Carwash

The joy of carrying a camera everywhere is that I get the chance to play with it whenever I get bored. Granted a lot of the photos I shoot under such circumstances aren't really worth the bother, but sometimes I find pleasing results in the most unexpected place.

I imagine the guy washing the windscreen of my car thought I was a bit crazy when he saw me taking this shot, but I was happy with the result.

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Linking up with Ruby Tuesday Too, Our World Tuesday, Water World Wednesday, Wednesday Waters and Wordless Wednesday.

Cam O'Flage

I don't often take photos of flowers growing in nature. Usually my flower photos show flowers growing on potted plants. More often than not they're growing on my bonsai trees. However there are occasions when I need something a bit different and in May 2011 I needed to find a more natural view in a hurry.

I didn't have to look far as the daisy bush in my garden was covered with flowers. It's not a beautiful plant though and I wasn't sure that I'd be able to get anything interesting, but I had to try.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this little guy hiding in one of the flowers.

He moved around quite a bit during this shoot, but was cooperative enough to let me get several shots I liked.

I'm still not sure which one I like best.

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Linking up to Monday Mellow Yellows, Macro Monday and Through My Lens.

Me and My Shadow

This moth wasn't nearly as spectacular as the one I shared yesterday, and the photo would almost certainly  have lacked interest but for some lucky lighting. I wish I knew what made him position himself so perfectly facing into his shadow.

It's been quite a while since I took this photo and I can't remember what I was actually shooting that evening, but I was using my extension tubes and had the camera on a tripod, so everything was set up perfectly when I spotted this moth on the wall. He was really tiny - much, much smaller than he appears in this picture.

I wish I'd seen him with his wings spread out, but no doubt if I'd tried to get him to move he'd have flown away.

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Linking up to ShadowShotSunday and Camera-Critters.

The Big Brown Moth

I'm not often lucky enough to find moths or butterflies that are prepared to keep still for long enough for me to get decent photos, and it seemed that things would be no different when I first came across this moth, perched high up on a wall of my greenhouse. There was just no way that I could get close enough to get the shot I wanted and reluctantly I was forced to give up on what I was sure would be a one-off opportunity.

Second chances rarely happen, but this time I was lucky. Two days later I found him on the garage wall at just the right height for me to get the shot I wanted without having to do any uncomfortable contortions.

It was only later, when looking at the photo, that I noticed how much his wings resemble a curled-up leaf.

It's nearly two years since I took this photo and I've never seen another moth quite like him. Perhaps I never will.

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Linking up to Saturday's Critters.

The Palm Before the Storm

In January I needed a photo of clouds for an online challenge. As the rules dictated that the photo had to be taken during that week, I kept my eyes open for something interesting in my immediate surroundings and discovered some interesting cloud activity around a palm tree growing in my next-door neighbours' garden. This was the resulting image.

In the weeks that followed I decided to see if I could get an interesting time lapse video of the cloud activity around that tree, so I set up my video camera on a tripod, in hope that the weather would cooperate.

After a few false starts during which my camera setting were way off what was required, I finally got the technical side sorted out. One sunny afternoon I set the camera up and left it to film unattended while I got on with other things. After I while I was starting to despair of getting anything worthwhile as there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Then, as it typical of Johannesburg weather, things changed very quickly, and the result was a video in which there were heavy rain and a few bolts of lightning. If my memory serves me correctly we had hail too, though it's not apparent from this footage.

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Linking to Skywatch Friday, Blue Monday and The Ultimate Rabbit Hole.

Lock

Some days I have fun taking photos of things that are really ordinary, like the lock in this shot. I liked the way it seemed to be smiling at me.

Taking the photos is only a small part of the job though. I often spend a lot of time messing around in Photoshop, producing several different edits of the same photo.

I had a really tough time deciding which edit I wanted to share in this post.

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Linking up to Little Things Thursday.

Urban Forest

Some people claim that Johannesburg is the world's largest man made forest. In fact there's even a Facebook community celebrating that idea.

Others dispute that a city can be called a forest, but regardless Johannesburg certainly has a lot of trees.

These photos was taken on a sunny summer afternoon in 2014, while I was caught in a traffic jam.

There are masses of these pine trees growing on an island in the middle of the road, separating the traffic going in opposite directions. If you look closely you can just catch a glimpse of some of the cars headed the other way.

Several pedestrians walked past us while the traffic refused to budge.

Sometimes being in a car isn't the quickest way to reach your destination!

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This post is part of Outdoor Wednesday and Friday Greens.

Red and Gold

I've never really been a fan of abstract art, so it seems a bit strange to me that over the years I've developed a taste for abstract photography.

This is a macro of a red ribbon which I shot way back in 2011, newly edited to make use of the superior software I've acquired over the last 5 years.

My original 2011 edit showed a lot less detail.

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This post is part of Ruby Tuesday Too and Wordless Wednesdays.

Red Flower, Yellow Flower

Even though photography has been one of my hobbies for more than half my life, I'm still struggling to develop my own photographic style.

One thing I particularly enjoy, however, is showing the world in a way that the human eye doesn't normally get to see it. One way of doing this is to get up close and personal to tiny things like I did in my post about "The Fly".

Another way is by choosing lenses which show a distorted picture of the world.

I don't have a fisheye lens, but I do have a fisheye adaptor which screws into the front of my lens and allows me to get up close to little things, making them appear large in the photo, while making background items appear tiny. That's how I managed to make these flowers appear larger than the trees in the background.

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This post is part of Monday Morning Yellows, Today's Flowers, Macro Monday and FloralFridayFoto.

Shadow People

Looking through old photos for this blog is proving quite inspiring. I've already come across a few long-forgotten works using techniques I haven't tried for years.

This is one such example. It was created about six years ago and is a composite of two rather ordinary photos. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

I think it's time that I tried out the technique I used here on some of my newer photos.

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Visit Shadow Shot Sunday to see what other bloggers have to offer.

The Fly

When looking for subjects for my photos, I try to look beyond the obvious.

A couple of weeks ago I had to fetch a friend from her flat and while waiting for her to come down to the car I was looking around to see if anything interesting caught my eye. It didn't take long to find something.

When she arrived she saw me taking photos and asked if I was shooting a pretty orange flower that was growing close to where I stood.

I wasn't. The tiny subject that captured my attention was this fly.

Although I don't have a dedicated macro lens, I was quite pleased with the amount of detail my camera managed to capture. At full size one can see lots of tiny hairs and there's also quite a bit of colour in a creature that appears black to the human eye.

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 If you would like to use this image, you can download a high resolution copy free of charge at Stockvault.net.

The Painter

Although I carry a camera everywhere I go, I sometimes miss interesting photo opportunities because I'm too embarrassed to pull the camera out of its bag and get the desired shot. That's probably my biggest weakness as a photographer - instead of going ahead and doing the job at hand, I tend to worry about what other people will think.

Today when I was out shopping I spotted this scene, but I nearly let fear get the better of me.

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This post is part of  "Through My Lens".

The Crab

Sometimes strange creatures turn up in the most unexpected places.

Way back in 2010 I came across this little guy lurking among my bonsai trees. Night was falling and I was forced to use on-camera flash, but I was determined to get the shot. It was a wise decision because by morning he'd vanished and I've never seen him or one of his relations since. I still wonder where he came from as there are no bodies of water anywhere near where I live.

When I chose this old photo for today's post I decided to re-edit it as I'd like to think my editing skills have improved over the last six years. I'm glad I did because viewing the photo at 100% magnification I discovered a tiny surprise. I always assumed that the white spot next to his eye was a reflection caused by the flash, but I was mistaken.

It's actually a tiny little snail!

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If you would like to use this image, you can download a high resolution copy free of charge at Stockvault.net.

In the Beginning

I don't remember exactly when I got my first serious camera, but I'm pretty sure that I must have been somewhere in my twenties at the time. Although that camera was big and heavy, I carried it everywhere I went and I've rarely been seen without a camera since.

Over the years I've accumulated thousands of photos which have been sitting unseen on my computer, so I guess that it's time to send them out into the world where, hopefully, somebody will like them.

My aim for this blog is to try to share something with you every day. Some of the photos will be new, but I also plan to dig into my archives and see what buried treasure I can find.

I thought it would be appropriate to start with a photo showing a beginning, so I chose this photo of a mango seedling shortly after germination. Today this seedling has become a small tree which is growing in a pot among my bonsai trees.

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If you would like to use this image, you can download a high resolution copy free of charge at Stockvault.net.