Pre-dawn at Plaza de los Angeles

Plaza de los Angeles in Guanajuato Mexico captured pre-dawn using my point-and-shoot on a pocket tripod (UltrapodII). Mexico is so colorful, isn't it?

El Charco Ingenio Close-ups

Some more pictures from the El Charco Ingenio Jardin Botanico in San Miguel...This time in color.

El Charco Ingenio B&W Plants

From GTO-SMA

From GTO-SMA

From GTO-SMA

Here are some interesting shapes and lines from plants in El Charco del Ingenio Jardin Botanico in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I really recommend a half a day exploring this park.

Vacation splash

This photo was taken at a beach in Mexico using my Lumix DMC-FX01 point-and-shoot camera (I'd feel very nervous holding my Nikon D70 this close to moving[and flying] salt water). Another great reason to have your point-and-shoot around...you can stick in places you couldn't (or wouldn't) stick your DSLR. I took this photo for this month's photo assignment for a photo club: "vacation". I think the beach setting and the care-free feel to this photo meets that assignment's theme.

Party's over

This was taken at my mom and brother's birthday party after the pinata was broken, and all the candy was collected by the only child at the party...JCO. I like the mood of the picture. His expression kind of looks like he is thinking something like "..is that it? Is it over?"

Like father like son

Here's a couple of shots of JCO enjoying a couple of his father's pastimes; photography and fishing. The first one was originally a grainy (due to high ISO) underexposed picture, but I liked the way the soft light (big window with blinds partially shut) wraps around his hair and face as well as highlights the camera. I also liked the pose; as if he was taking a moment away from his shooting to acknowledge that I'm there. I tried the black and white conversion and a little softness around the edges to give it that timeless look. What do you think?



The second shot was taken in the backyard where he likes to sit in his play boat and pretend to go fishing. I wanted to take advantage of the late afternoon sun and try out some strobist techniques. I placed my SB-600 flash on a tripod camera left put it into CLS mode. I shot in manual mode at the highest sync shutterspeed (1/500s on my D70s) and set the aperture to underexpose about 1 to 1.7 ev. I then set the on-camera flash to commander mode manual where I could dial in the flash output from the camera's menu. This is the first time I used the commander mode in manual mode...pretty cool. I was pleased to be able to dial in some fill from the left to balance out the sun to the right. I'm still trying to learn some of the off-camera flash techniques and, after this shoot, I feel like I have a long way to go.

Never-the-less, I'm glad to have captured these shots of my son doing (or pretending to do) the things I enjoy.

More Lavender

The family went up to Valley Center, CA this weekend to see the Lavender Fields . My wife loves lavender. We've got several plants spread around our yard. I thought it would be a good opportunity to shoot some more macro-style shots. I also wanted to travel light since we had JCO in tow. All I used was my 50mm and +3 close up filter.

I was a little disappointed with the shoot but here's one of the shots I took of a bee "working" the fields. Apparently they produce lavender honey that the gift shop sells. I think I could of used some more depth of field. I tend to shoot in the extreme apertures when I use this lens (f/1.8 or f/22). I need to learn to spend some more time in between. I think an f/5.6, perhaps, might have brought more of the long flower into focus. Alternatively, I could have aligned the camera's plane of focus to be parallel to the flower.

Perhaps in a few more weeks the flowers will be in more full bloom that would make for more colorfull photography. As of this past weekend they were only partially blooming.