Sports Day

In a departure from the landscape and flower pictures that frequent my posts I had the opportunity to take some sports shots.  The Speedway Grand Prix final round was held in Melbourne and allong went the camera.

Shooting with a 300mm zoom indoors at night was always going to be a challenge.  these shots are not as bad as I thought they could have been and will be the baseline for improving my technique for fast action photography in limited light.

The first sequence required multiple frames to capture, the last image manual settings to get the correct exposure.

Sunrise didn't deliver

The weather forecast didn't promise conditions for a good sunrise so I didn't set the alarm, then as I'm making my morning cuppa the view from the kitchen window indicated some high cloud and generally blue skies.  Perfect good sunrise weather so out with the camera.

I was attempting to get a shot of the iris below with a red sunrise behind it, however the sunrise didn't develop so I changed my planned perspective and played with a few light conditions using an LED panel light (a cheap one bought from the hardware store).

I'll try to take a better shot of the iris, the centre not as sharp as I would like, probably cut flowers against a black background in the studio, this choice inspired by the lily.

However the lily was taken outside and the dark background supplied by the side of my car.  Careful exposure control and a bright subject (courtesy of the LED light) helped to reduce reflections (and dust) from the body.

Sometimes you have to make do with what's around you.

Colours in the air

A few more form yesterday's shoot with the balloons.

I hadn't really realised how featureless the sky was and there were too many issues trying to pull anything out of the raw files.  I may try to do something in photoshop but will need some more shots from the same place at a similar time to do the new images justice, or not, depends on how my integrity feels on the rainy day I reprocess these...

Balloons and Bails

An early morning and quick dash for fuel had me in my favourite vantage point for the sunrise.

Not a spectacular sunrise but the noise on the radio and 6 hot air balloons on the horizon gave me a frantic 20 minutes of action, They were moving at a pace and the messages made me think that it was an interesting morning piloting the balloons.

This one may make the Global Ballooning Facebook page...

Bloomin Good Time

Spring has sprung and daylight saving arrived (at least in Victoria) some shots of various flowers in the garden.

With one image having very little editing in Lightroom, crop, sharpen and lens correction.  Can you tell which one...?