I intended to go and photograph a small flower I’d seen walking home from the bus but when I got there a lovely hoverfly was kind enough to sit on that flower for quite a while so I ended up photographing that instead.
I also discovered that there is a huge dragonfly in that area so I kind of want to find out when and where it sits still because it would be really cool to photograph that.

Here are the 2 photos I like most.

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Roughly two weeks ago also got myself a new macro flash setup to complete my macro setup, the Nikon close-up speedlight commander kit R1C1.
This kit is great for macro photography as it enables you to attach and control multiple flash lights divided into up to 3 groups at the same time. These groups can be set to flash at a different intensity so you can really control the lighting.

Today I did a macro run in which I got some nice results which I thought would be nice to show you.

– Macro flower – Macro flower	– Macro flower – Macro flower	– Macro flower – Macro flower
– Macro flower – Macro flower	– Macro flower – Macro flower	– Fly looking for food – Fly looking for food
– Macro flower – Macro flower	– Macro flower – Macro flower	– Small moth – Small moth
– Little frog – Little frog	– Little frog – Little frog	– Little frog – Little frog
– Little frog – Little frog

I chose this lens because of it’s focal length which is somewhat longer than the cheaper 60mm versions which gives me some more space between me and my subject (insects like me better when viewed from a distance…).
Also I really like the fact that it does not extend when focussing the lens, which most other lenses do. A lens gaining a few inches in length is quite a shock for most insects and might scare them away too quickly.

Anyway, once home I immediately put the lens on my camera, threw on a flash and went outside to do some test shots.
I spotted some fun insects on which I spent several hours shooting, time flies when your having fun!
Here are the best photo’s I got. The first one was rather a lucky shot, basically the only good one I got from 20 minutes of trying to capture a flying hoverfly.
The others are the two sharpest shots I got, I included a 100% crop of one of them.

– Hoverfly in flight – Hoverfly in flight	– Hoverfly – Hoverfly	– Hoverfly 100% crop – Hoverfly 100% crop
– Fly – Fly

The picture I’m going to show you was taken on Queensday, which was not too long ago.
During Queensday there are a lot of events going on and one of them was a final fireworks display at the city hall.
I thought it’d be a fun thing to try and take some photos.
Well, it was indeed fun and I ended up taking a large series of photos trying to capture a shot with some good light effects in them.
Eventually I selected a handful of keepers and one that I found particularly nice which I am posting here now.

– Queensday fireworks – Queensday fireworks

Anyways, as we are accustomed to do we’ve messed about with fireworks again on new years eve (it’s always sparklers for those of you that haven’t seen the previous ones).
This time I came up with the idea to play around with real high exposures, an idea I picked up a long time ago on the internet but never really used.
Basically what I did was use an exposure of about 10-20 seconds on the camera and my little brother or me would take a sparkler and wave it through the air in front of the camera. This gives some really nice results.
But of course the fun doesn’t stop there. We really went nuts when we actually started to try and draw something recognizable.
As you can see by the blurry background I did not even use a tripod for these photo’s. I actually think it makes the photo nicer with a blurry background because the focus really lies on the light coming from the sparklers.

If you have the chance you should really try this. You don’t need any fancy equipment, just a few sparklers and a dark night.
I think I might work with this idea some more in the near future as I have a few other ideas, though those require a bit more.

Happy very late 2011 everyone!

– Sparkler magic on high exposure – Sparkler magic on high exposure	– Sparkler magic on high exposure – Sparkler magic on high exposure	– Sparkler magic on high exposure – Sparkler magic on high exposure
– Sparkler magic on high exposure – Sparkler magic on high exposure

And finally I would like to show you a panorama photo I made on a watchtower on top of one of the mountains.
This photo was made using 24 photos and contains the entire surroundings (it goes a little more than 360 degrees round).
Warning, the image is rather large.

http://www.judobreaker.com/images/Panorama_germany_small.jpg

– Rocks – Rocks	– Volcano crater edge – Volcano crater edge	– Stalactite in the making – Stalactite in the making
– Cave entrances – Cave entrances

The photos in this post were made in Eifelpark Gondor, which is near Bitburg.
This is a park similar to the park in Daun we went a few days earlier except that it has a wider assortment of birds and some very fun attractions.
I do not have a lot of interesting photos of the attractions, but I do have some very nice photos of the birds however.

You will notice that the photos I made of the eagle are a very high contrast, this because these birds were behind a fence.
The only way I could make photos of them was through the fence which made rather stupid photos. However, when I put them against a dark backdrop (shadows in their cage) and used a high aperture value I could almost filter the fence out of the picture. By further increasing the contrast in Photoshop afterwards I was able to get these results.

– Falcon – Falcon	– Falcon – Falcon	– Snowy owl – Snowy owl
– Golden eagle – Golden eagle	– Eagle – Eagle	– Eagle – Eagle
– Eagle – Eagle	– Golden eagle – Golden eagle	– Golden eagle – Golden eagle
– Bear – Bear	– Bear scratching it’s nose – Bear scratching it’s nose	– Bear – Bear

These photos were made in the city Cochem. This is a rather old city (dating back to 1051) with quite a lot of older buildings such as the monastery and the castle.
Besides that Cochem also has the most beautiful view on the river Moselle there is.
All this together makes Cochem a very nice city and a very good photo location.

We’ve been to several of the key points in Cochem such as the castle and the lookout point at which you have the best view of the Moselle.

– Castle of Cochem – Castle of Cochem	– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany	– Ruins in Cochem – Ruins in Cochem
– Cochem, Germany – Cochem, Germany	– Cochem, Germany – Cochem, Germany	– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany
– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany	– Moselle, Cochem, Germany – Moselle, Cochem, Germany	– Cochem train station – Cochem train station
– Statue in Cochem – Statue in Cochem	– Castle of Cochem – Castle of Cochem	– Castle of Cochem – Castle of Cochem