02-04-14 Dreaming of Fall Colors

This photo was taken a few years ago on a visit to the Yashiro Japanese Garden in Olympia, Washington. Our timing was perfect (and lucky) and the garden was, as any hunter might say, "a target rich environment."

Canon 5D 1/60s f/4.0 ISO400 105mm

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Dreaming of Fall Colors by Scott Shephard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

02-03-14 Under the Sea

14 This is a GoPro frame capture of my brother-in-law luring a tropical fish closer to him using a banana as bait. I'm guessing that naturalist wouldn't like the fact that the fish have become somewhat domesticated. But it's good for the snorkelers.

01-26-14 Vigilance

After four deer swam a quarter mile from one shore to another in a bay on Lake Oahe, three kept on moving. But this one struck a pose for me.

01-25-14 Dreaming of Spring

As I browsed looking for a photo to post, this bright, pink rose called out to me. And those are real rain drops.

01-23-14 Ready To Fly

I had a version of this photo ready to go several weeks ago but I had already posted several "fall color" shots so I put the maple seed pods picture on the back burner. Last night, in a quest for a photo with rich colors to use for a class demo, I came across the maple tree photo and started to play.

And all of a sudden, my "fall color" photo was converted to black and white. Why is that? Well, in part, I am partial to black and white treatment of subjects because the emphasis switches away from color to lines, shapes and textures. But I also am posting the black and white version because just after I converted the original to this, my wife walked in the room and said, "That's nice." And I trust her critical judgement.

01-11-14 Pretty In Pink

If I had a true scientific interest in coral, I would have answers to the many things I wonder about when I look at it. I wonder, for example, about the many ways that coral seems to organize itself. I wonder about the age of coral we find along the shore. And in the case of this piece, I wonder what the pink substance is.

But I don't have a scientific interest in coral and I don't seek answers. In the case of coral I take comfort in my wonder.

Canon 5DIII 1/640s f/5.0 ISO200 100mm

01-08-14 Procession

I encountered this tree branch on a short hike on a rainy day while Deb and I were sailing in the Virgin Islands. I'm not sure if the caterpillars were seeking shelter from the rain on the underside of the branch or if they were up to something else. Though what caterpillars might be "up to" is a bit beyond me, not that I would attempt to pass judgement on the purpose of a caterpillar's life. . .

01-03-14 Countless Unseen Details

I have written about the "countless unseen details" that artists concentrate in their attempt to approach the "sublime" in their creations. In the case of this composite photo of brain coral, my title refers to Nature as the creator, not me. Frankly, all I did was record and compile the detail in this coral. But, as macro photography often does, you are being allowed to look at coral in a way you may not have done before. And there is amazing detail here that often goes unseen.

Brain coral evokes a powerful childhood memory in me, incidentally. My grandma, who lived next door to us in Sioux Fall, SD, had a perfect piece of brain coral on her front porch. I was fascinated by it largely because my older brother told me it was a petrified human brain. That was so cool. But why did Ida have a petrified human brain on her front porch, I wondered? Oh, to be a child again. . . .

01-01-14 Circle of Light

I had mentioned yesterday that I had another photo that showed a drastic difference between what the human eye sees and what the camera "sees." Yesterday, the difference had to do with focus, depth of field and bokeh. What today's photo demonstrates may not be so obvious unless you understand the concept of "dynamic range."

Dynamic range is the term used by digital photographers to describe a camera's ability to show the range of shades in a scene from very bright to very dark. And, generally speaking, cameras don't do such as good job compared to the human eye, which is brilliant.

When I saw this palm leaf, singled out by the relatively bright sky above, I didn't see what you see in the photo. I saw the highlights as bright green and the shadows as dull green. And when I took the photo and looked at it on the built-in screen, I thought, "Wow! I didn't see that." And I liked it.

I'll admit that I did use a few fancy software processes to boost the dynamic range of the photo a bit. But I didn't want to kill the highlights you see here. Is is a good photo? I can't say. But, as I've already said, I like it.

Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/4.0 ISO640 102mm

And for detail junkies, Here's the raw, unprocessed file

2014 01-02 Bright Palm by Watertown, South Dakota, photographer Scott Shephard