Rose

Photo of the week #17: Macro of a late Valentine's Day gift from Geoff:

Not as sharp as it looks!

Photo of the week #16: A macro shot of the necklace that Geoff gave me for Valentine's Day. I took this shot using my 50 mm lens reverse mounted onto my 55-250 mm lens (at 250 mm). This technique is great in that it allows you to take photos at a very high magnification (5:1 in this case, which is much higher than the 1:1 magnification that I get using my macro lens). It is however very difficult to focus when using a reverse mounted lens since the depth of field is extremely shallow:

Flames

Photo of the week #15: A triptych of images that I shot while experimenting with our Lampe Berger. I had originally only intended to post the image on the right. But, I really liked the one on the left too, so I decided to post that one as well. The center image was added for balance.

Smoke Curl

Photo of the week #14: This shot of candle smoke from an extinguished tea light was taken using a snooted flash (not to be confused with a snooty flash!). Here, my snoot was just a sheet of black paper that was rolled up and taped onto my flash. The snoot causes the flash to give very directional lighting, which in turn helps the flash to be bright enough to illuminate the smoke without losing the details in the whites of the candle:

Also, for interest sake, here is the candle before Geoff blew it out: