This morning, I went out for my usual Saturday morning 3 mile walk through my neighborhood, but this time I brought my camera along.
This is only the 2nd time in the 11 years that we’ve lived in this house that I’ve brought my camera with me. I wrote about my first time, in my blog post that I published on June 4th.
On that walk, I took my brand new Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera with the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens. Today, I took the same camera, but I brought the Panasonic Leica 25mm ƒ/1.4 DG Summilux lens, with a B+W circular polarizer on the front of it.
Before I left the house, I performed a Custom White Balance to the camera, set the ISO to 200, and put the camera into Aperture Priority Mode. I did not change any of these three settings for the rest of my walk.
I’m going to try something new with this post. I’m going to keep the number of words to a bare minimum, and just present you with the pictures. I’m going to do it “Robin Wong style”, where I’ll add a two or three word “title” underneath each photo, that attempts to give a little insight into either what I saw, or what I was thinking. If you like this format, (or if you don’t), please leave a comment (or send me an email using the “Contact Gregg” button under the banner at the top of this page) to let me know that.
Enough words. Here are my photos.
Honey Bee
Helpful Hint: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to Gregg’s story.
Clay Pot
Playground Tunnel
Circular Jungle Gym
Stairs and Handrail
Steel Mesh Stairs
Ford Mustang
Gate Hinge
Low Cactus
View @ Halfway
Prickless Prickly Pear Cactus
Cactus Flower Buds
A Red One
Big Grass
For Libby
Red and Orange Flowers
Pink Flowers
Miniature American Flag
Rusty Fire Hydrant
Ivy Ground Cover
Limestone Wall
My Front Door
Maybe someday soon I will get up the nerve to do some real Street Photography in downtown Austin. Plants and patterns are interesting to me, but I would like to include some architecture and some candid people photos, too.
Who knows, I might even get lucky and bump into Kirk Tuck…
I see you found a Yard Bunny LOL! I’ll send my mother down so she can look and say “See? Other people have them!”
The color and feel on that hydrant shot is awesome. Also I sometimes find that USA flag colors are quirky on some cameras but the OM-D really nails it.
Just think, soon you’ll be taking a monopod on the walk, then a Big Gitzo. You’ll run in KIrk Tuck who will take your camera from you, handle it, look through the viewfinder, then hand it back to you saying he feels better after having not bought it 🙂 Yeah I love Kirk. He’s his own guy, which is all anyone should ever be.
I knew that you would like that Yard Bunny, and I also liked what the little sign down on the ground next to its feet had to say.
Don’t have a monopod – yet, but I do have two Gitzo tripods now. Big one for the Canon, and a new Traveler for the Micro Four-Thirds.
Still waiting on the Really Right Stuff base plate for the OM-D, though.
I like your comment about Kirk! I’ve meet him three times now, and I’m sure that he would recognize me, so if I see him first, I’ll be sure to hide my OM-D. 🙂
Maybe I’ll ask to see his Sony, look through the viewfinder, click off a couple of shots, commment on the sound of the shutter, and my impression about it feels in my hand, and then mention that I fee a whole lot better being able to hand it back now… 😉
All kidding aside, it would make my day – no, my whole week – if I ran into Kirk downtown Austin sometime when we were both out having fun with our photography!
Gregg, each of these photos is a treat to view. I love them all. Since I think you “solicited” opinions about the use of words…here are mine…sent because I think you posed an honest desire for frank feedback. I think the photo captions are unnecessary, as in many cases, the subject of the photo is obvious. “Gate Hinge” is an example. However, now that I think about it, historically some famous artists put very obvious titles to their works.
The exceptions would be the photos of plants, which might be nice to label, although depending on your preference, you might want to eliminate all captions if you eliminate some for the sake of continuity. When labeled, most of the photos of plants which I see on other web sites are labeled for the purpose of accurate identification, so you would need to use the actual name, like “Asian Jasmine” instead of “Ivy Ground Cover” and “Pride of Barbados” instead of “Red and Orange Flowers” and “Crepe Myrtle” instead of “Pink Flowers,” for eg. No need for the scientific name, of course, but the actual common name seems preferable to “Big Grass.” Of course, since I’m not a photography student, all of my opinions about labeling could be entirely incongruous with tradition or preferred style. With my ignorant background in the process of generating captions for publication, I’m curious as to what your reply will be.
‘Thanks for sharing this beautiful album.
Diane, thank you very much for your honest, helpful comments. As we discussed on the telephone, the real issue here revolves around your statement “When labeled, most of the photos of plants which I see on other web sites are labeled for the purpose of accurate identification, so you would need to use the actual name…”
I must admit that my intent was not to “be cute” or to mislead anyone about the actual types and names of the plants. It is simply due to my ignorance about the various plants’ names, and my not doing the proper due diligence to research them to determine their actual names.
I was simply trying to immitate the photo titling style of another photography blogger, named Robin Wong in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia.
http://robinwong.blogspot.com/
Hi Gregg,
Thanks for sharing your photos.
I particularly liked “Clay Pot”, “Playground Tunnel”, and “For Libby”. I thought the short titles for the photos were great. They clearly communicated what you saw in the photos.
The photos of the flowers had nice color. Something that makes flower nature photos spectacular, at least in my opinion, is the close up detail. For example, “Honey Bee” had vivid colors in the pink and a nice contrast with the flower color and that of the honey bee. What I thought would have made the photo extra special would be a more close up photo of the bee on the flower. This could be done by showing only some of the flowers in focus or in soft focus with the bee in sharp focus.
Thanks, Nancy! Yes, I know that the honey bee was very small in that photo. The fixed focal length 25mm lens that I had with me at the time simply did not allow me to get any closer to that bee. It is not a macro lens, and most of the flower photos were taken with the lens focused at the minimum distance that it is capable of. The 12-50mm “kit lens” that I bought with the camera does have a macro function, and I use that lens a lot. The reason that I didn’t take it with me on this walk is because I still do not have the lens hood for it (which I ordered directly from Olympus in early June).
Once again, thank you for your comments, and thank you for visiting my web site!
Wow, Gregg. I feel like I’ve been to Niagra Falls, The Rose Bowl, Temple and through the neighborhood – all in 15 minutes! What a beautiful journey. Loyce
Loyce, thank you so much for stopping by my photography blog and leaving your nice comment! Thanks!