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.

Gallery Milestone

Hard to believe that in a few years this would happen...

A few weeks ago my gallery on Fred Miranda's web site passed the 2 million views mark. I just want to thank the people that look, and those that took the time to comment. I have other galleries on my own web site and on Photo.net, but here is the link to the James Markus FM gallery

Dishwater Dreams

 

Vision of the future, and reality are two very contrasting themes in my life. Dreaming is no problem, but

the reality is usually far less colorful. When I think about the 1960's I remember an explosion of colors.
Colors we had never seen before outside of nature - like fluorescent shades of various primary colors showed up in publishing, and the culture. While experimenting with common tap water and dish soap I found little areas of this explosive color. I set out to capture one of these fleeting intersections of color. Here is one of the intersections, and a 100% crop of a piece of the image. Lets hope our futures become as colorful.

 

Both of these were shot with a Nikkor 105mm f1.8 ais manual focus lens, and extension tubes.
Click to view a larger versions

Time Travel

A convergence of old...

A couple months ago my mother gave me this pocket watch. Its value is that it belonged to my grandfather; whom I never meet. However, I was born on his birthday and share his first name as my middle name (Paul). Yesterday, I gave the stem a twirl, and the watch leapt to life. The rhythm was amazingly precise, and I thought about how to capture that accuracy. This is a 150 second slice of time as recorded by the watch. Notice the perfect spacing of the minute hand. So, what is the "convergence of old"? Well, first there is the old man that took this image, me. Next, I employed a 35+ year old manual focus Nikkor lens (105mm f4.0 ais micro), and of course the watch itself.

Whimsical Photo Contest Grand Prize Winner

 Title: "Chili Fire"

 The expression by David is exactly what I was going for in this humorous image. It is a straight forward shot requiring no Photoshop special effects. Just timing, some preparatory work, and simple lighting.

Photo.net's "Whimsical Photo Contest" guest judge awarded my entry the grand prize a couple weeks ago. The prize is this really cool wireless 2TB portable hard drive. It has a battery that can last up to 20 hours, and a SD slot. The judges' comments can be found HERE as well as the other winning entries.