First week at home with an escape artist

Esmeralda’s first week at home has been fun while also being a lot of work.  The cat is slowly starting to tolerate her presence on the same floor of the house (of maybe even the same sofa) and toilet training has been going well – we have the great warm sunny weather the first few days to thank for that. However, she has recently discovered that she can easily fit between the bars of the garden fence and has escaped off down the green belt a few times… so now the leash training starts in earnest and they may be chicken wire shopping in our future.  Today we have discovered the benefit of basking in the sun.  Happy days

Chartwell

Last weekend I spent a few hours exploring the gardens at Chartwell challenging myself to capture things with just a 50mm prime lens.  It was really fun to experiment with depth-of-field and bokeh to capture these shots.

Experiments in macrophotography

Recently I’ve been having fun experimenting with exploring the world at the macro level and seeing what I can capture.  After much research and consideration I decided that I probably didn’t want to invest in any specific macro lenses for now as I already have quite a collection of lenses and you can only carry so much around.

So, for this first foray I’ve settled on a fairly simple setup – Canon 7D with a 12mm Kenko Extension Tube and the EF 50mm f1/8 II.  For the second two shots I also brought my trusty 580EX II into the mix because there wasn’t enough light in the kitchen to get any good shots otherwise. The shallow depth of field and narrow distance window at which the lens will focus in this setup make taking these photos a challenge.

I really love how the shallow depth of field in the first image really draws you into the Kingfishers eye while the background just blurs away.

Kingfisher ornament
Kingfisher ornament

 

The other two photos that I want to share from this experiment come from a recent days baking.  These rocky piles of sugar have a magical sparkle, maybe they can be mined for diamonds ;).

Sugar mountains
Sugar mountains

 

This close up of the brownies came out really well. I love the bokeh and shallow depth of field.

Brownie Landscape
Brownie Landscape