Sea World

In the last part of my vacation blog series, I visited Sea World San Antonio.  Sea World was having its Memorial Day "Here's to the Heroes" event where military personnel were offered free admission to the park.  I can never argue with a company that is willing to go so far for our troops.  Beyond that, I think that Sea World gives you fantastic value for your money.

My personal mission with this visit was to get a great picture of Shamu jumping out of the water.  On previous visits with my point and shoot, I either didn't have the zoom or the shutter speed to get a good shot.  To put it lightly, I had a lot of great pictures of Shamu back in the water after a jump.

First up is "Azul", the dolphin, beluga whale, acrobatics show.  There is a lot of color in this show, from parrots to synchronized swimmers.  I really worked on my exposures after the show to be able to really capture the color.

Here, the trainer was hitching a ride across the pool.  A fast shutter speed and a little luck were needed.  The dolphins kicked up a lot of water and she was "splashed out" in a lot of the pictures.

Next up was the Sea Lion comedy show.  This show has always been a favorite of mine.  Lots of laughs to be had.

If you notice, the sun shining on the light colored ground makes it very bright compared to the set and actors.  It gets pretty tricky when shooting.  What I did to counteract that was to darken the picture using the 'levels' tool, then enhance the lighting by decreasing the brightness.  The ground is still a bit bright, but much better than the beginning.

This is one of my favorite shots of Shamu.  The cloud of water around Shamu was produced with a fast shutter speed.  I had the camera set to burst mode so that I could hold the shutter down and let the camera fire off consecutive pictures.

I think I still have some room to improve on these pictures, so I really want to go back again soon.  We'll see what happens next time.

Finally, we get to the fireworks.  These were preceded by a concert by the Lackland Air Force band.  It was a great show and great fireworks afterward.  The structure in the background is the Steel Eel Roller Coaster.  This is well worth taking the family to see.

Until next time...

Sleepy Time at the San Antonio Zoo

This is part 2 of 3 of my San Antonio vacation.  As a lot of you know, I really enjoy going to the zoo.  The unpredictability of the animals combined with the challenge of bright light and shade makes taking photos fun and challenging.

As the name implies, it seemed that the animals were in the middle of their morning naps when we came through.  The Cheetah, Lion, Tiger....

 ...And these things.  I'm no sure what they are, but I have never seen an animal sleep like that.  Also, the one in the front looks like it was really surprised.  lol

One thing that I liked about the zoo is that they have a great selection of animals that I have never seen in other zoos. 

I was shooting today with the Canon 100-400mm lens that I rented from www.prophotorental.com.  Again, I love the reach that I got with that lens.  The birds to your left were shot from about 8 or 9 feet away.  Their nest was in a tree, which is not a set up I have seen before at a zoo.  I really liked this guy with the orange head.  It was a nice contrast against his white feathers.

As this cat is showing, it's time to end this post.  A big mouth and sharp teeth sure get my attention. lol

In response to an article that I recently read in Shutterbug Magazine, I plan to take a trip out to the Dallas Zoo.  The point of the article was that the author who works at Zoo Miami photographs animals focusing on eye contact to connect with the animal.  I am going to take my time and wait for that moment.  I sure look forward to it.

 Until next time...

Back From Vacation

My wife and I went out of town last weekend down to San Antonio.  Vacations sure have a way of making you feel very worn out.  It has been about two weeks since my last blog, but I have a few lined up for this week.  Here is the first of 3 blogs from the vacation.

This is the hike I went on in Lower Purgatory Creek Park in San Marcos, TX.  This is about 30 miles north of San Antonio.  Aside from the blazing heat, this was a great 2 hours.  Lots of cacti, wild flowers and the best sky I have ever photographed.

 

I rented a 100-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter for this weekend.  It was a great combination, but you'll see more of that later.

 With the telephoto lens combination that I rented, it is hard to shoot landscapes, so my plan was to hike in with the telephoto in hopes of seeing some wildlife and hike out with a smaller lens for landscapes. 

As I said earlier, there was lots of cacti out there.  I have to admit that in all the time I've lived in Texas, I have never seen this many cacti.  Also, cacti is a fun word to say.  lol

This is a photo that I took as I was passing out from the heat.  Just kidding, I thought this would be a nice low angle photo.  The blue sky with clouds was fantastic. 

Also, I'm a fan of Georgian Architecture which emphasizes symmetry, so the flowers, trees and tall grass on either side of the walkway works very well.

I think I will try this in black and white later.

Here is the telephoto part of the fun.  The 2x teleconverter does just what it sounds like.  It doubles the focal length of the lens it is attached to.  So, the lens went from a 100-400 to a 200-800.

There are pros and cons to this set up.  The biggest pro is that this is a much cheaper way to get out to 800mm.  A true 800mm lens runs about $8,000.  This combination is less than $2000.  However, the con is that the teleconverter also doubles the aperture of the lens and because of this, you lose the ability to auto focus.  It definitely is not impossible, but it does make it a bit tougher.  It takes a fair bit of practice.

 

The bird on the left, I'm guessing, is a Blue Heron.  If anyone knows more about this, I would appreciate a positive ID.  This little guy tested my patience.  I wanted to get a picture of him in flight.  He was really not interested in flying.  I waited for about 30 minutes and caught me off guard.  lol  I got some decent shots, but nothing to write home about.  I decided it was a little too hot to wait for him to fly again.

The bird on the right, I have no idea what it was.  Once again, an ID would be great.  This is a great example of the power of this lens combination.  I can' even imagine how high in the air this bird was, but it had to be at least 6 or 7 stories up.  This is cropped a little in PhotoShop, but not much.  The nice part about this bird is that even though it was so high up, it tended to glide which made it easier to follow and focus.  EASIER, not EASY.  lol  This picture is not the best, focus-wise, but you can see a lot of detail in the feathers, which I really liked.

All in all, I think this was a pretty good test of the lens.  I plan to buy this combination for Christmas, so it was nice to rent it and test it out first.  For those of you who may want to take a look at it, check it out at www.prophotorental.com.  Shipping both directions is free, so you really can't beat that.

That's the end of my hike.  You can check out more pictures on my facebook page  www.facebook.com/marcusdavisphotography

Until next time...

112 MPH Panning

Today was a pretty fun day.  I went out to a drag strip to watch some friends race their mustangs.  This is my first experience with drag racing and it was pretty exciting.  When I was invited, I was pretty excited to try out a technique referred to as panning.  The concept of panning refers to me moving the camera to follow a moving subject, in this case the cars.  By doing this, the cars stay in focus and everything stationary blurs.  It's kind of the opposite of your normal moving photography.

Here are the three muscle cars that I was photographing today.  The red one belongs to my friend Brent.

There were a lot of horses under the hood and the red white and blue kind of lent itself to the term "American Muscle".

 This is Brent doing his burn out.  Fast shutter speed here, both for the stopped action and the bright sun that was out today.  For once, I was kind of excited to have so much sun out.  With fast cars, I was going to need a fast shutter speed.  As you'll see below, it came in handy.

As you can see with these two pictures, the panning causes the moving cars to be in focus while everything behind them blurs.  The power of these cars was amazing as you can see by them raising up as they came off the line.

So, this was a fun experience.  By far, these are the fastest things I've photographed.  I've been wanting to try out panning and I think I did pretty well for my first time.  There is another technique that I want to try out soon.  As soon as I get it done, I'll put it up here and show ya'll.

Until next time...

Longhorn Sunrise

This is a spot that I have been wanting to shoot for some time.  My friend Jill came out with me this past Sunday to stretch our trigger fingers.  The first thing I noticed is that East was completely NOT the direction I thought it was!  The last time I was at this spot, I forgot to check which direction east was, so I looked at my pictures to see which direction the shadows were facing.  I also discovered that there was a HUGE overhead light that was probably causing the shadow.  lol  Oh well.  You roll with the punches and get shooting.

So with the different point of view, I had to change my composition.  I pondered for a couple of months on how I would compose the pictures towards where I though east was.  The funny thing is that with my new east, the composition seemed to just hit me.  I like what I got and here it is.

This is my new east direction.  The cowboy watching over his herd.  The color in the sky was great, but it sure didn't last long.  I would estimate it was there for about 10 minutes before the sky went blue.

 Here's the herd.  I thought this would be the best picture for black and white.  I just wish I had a fan blowing up some dust for special effects.  These statues are located in Pioneer Plaza in downtown Dallas near the convention center.

These are my two favorite shots.
  I like the composition of the water and greenery in the foreground and the cattle in the background.  I think the picture on the right is one of my favorite shots in awhile.

Thank you for your continued viewership.  I am currently working on a website for MarcusDavisPhotography and lining up some portrait sessions of friends to get some practice shooting people and building that aspect of my portfolio.  If you need some photos made, let me know.

Until next time...

Sons and Daughters of Scotland

My wife and I went out to the North Texas Scottish Festival today, at the University of Texas - Arlington.  We spent about 3 hours out there before the heat began to take its toll.  It runs through 6pm Sunday the 6th and I highly recommend checking it out.  There is a great combination of bands, dancing, shopping, eating and my favorite, the Highland Games. 

 I don't care what people say.  I think bagpipes sound great.  The combination of the pipes and drums can not be beaten.  I also think that there is nothing more Scottish than this sound.

What I was looking for in the picture below was to show the movement of the mallets of the drummer in the foreground.  The movement was amazing.  He is very good at his craft.

The picture at the left of the fiddler is a band that came on stage as we were watching some of the games.  The fiddler was quite good and really got into the show.  We really enjoyed the couple of songs that we heard them play.

There was a lot of good food there.  I personally had a meat pie, which is about 3 1/2 inches in diameter and is similar to a chicken pot pie.  It is stuffed with spiced ground meat and some onions.  It is very light and very delicious.  My wife had shepherds pie, which is similar to what I had, but hers was topped with mashed potatoes.  There was also Scottish and Irish Stew and lots of Scottish inspired beers.

The Highland Games are what I really wanted to see.  These consisted of the Hammer Throw, the Caber Toss, a Kettle Bell Toss and an event similar to the shot put, but with a large stone.  Throughout the weekend, there were going to be competitions for all age groups and this is very fun to watch.  The big photographic element here is a fast shutter speed to freeze the action.  Luckily, it was bright and sunny out, so I could almost max out my shutter speed.

So that's it for today.  A fun day over all.  I got to see some culture, see some sport, eat some good food and of course, pull my camera out and shoot.  I hope you get to take some pictures of the "super moon" tonight (5/5/12).  It is supposed to be 14% larger than usual tonight.  Here is my shot.

Until next time...

Keeping Your Eyes Peeled

As I've gotten more and more into photography, I've found myself keeping an eye out for new places to shoot.  Possibly not the safest thing to do while driving, but what can you do?

On Saturday, I was headed into Frisco to take pictures of my friend's son playing his last soccer game of the season.  As I was headed up the tollway, I noticed this place out of the corner of my eye.  I made note of the cross street and planned to come back after the game.

This first picture is a regular shot.  I spent some time reading through my camera manual (Possibly the only manual I've ever read) and I noticed a section on some presets built into my camera.  One of them was a setting for landscapes.  The setting is designed to make greens greener and blues bluer.  This feature enhances grass, trees and skies.  I really like how the sky came out, because you can see the clouds against the sky.  I will do some fine tuning to it, but I like the setting.

One thing I know for certain is that the only thing you can count on is that Mother Nature is unpredictable.  As I'm sure you can tell, I love the look of flowing water and will take pictures of it every chance I get.  However, the wind decided to keep blowing while I was taking these shots.  With HDR consisting of 3 different shots, anything that moves creates blur as you put them together, as you can see in the trees.  However, I still love this shot.

Another shot that I really liked.  This is a little bit "downstream" from the previous waterfall.  I like rocks in HDR, because they always burst with color that you really don't see looking at them with the naked eye.

This was a great place to stumble upon and I plan to go back out here.  It will be a great place to do family or couples photographs.

That's it for now.  I'm still working on Sunday's sunrise photographs.  I should have them up soon.  It was a nice morning hike and I think you'll like the photographs that came out of it.

Until next time...