Inside a Tulip

There are a lot of colorful flowers in Spring, but tulips are kind of special. They bloom in various colors and their blossom's shape is beautiful.

55mm  f/10  1/125sec  ISO800

Some days ago I was taking photos of tulips in the garden area of some backyard. Usually you take photos of the blossoms from the side to point out their beautiful shape and color. I also found some with a mostly orange blossom with yellow shades. It looked awesome. I always try to find some different perspectives by shooting from below or from above. This time I wanted to know how it looks like if I'm pointing my camera to the inner part of the blossom from straight above. I was amazed by the pattern and its symmetry that I saw. The 6 blossom leaves form a nice hexagon with one color at the bottom and a hard cut into another color. Each lower part is disrupted by some item in an opposite color. And in the center of it all a thick main part with a hairy top. I never payed that attention to the inner part of a tulip blossom, but I was amazed of that view and I still am.

55mm  f/10  1/125sec  ISO800

I took these photos with my EOS 600D camera and my EF-S 18-55mm standard zoom kit lens. This time I've set the camera into Av mode with a fixed aperture value and let the camera automatically calculate shutter speed. I chose an aperture value of f/10 to get a nicely clear photo with all the main parts quite sharp. The disadvantage of that value is that the background becomes quite detailed and distracts from the main object. But it is not a big problem here because the blossom has such a strong and different color that it still clearly separates from background. With that high aperture value I needed to set ISO up to 800 to get reasonable shutter speeds. I zoomed out to maximum focal length to get largest possible magnification. I tried to take a position directly above the blossom to get the best symmetry shot, but I didn't reach it perfectly. Anyway, I'm very happy with the result and I love it.

Dogs looking out of their homes

Last February I visited a Husky farm and attended a short dog sled tour. When we cam back from that tour I has some time to play with the dogs. As I already mentioned in a former post I love Huskys. At this farm dogs where held in kennels where two dogs shared on home. When walking around looking at all the dogs I noticed this relaxed one, looking bored out of the opening of his home. It was such a funny scene that I had to take a photo of it. I decided to shoot through the kennel's fence to not disturb the dog in his relaxation. Fortunately the fence holes were large enough.

55mm  f/5.6  1/20sec  ISO200

At the next kennel I was surprised to see a similar scene, that was even a bit more interesting. Again one dog was looking out of his home. This time not in a bored manner but watching carefully what's going on around him. It is so funny to see that the dogs behave similar to us humans. Watching out the window to see what's going on at the street. These dogs are simply gorgeous. I again took the photos through the kennel's fence to not disturb the dog and destroy the funny scene.

55mm  f/5.6  1/30sec  ISO200

I had my EOS 600D and the EF-S 18-55mm kit lens with me at the farm. As usually my camera was set into P mode and calculated aperture and shutter speed automatically. It was an overcast day which results in poor light conditions on a Winter day in northern Norway. But I didn't want to set ISO value too high to prevent image noise. I have chosen a fixed value of 200 for ISO, which resulted in relatively slow shutter speeds. But fortunately I could stabilize the camera at the kennel's fence and the dogs were not moving. So I got some sharp shots anyway.

Symphony of Lights in Hong Kong

Some days ago I was talking with some friends about a photo of Hong Kong shown in a magazine. This talk reminded me of my own visit to the city several years ago. While browsing the photos of that vacation in my archive I came across the ones I've taken during a spectacular light, laser and fireworks show. I had the luck to have been at the right time to the right place.

11.6mm  f/3  0.7sec  ISO200

During my visit to the city of Hong Kong in May 2005 the spectacular "Symphony of lights" was performed every evening. I got noticed about that event by posters and signs all around the city's streets. It was announced as a spectacular night show with laser beams, lights and fireworks from the roofs of Hong Kong's skyscrapers. Music will be broadcasted at some radio stations. My plan was to go to the harbor front of Kowloon at the opposite site of Victoria Harbor with a beautiful view at all the skyscrapers. When arriving there in the evening the scene was amazing. All the building were illuminated, some with changing colors, others with changing light patterns. It was such a beautiful sight, even without the fireworks.

11.6mm  f/3  0.8sec  ISO200

The harbor front was filling with people and then the show started. First there were some light spots stretching their beams through the air over the harbor. A first show with colorful fireworks from the roof of several skyscrapers followed. Many people were wearing headphones to follow the broadcasted music. I had none, but even without music the show was fantastic. The low hanging clouds were illuminated by the fireworks and the water of Victoria Harbor was reflecting the colorful light as well. The show continued with some bright green laser rays and a second amazing fireworks part. It was so nice to be there at the harbor with many others tightly following and enjoying this awesome event.

As this was long before my DSLR era, I took the photos with my Nikon E8700 camera. I switched the camera to night shot mode, which resulted in longer exposure times. To prevent shakes I placed the camera onto some wall and activated a 10 seconds release timer. Every now and then I pressed the release button. I also changed camera's direction from time to time to get other parts of the skyline framed. At that time I was amazed about the resulting photos. I am still fascinated, but today I would say the quality is not that good. But,  because of that spectacular scene I want to share them anyway.

Silhouette Grabs The Sun

I love to play with the sun and to create photos of silhouettes. This time I was at the beach promenade of Westerland at the island of Sylt, where this statue is erected. It shows a woman waving her hand to greet sailors, I guess.

42mm  f/18  1/800s  ISO200

When walking by I was blended by the sun and saw the statue's silhouette. I took my camera a started to take photos of that scene. First I took a position where the sun was hidden behind the woman's head, like I did it already in former silhouette shots. But then I got the idea to move a bit and let the waving hand partially hide the sun to create an impression as if the woman is reaching the sun and grabbing it. I like the result. Due to the high aperture value the sun appears nicely as a star. Unfortunately the statue looks like as if the woman has lost a leg, but when you take a close look, you will see the knee of the second leg behind the first one.

Silhouettes look great when turned into gray scale photos. This is what I first did with this photo in post processing. When comparing the gray scale photo with the original one I noticed shades of blue sky and yellow horizon. I was curious how it would look like, if I bring out these colours by increasing saturation a lot. And I must say, I like the colored photo more that the black and white one. It looks more interesting to me.

I have taken the photo with my EOS 600D and my EF-S 18-55mm standard zoom kit lens. Camera was set into P mode and calculated aperture and shutter speed automatically. ISO fast at a fixed value of 200.