New Gallery, and Contests

Last spring I began competing in Viewbug's photo contests instead of the usual on line competitions. There were a number of reasons for this, but the number of eyeballs was one of the main ones. After about 8 months of entering photo contests on Viewbug seven entries have placed and/or won recognition, 77 have been deemed "Top Class", and another 878 entries have received "Peer Awards". Four of the seven Viewbug awards were won by this image.

The gallery is still coming together, but I like the format and style of image presentation. You can see my gallery at this link HERE

By the river fall colors

  Had an opportunity to work with the Nikkor 135mm f2.0 ai again. It's a beautiful lens. This was photographed by the dam in Grand Rapids Michigan on a very pleasant November evening.

Men fishing at dusk

Water over the dam

The lens faithfully captured the color and mood of the evening. It resisted flare, ghosting, and comma under some harsh conditions.

Ooooops

Seems I haven't posted in a while.  I got a bit busy, and I needed to recharge the soul. In the last 6 months I began participating in another photo site which aesthetically I liked it's design. I also let expire my FM gallery which reached 2.3 million views. Lots of views, but almost no action. So, the approximately 1200 images in the gallery were all  thrown away. Cathartic! 

I created an image for one of the new site's photo contest, and it won some awards. The new gallery is linked here, and here is the image.

Macro with different lenses and techniques

There are many ways to shoot macro photography. Each of the these were shot with a different lens and technique. The lenses used were a Tokina 17mm reversed (mounted with the rear of the lens facing forward), a Nikkor 20mm ais reversed, a Nikkor 28mm ais reversed, a Nikkor 105mm micro, and a Nikkor 135mm + extension tubes. (Click photo to see larger versions)

Title: Liberty - Tokina 17mm f3.5 ai reversed

Title: Eye of the Needle - Nikkor 20mm f2.8 ais reversed

 Title: Wizard's Hat - Nikkor 28mm f2.8 ais reversed

Title: Sunflower #9 - Nikkor 105mm f4.0 ais micro

 Title: Standing out from the crowd - Nikkor 135mm f2.0 ais + extension tube

These are some of my favorites so I entered them into Photo.net's February Macro photo contest. Of course there are many wonderful entries that you might enjoy seeing. Click HERE to check it out.

Valentine

I like to give photos of flowers to Barb for Valentine's day. There are lots of reasons, but I think she likes it this way now. This year I ended up with three keepers of Gerbera Daisies (a favorite), and I liked this particular color this year. I really appreciate the bokeh (out of focus areas) that the two lenses I used to shoot these images render. The first two are using the Nikkor 105mm f4.0 ais micro, and the last one is the Nikkor 105mm f1.8 ais with an extension tube.