Day 61 – Cooperative Kitteh

Busy day! No chance to shoot anything worthy of posting here. Luckily I have critters!

We had a guest speaker tonight in our lighting class. He gave a rapid fire presentation on Speedlite flash photography and my brain is reeling. It will take me some time to absorb what he told us, but I did latch on to a couple of concepts and had to try to apply them when I got home.

I learned the difference between TTL mode and manual mode and how to lessen the intensity of the flash so I experimented with stopping down the flash so that it wasn’t as intense.

This is Maya. She was resting on the back of the sofa about an arm’s length from me. Shot at 100 ISO, f 9.0, 1/160s. Manual flash at 1/4 which I learned tonight (a) how to do and (b) is not one-fourth of intensity but rather 2 stops down. Thank goodness she puts up with me!

Day 60 – Experiment

I was experimenting with movement today. I kind of like this. I think I’ll keep playing with it.

Winter Grass and Pine Trees © Carissa Snedeker

Branches and Sky © Carissa Snedeker

And in case those don’t strike your fancy: Ducks! Shot at 5pm, in low light. I’ll keep working on this too.

Day 42 – Falconry!

We celebrated Darwin Day today. We gathered at the South Valleys library and had cake and snacks and listened to a lot of interesting presentations. We learned about neuroscience and the problem of the self. One fellow gave a talk on “Wrongness.” I gave a talk on science standards in the U.S. and Nevada. We watched a short movie on the Galapagos, played Evolution Trivia, heard some great music from Beagle and the FootyFish. The most unusual presentation was one on falconry. Two young men brought their birds (one hawk, one falcon) and told us about their hunting habits, how they socialize and interact with each other and with humans, how their nostrils have special baffles in them so they can breathe when diving through the air to capture prey. After the talk we all went outside for a demonstration which gave me an opportunity to get some up-close photos.

Day 27 – Tangled Tree and a Kitteh

I wanted to share this with you. I took this photo in the same field where I shot the wagon wheel. Behind the wagon wheel (lower left of this photo) there is a tree with a wheel that, as the tree has grown, has been absorbed into the tree itself. One of these days I’m going to sneak through the barbed wire to get a really good look at it.

Normally Maya is a bit aloof but every now and then she wants to hang out and tonight was one of those nights. She paused on the end table and I was able to snap quite a few of her lit only by the table lamp. She looks so sweet and soft.

Six Photographs

I’m starting a new photography class at UNR on Tuesday. This is the Photographic Lighting class and I’m really looking forward to it. The instructor sent us an email today telling us to bring six of our best photographs to our first session to share with the class. Here is what I’ve chosen. Regular readers will recognize that four of them come from my 365 project.

Cross-posted at Blue Lyon

Day 20 – Broken Bird

I slipped out to the duck pond by NV Energy again today. Amidst all the geese, ducks and coots, this little guy caught my eye. Hopping along on one leg, he didn’t appear to feel the least bit sorry for himself, but he just broke my heart. I converted the shot to black and white. It seemed fitting.

Day 14 – Buddy & Nina

This shot of Buddy came out as close to perfect as I could hope. I didn’t do a thing to it except convert to TIF and JPEG. This is my 365 shot for the day.

This one of Nina isn’t quite as successful as Buddy’s. I would have liked a little more sharpness in her eyes but for Nina, being the whirling dervish that she is, it’s pretty good.

Day 13

Underwater at the duck pond. This is my 365 photo.

And I wanted to put this one up too. I took this photo of my husband at dinner tonight. The light was low and reddish, so I processed in black and white.