There's a Mouse in the Garage!

So we noticed that a container for bird feeder peanuts on a shelf in our garage always had husks around it, then we noticed on closer inspection what looked like Niger seed on the shelf too.  I thought my wife topped up the Niger feeder, she thought I had.  When we spoke about it, turns out neither of us had topped up the Niger seed and on closer inspection it turns out they were mouse droppings.

Ok, time for a trap, not the springy shut type but a laser trap.  After setting peanuts in the same spot on the shelf for several nights (which were all gone by morning) it was time to set the trap and get a look at my nocturnal visitor.

I rigged my Phototrigger to shine a laser beam over the peanuts, and prefocussed my Canon 7D with a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens onto the same place.  I also had a studio flash (operated by radio control) pointing at the same spot (with a snoot and honeycomb, lighting the scene from behind the camera).

Click the image to enlarge

Then it was just a matter of waiting and hoping.  As things cooled down the beam would wander and the 7D would start to rattle off pictures, so I had to frequently check and reset things, hoping this wouldn't put off the little fella from making an appearance.

But then, he (I've no idea if its a he or not) put in appearance, apparently the lure of the peanuts was too strong and he ignored all the new stuff that had appeared, and the blinding flashes of light!

Click the image to enlarge

I think he's kinda cute.

Peter.

PS: No animals were hurt during this photoshoot!

For info the PhotoTrigger website is here http://www.phototrigger.co.uk/

The making of the Dangling Spider

Freshly spurred on by a recent afternoon spent taking pictures of Spiders with other members of our local camera club I wanted to try and take things up a notch.  I had in mind a macro picture of a Spider dangling from a single gossamer thread against an all black backdrop, looking like it had descended at night and was only lit by the moon.

Hmm, ok where to start! I managed to find a Spider that would do the job, one of those fat ones in the garden with a white cross on its back, they seem to make a web almost on demand and with a small stick you an carefully catch the web and lift it, and the Spider into the air.

But how to light it (remember its at night) , how to focus on it (its macro so shallow DOF) and how to freeze it so it is sharp when it will be moving, as may its appendages be.

I came up with a solution, and made a video showing how it was done, its only a couple of minutes long and I hope you like it (literally "like" it :-) ).

One of the resulting images

You can view more images here just search on "spider"

The Photo Trigger was supplied by High Speed Photography UK and the "spare pair of hands" are from Amazon, amazing value at less than £5 each, I use them loads.

Cheers Peter.

Flowers, not that easy

For a challenge I decided to try taking pictures of a flower sprayed with water.  I purchased a bunch of flowers, with some exotic types in it for us to work with and armed with a couple of LED lights, off we went. 

It soon became clear that to do them justice was not going to be as simple as I thought.  I deleted all of mine! the best one is here so you can imagine what the others were like!

I used a Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro lens, but somehow was not getting the results I wanted.

 

I'll have to read up on technique and have another go at it.

In other news I put my first "tip" video on to Youtube the other day. 

I'd been helping a friend with a shot of some flying Gannets he'd taken on the Farnes Islands.  It was a great shot but there was a gap in the shot where there were no birds and it looked odd.  We tried slecting birds and pasting them in but that didn't look right.  Somehow we found that you can use the Patch tool in Photoshop CS5, in reverse and in this case got perfectly blended birds to fill the empty space.  It was particularly pleasing as it took seconds and blended the different shades of sky perfectly.

You can see what I mean on the video here on a shot of Manx Shearwaters flying in Wales.

So if you have any tips on taking flower pictures, or comments on the video clip, please let me know.

Cheers, Peter.

Flickr stream

Locusts!!!!!!!!

Now the nights have drawn in, the opportunities for photography are reduced.  So, wanting something to do, I purchased a tub of locusts from a local pet shop (that was a strange moment, "what type of reptile do you have?" um...... ).

I invited some friends over and we set up one studio light with softbox, a twig, a co-operative locust and spent the evening trying Macro photography. 

I used a Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro lens I bought earlier this year, but had used more for portraits than macro. 

Its really not that easy to get good results, getting a sharp image is one thing, getting a good composition whilst getting a sharp image is another thing altogether.

Still I enjoyed the effort, and am happy with the results, though can't help feeling there's a killer shot I haven't figured out yet!

Work in progress.

Quick tip, if you try this yourself, you might want to put them in the refrigerator for a few minutes to slow them down a bit.

You can see some more on my photostream Flickr