golden gate bridge II

I love this bridge. So much. Is there a better bridge? I think not. I love driving across the Golden Gate Bridge. Better yet, I love being a passenger driving across so I can take pictures. I love looking at it from San Francisco, or Berkeley, or an airplane. I have never walked over it, but I have now gone UNDER it. Took a 90 minute cruise of the bay with San Francisco Whale Tours. Don't let the name fool you, 90 minutes round trip from Pier 39 is not going to get you anywhere near a whale. We did see porpoises in the harbor which were frankly adorable, but I digress.

This was another journey with the new 100mm. I really like these photos, however the focus is not tack sharp or really that sharp at all upon zooming in in Lightroom. Was this due to shooting from a moving boat? Am I expecting too much from a distance? The jury is out, hopefully I'll get under there again for another try.

january flowers

New year, new lens! After lots of thought about adding another lens since upgrading to the full frame 6D. I finally bought Canon's 100mm macro. The Macro Class kind of sealed the deal. I'm still getting used to it, and as always I'm somewhat focus obsessed. I need to see how crisp it stays how far away. But so far, I like!

Today was a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco. I didn't have as much time to get out as I would have liked, but was able to snap some blooming trees near my house. Same place on Church Street I took pictures two years ago March, so hopefully the'll stay in bloom for a while. Or maybe it's a sign of rapidly shifting weather patterns that will soon have my neighborhood and all of California underwater. Ok, enjoy the flowers!

macro class

I had a fun afternoon yesterday in a Macro photography class that Canon offered in downtown SF. They have a great series of classes that are all really affordable and in off-work hours. See the list of classes here. The Macro class was more of a set up of cool things to take pictures of, not really formal instruction.  I was surprised how low sales-y this was, I would have easily sat through (might have even preferred) a half hour on all of the ins and outs of their macro lens line up but they were like, you can borrow this one, sorry it's all we have. Anyway, the lens I borrowed was great, the 100mm f/2.8 L series (think I'll still buy the lower end version of the 100mm). Then around the room they had set ups of a variety of macro situations.

What did I learn? Well, this really is the opposite of portrait photography, it's all about tripods and f/11, f/16 to get as much clarity as possible, not very mobile, not about wide apertures at all.  I also learned how to zoom in while in Live Mode to get crisper manual focus.

The coolest set up by far was water dripping into a pan. This was just a plastic cup with a hole in the  bottom suspended over a black plate with a swirly watercolor on the wall behind it. Tripod in front, remote shutter release. These are mostly at 1/125 sec at f/16.

There was also a set up of a glycerine drop on a leaf, which nicely reflected flowers behind it. However the glycerine had started to sag a little:

Orchids with some water spray, this set up fired off two remote flashes. Remote flashes are still a mystery to me. 

 And if you see me hanging around toy train supply stores it's because of this set up.