Fall colours

This one I played with a little bit in post-processing.

This scene and therefore the image already had great colours. Late fall gave the gorgeous reds and oranges, and the sun was setting, leaving the pinks on the left. The water was quite still, giving a very beautiful reflection. So, what did I do to this?

First, I cropped it. I actually cut out most of the sunset, because that isn't what I wanted to focus on. Then I added some "warmth" to the picture. It gave the sky a slightly odd cast, but I think it made the rest of the colours pop even more. Third, I increased the saturation a bit, again, just to bring out those gorgeous colours even more.

I love this picture.

Leafy Waterfall

I go back and forth a lot on whether I like this one or not!

I do like the contrast between the large, colourful leaves that are sharply in focus and the muted rocks and waterfall in the background that are softly blurred. Maybe it's just the angle I'm not sure of. Anyway, minimal post-processing here. I cropped out some distractions to either side and did a very slight smidge of sharpening.

Turtle in Turtle Town

After posting yesterday's picture of the fish in Turtle Town, I suddenly realized I've never shared the turtle who came to visit us in Turtle Town!

Turtle Town is an area on the coast of Maui where many turtles like to live. This one came swimming out to our boat, and actually ended up swimming right under us! Stunning, amazing, incredible...

Clear Water

The water in Turtle Town was so brilliantly clear!

Family Time

Dragon Boat Races

Wordless Wednesday - Surfer's Paradise

(Here I practiced straightening the horizon.)

Water water...

Sadly, this did not work out quite as well as I wanted.

I was trying to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the drops, however it wasn't bright enough out, so the high shutter speeds resulted in a very dark image. This was the best of the middle ground. It's a wading pool (in the summer and a skating rink in the winter) with large water sprays from either side. The kids have a lot of fun, but I was pleased to be able to practice this when there were no children around - so I didn't creep out any parents.

1/250 sec, f/5.0 aperture, 19.8mm focal length, ISO 80

Too good to miss

This duck was diving for lunch under the water. The view was priceless - including the feet visible beneath the surface of the water! Strangely, I actually like that it's off-center. Usually I'm not fond of it, but this one works. Maybe that's because it's only a little off?

1/125 sec, f/5.0 aperture, ISO 80, focal length 41.4mm

Rainy day

Cue sequence of events: Dog starts to bark like crazy. Woman gets up to look outside and see what's going on. Woman sees nothing of note for the dog, but a lovely photo opportunity. Woman gets camera, and does her best to get the shot without having to go outside in the rain!

As I've said before, I love my SX10, but every once in a while, the lack of true manual focus drives me to distraction. Today, I could NOT get the autofocus to do what I wanted, so here we are - this is what I could eck out with the limited manual focus the camera offers. Overall, I'm quite pleased with it. The focus may not be razor sharp, but it is very good. the background is beautifully blurry, to make a muted and not-distracting canvas for this pretty iris leaf.

And did I mention I shot this through the window? (which is a little smudgey, and that might contribute slightly to the sharpness issue.)

0.02 sec exposure, f/5.7 aperture, ISO 200, 100mm focal length

Wordless Wednesday: Calm

Disappearing act

Whoops, sorry for disappearing for a few days!

This came from the same set up as the last picture with the green bubble wrap.

The background is neutral, it's just the wall. What I wanted here was to capture the colour diffusing in to the glass. It's just plain tap water and my assistant was dripping in grenadine. It didn't really come out the way I thought it would, so the pictures weren't as neat as I was hoping, but I do still like this one. The bottom of the red is sort of what I had in mind, and I do like the thin string of red towards the water's surface.

Auto white balance, 0 exposure bias, ISO 800, aperture 4.0 and 1/80 exposure length, no flash.

Christmas boat

1) Yeah, yeah, holidays are over, blah blah. Too bad, you get another picture anyway! :-)
2) My boyfriend roundly chastised me for leaving the tripod in the vehicle. I apologize in advance for that fact, because it did have a negative impact on the picture, although I believe I took this one propped on some kind of pillar or post.

The moment I saw this boat, I loved it! They did such a great job with the lights. What I was trying to capture here: The boat's lights as well as the reflection. I don't believe the reflection would ever be perfect, as this is on the ocean, so the water is never perfectly still. And it takes so very little movement for light to "smear". As much as I like the lights though, my favourite part of this image is actually the boat just in front of it, to the right in the image. It's reflection on the water is quite crisp. I did slightly crop this picture, to cut out a distracting boat to one side, but that was the extent of post-processing.

So, how to get this picture better? A tripod is a given, but because it was on moving water, a long exposure isn't the solution for a sharp picture. I would still need a faster shutter speed. A high ISO and large aperture would be in order, I think. Sadly, I was too tired to try playing with the settings that evening, I just wanted to enjoy the view and the nice smells, so I let the camera do it's thing and I will simply try to learn from what it did.


Auto white balance, 0 exposure bias, ISO 400, aperture 3.2 and 0.8 second exposure length.

Rain drops

Okay, I admit it, I didn't take this one for the purpose I ended up liking it for.

My reason for taking this picture was because I liked the little things growing on top of this support. That part of the picture is less than spectacular, even aside from the fact that the colours are too dull. What I find wonderful about this picture is all the little splashes where the rain was hitting the water in the bay. 

Now if only there was something with some colour to liven up the picture.

Ferry wake

I had a lot of fun taking pictures on the ferry. Here's a really fun shot of the wake behind the ferry.

I love the look of a wake behind a boat, and the huge wake behind a ferry is just lovely!

Lake reflection

Yay for vacations! They give you a chance to try a whole different type of photography, by being in a different environment. Here, instead of dealing with snow, I have to figure out how to deal with fog and near-constant drizzle.

For this picture, I was trying to get two sets of trees - the real, and the reflection! I really like the way it turned out, with the skiff of fog over the water to act as a sort of barrier for the two. The sky is a little too bright, too washed out. I wasn't expecting that to be an issue on such a rainy, cloudy day!