Waiting for Spring

In the front yard today. There's not going to be any new growth for a while if we actually do have a real winter around here! Recently it's been unseasonably warm in Atlanta (like a lot of places of course) but today's been rather miserable with threats of rain and overcast skies.

And at a slightly different focus point.

Holding Pond

Once again I'm at the old Decatur waterworks. Here's a closeup of the top of the holding pond just below the new pedestrian bridge crossing the railway line.

Busy Post

Our front yard post is getting more and more encumbered with electronic and electrical gizmos of all shapes and sizes. The latest addition is a device for delivering fibre optic internet and I'm certainly not complaining about such things.

Palms, Santas and Snowmen

We've been happy to have a neighbor close by who seems to be exceeding expectations with Christmas yard decorations this year after a couple of not so spectacular years. I'm glad to see he's back in the game with a full yard display of palms, Santas, etc. Check out the panorama, which actually is only two thirds of the width of his yard. My finally right hand image was mismatched, so I didn't get the full intended image, but I'll try again some time.

More Holiday Decoration

I really wanted to get shallow depth of field with this shot, and I guess I achieved just that. And I like the bokeh.

Giraffe

I was surprised and delighted to come across this new graffiti over at the old Decatur Waterworks ruins this afternoon.

Bolted Bridge

Yesterday afternoon on a walk along S Peachtree Creek Trail connecting the Dekalb Tennis Center to Medlock Park I crossed the bridge crossing South Fork Peachtree Creek took a couple of pictures. This first one kind of captured the mood of the day and as it turned out I had some adjustments to make in Capture One. The camera was set for underexpose by a couple of stops which wasn’t my intent. I’d forgotten that I’d done this a day before.

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And here’s another view from the bridge looking back up the trail.

Koala Xmas

I got our Koala decoration hooked to the top of the Christmas tree and then decided that I needed a photo. This one was taken with my Nissin i40 flash attached to the Sony a6500 and after a bit of fiddling around (actually just getting the flash to fit in properly to the camera hotshot) I too this photo. As usual it's processed courtesy of Capture Photo and I'm now using version 10 of the program.

Christmas Coming

I'm getting the hang of this new camera and in particular learning about the tricks and traps of taking pictures in low light.

Front Door

Christmas time is here and the front door is showing off. I took this photo yesterday with the top half in shadow and so I had to do a little bit more processing in Capture One to bring out the detail across the top.

Surviving the Cold

I’m not sure how long these leaves are going to hang on. I know that at least one branch now has shriveled leaves after the last couple of mornings of sub-freezing temperatures. Anyhow, this Japanese Maple is still managing to shine, especially in the light of early morning.

Final Colors

Today was probably the coldest day that we've had this season in Atlanta. It got down into the 20's Fahrenheit this morning and didn't go much above 40 for most of the day. I'm guessing that fall colors aren't going to last too much longer around here. It's been a long autumn season for us actually since we were up in Northern New Hampshire in September where we first saw colors beginning to appear - the first hints of fall, as it were. And now here we are some 8 weeks later and we are still getting to experience some intense colors albeit at another latitude.

Resting

I love the fact that this gentlemen has grip on his smartphone even though he's supposedly taking a nap. This image and the other photos that I took today were processed on my iPhone through Snapseed as a bit of an experiment. I'm not sure that I really like doing the processing on my iPhone even though it's the plus model and therefore has a slightly larger screen. It's still just a bit too difficult to edit images on that size screen.

Lock and Bridge

I took this photo last week shortly after acquiring the Sony 18-105 F4 zoom lens. It's known for its particularly effective bokeh quality and I don't think this photo disappoints.

Spring Foliage

These are all taken with one of my favorite lenses. This is the Minolta MC Rokkor-X 50 mm lens. These shots are all manual focus (with focus peaking on the Sony) and manual exposure. I love this “old school” photography as a break from the totally automatic way of doing things. Of course there’s no auto-exposure on the lens to I have no choice but to manually focus.

Brown Nuts

Once again at the Sweetwater Wetlands Park in Gainesville Florida, and yet again a study in manual focus. Love the bokeh this lens produces.

Cranes in Flight

Pre-focused on cranes with my Minolta 50mm Prime manual focus lens and then they took off at Sweetwater Wetlands Park in Gainesville, Florida.



And below the initial picture before they took flight.

Ersatz Butterfly

A found object in my sister in law's back garden in Gainesville, Florida