Squirrels!

This one is for the kids mostly, although there is one photo here that I especially like: The squirrel with the old woman's hand. She was a real deranged hermit :-), the squirrels had some strange affinity towards her. Kulida will kindly forgive that there are only two squirrels, yet several photos. :-P All shot in St. James park.






And I'll also add the hermit for Filip. :-) And a little bird also on her hand. It was a nice and entertaining shoot overall, and I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of detail and magnification I was able to squeeze from the lens.

God Must be a Hippie

This post is long overdue, because I just couldn't get myself to process the photos. As for the post-processing, I know these look unreal. But that's not my fault! There is no HDR applied, and color is not edited at all! Seriously, I have deliberately left all the Hue, Saturation, Luminosity, Vibrance, and other similar sliders alone. The colors are exactly as shot, and much less crazy than they were in reality. On the second thought, perhaps I should have made them more vibrant. :-)

So, being unrealistic enough on their own, that is sort of their selling point, because the sky was INSANE that evening. I went out and was like "WTF? The end is at hand, Sabaton has finally met Amon Amarth in the Final Battle." Seriously, whatever deity involved must have been stoned.

I only made a few documentary shots, nothing really artistic, so don't grumble about the composition, or stuff, I was being chased around by dad who wanted me to mow the lawn and his patience was getting thin. :-) Needless to say, I was moving it so that I was always facing the sunset. It turned even better later, but I couldn't go get the camera and reshoot, because he would probably break my lens with a spade. :-D

Walrus on the Lawn

Although not technically a member of the odobenidae, I believe that this speciman has much in common with the marine mammal. Thus, although Janka likes to call him Blesk (Flash), I usually call him Mrož (Walrus). There's just something about his personality and phonic demonstration that makes me sure he should have been born somewhere in the Arctics with giant tusks. :-D

Perhaps his most favourite source of nutrition are tennis balls, which he pops effortlessly and devours with great passion. ;-) Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a wee bit.

When confronted with a stray tennis ball, Walrus darts after it furiously and although sometimes he gets disoriented, usually he manages to prevail.

Lately we've been having some quality time together no less than three times a day, so in case the next time I see you I act like a marine mammal, you know that Walrus has won the battle of wits against me as well. Then again, I might offer more resistance than a drooled-over tennis ball.

Notice the strong difference between shadow and direct sunlight on the photos. Sometimes it can be a real pain to compensate for this. :-(

Also, as some of you may have noticed, it is most unjust that I blog about Walrus sooner than I do about Freya. I plead guilty and declare that this will have to be corrected sometime soon.

PS: You have to admit... the similarity is just uncanny. :-D

More beasties from Vienna

Quite a few weeks ago we spent a lovely Sunday in Vienna with the kids, and one of the main Sehenswürdigkeiten on the program was Haus des Meeres, an equivalent of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, mentioned in a post few months ago. These photos are slightly worse than the ones from over there, as the light conditions were much, much less photography-friendly. Still, I was not as idiotic as some people who were using direct flash to photograph bats. At that moment I felt slightly sorry for not bringing my external flash, as I really felt like discharging a formidable blast at 100 % of power right into their Ungesicht.

The range of animals they have over there is quite impressive, especially considering that their premises are nothing more than a house of average size in downtown Vienna.
And turtles. Oh, turtles. I love turtles. Turtle, also known as korytnačka, želva, skilpadde, tortue, Schildkröte, tortuga, skjaldbaka, черепаха, kurakura, χελώνα, bruņurupucis, سُلْحَفاه, maakilpikonna, or かめ, is one of my favourite animals. There is just something magnificent and adorable about them. The aesthetics and functionality of their design is amazing, as well as how all the pieces fit together, how efficient it is, and how much agility they still retain underwater while being majestic. :-)


And now... for something completely different!! :-) Crazy monkeys. Screeching and screaming and constantly moving around and grabbing our hair for the sheer fun of it.

And that's about it. But wait, I have a jellyfish, too!

Damn. I still love turtles. :-D

Let it snow...

Snow is most certainly the photographer's good friend. Especially when it's fresh and forming pretty patterns, it's a great pleasure to just observe it wandering through the woods. Which is, by itself, quite a powerful experience, especially after having lived in the jungle of concrete, that is Chicago, for quite some time.
It was a lovely walk and one of the nicer family moments, and the dog was crazy and excited as well. The raspberry plant above obviously didn't get rid of its leaves in time.
One of the weaker points of my 70-20omm lens is the macro capabilities. With Canon 500D close-up lens it improves moderately, but the depth of field becomes extremely shallow. In
the following photo I tried to increase it by setting the aperture f number to 20, but even so, at 200mm focal length and close distance, the acceptable depth of field was only around one milimeter! Not only is this a problem when composing the picture, it is also extremely difficult to hold the camera so still that it doesn't move while you focus and take the shot. Other than that, I really like this photo.
At times, the snowy forest was offering really spectacular things to see.
I was also trying to shoot extreme macro, and this is about as close as I was able to get, pretty good for a non-macro lens, I would say, but the quality suffers:
And that's it for today, unless you want to see little Filip posing... oh, what a heart-breaker, who could resist? :-)