Focal Point

Photographing flowers is always so rewarding. A pretty flower can make a pretty picture and you do feel good when you get a good picture.

Sometimes we do need to look closer and see the beauty in minute details. Like this flower for example. It's really pretty as a whole but even when you get really close you can see there is much more to it that is waiting to be explored.

So details are important and we need to look closer and appreciate little tiny things :)

Homey

Not a misspelling. I wanted to go with "homely" but then Google told me that it's a British word so I decided against it.

Anyway I took this picture a couple of years ago when I was experimenting with HDR photography.

It was a phase that I soon got over. I mean I still shoot HDR but I don't use it all the time like I used to because sometimes a single RAW file will suffice.

Over Boundaries

I've always been fascinated by things that fly (and this goes for man-made stuff too). Birds, bats, dragonflies...all sorts of creatures...they just are so beautiful and graceful when they fly and even when they don't :D

It seems like they have no limits and boundaries don't really matter to them. They can just fly over those boundaries and go wherever they want.

Seeing this dragonfly sitting atop this fence immediately made me think of that fact.

We humans are so tied down and limited in our actions but these beautiful wonders of creation (just like us) are free.

The Comb

I was going to go with "The Comb-Over" but I didn't know how many people would actually get it so I decided against it.

We'd gone fishing and this cock kept following us around and so I decided to take a few pictures of it while we waited for the fish to take the bait.

I quite like this one from the entire bunch because I think it portrays the pride of the cock quite well.

Watchful

I ran into this juvenile Oriental Garden Lizard when I was shooting dragonflies.

The dragonflies were really all over the place and it was really hot so that made it all the more difficult to get a good shot. Then I noticed this little fellow eating some tiny insects that were flying around it.

I tried to get close but juveniles are a lot more nervous than adults and so it kept running away even when I wasn't close to it.

Finally it went behind these weeds and poked its head out and stared at me providing a good photo opportunity.

Light Painting Vase

I've tried getting back to light painting because I haven't done it in a while and I'd forgotten how much fun it was. Of course it requires a lot of patience but it's worth the effort.

This particular picture was part of a "welcome home" banner that I did recently out of light painting.

I wanted to do something unique unlike the previous banners that I'd done and I thought light painting would be a good place to start.


Painting this vase wasn't too difficult but took a lot of time because I really wanted to get all the details so I had to go in and paint each flower separately and then the vase itself. The white streaks you see are actually reflections of the torch I was using. I used a home-made diffuser (ok, it was just a piece of paper).

Peeking Blue

Another one from my recent visit to a nearby hill station. It was amazing and I'm sure you can tell from the pictures.

For this particular picture I wanted to try something new in post-processing.

When I took the picture I remember the blue in the sky was really close to the blue hill in the background but that somehow got lost in the picture and that when split-toning seemed like a good idea.

I actually quite like this look even though some may say it doesn't look real. Of course I'm not going to use it for every picture but I think it works well for this particular one.