to use, and part of that decision was based on the running time of the video. In the end, though, I think it really fits the video well. If you are curious, the piece is Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium.

Thanks for viewing.

- Bill

So for a recent assignment on a photography forum that I post to regularly, one of the members picked "Time and Motion" as the theme. That instantly got me thinking time lapse! I've been wanting to try my hand at time lapse for a long time, and as things usually go, procrastination got the better of me.

Anyway, this apparently was the right motivation!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 31mm, 1 second at f/5.0. ISO 2500. 695 frames taken every 5 seconds. RAW processing Adobe Camera Raw, video rendered in Adobe Premiere Elements 11.

As you can see, it isn't the best attempt, but I definitely learned a few things to keep in mind for next time.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Bill

Ok - as promised... this trip had sharks... lots of sharks... up close and personal...

Man - that was fun... it gets better and crazier (remember - we've got a shark feeding dive coming up later in the week!)

- Bill

Ok - I've had this video sitting around for literally almost two years... I finally fixed up my home PC to the point that I can actually edit videos and put a couple clips together to make this video.

Enjoy...

Sorry if the shaky camera operator is making you seasick... I need to work on that.

- Bill