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Canon EOS 70D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 second @ f/6.3, ISO 250.

This week the challenge is to shoot a flower bud.

It’s autumn, so there aren’t really any buds around. I did manage to find this rose one, and shot it last night. The light was crap, so the flash came out (I got Melissa to hold a diffuser that I fired through). It was also windy, which makes using the macro lens interesting as the depth of field is so tiny.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM + 2× III lens @ 400mm, 1/1600 second @ f/5.6, ISO 320.

This week, it’s black and white, and we’ve just been given a very vague theme: steadfast.

One of the sentences in the blurb is “No matter what genre of photography you prefer, you should be able to find something to represent the concept of steadfast, just it shoot in a black and white.” Well, at the moment, I pretty much only shoot football, and this week the Diamonds played on Saturday, so I have two girls games to go to (which is irrelevant). So today at the Diamonds game (they won 4-1 away to Stop Out) I had half an eye out for getting something that I could use for this challenge. I saw these Diamonds lining up a defensive wall, and took it. They are dutifully firm and unwavering, so it fits the challenge. I then made it black and white in Lightroom and that was it. (I shoot JPG at football games, so there’s not much editing to be done anyway. Except cropping. I always crop.)

Canon EOS 70D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, 1/200 second @ f/4.5, ISO 640.

This week the challenge was to take a portrait of a domestic bird.

This is somewhat out of my comfort zone. I normally shoot wild birds (I’m quite fond of hihis) at Zealandia. My back-up plan was to shoot the takahē on Sunday. They’re basically domesticated. However, one of Melissa’s dancing friends has a pair of canaries. So we wandered over there, armed with all the kit. I set up my flash into an umbrella, and pointed it at the birds (you can see the catchlights in the eyes). I know that the challenge said “use natural diffused light if you can”, but it’s easier to just use a flash, especially in dim light with flighty birds. I shoved the macro’s lens hood right up to the cage and fired away. I quite like this shot because it makes the canary look a little like a chicken, which I find amusing.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens @ 130mm, 1/160 second @ f/2.8, ISO 4000.

This week we’re back to portraits and the challenge is environmental portrait, which is actually an occupational portrait upon further reading. Oh well.

My first thought was to go shoot at the hospital, as I have an in there. However, that needed to go through the communications department at the hospital, so screw that. Instead, I went for a site visit today, and took some photos of the builders working. This is a builder removing a ceiling. You can see the gib falling and all the particles on his face. There wasn’t much space to frame up a nice photo (this is basically framed between some wires and a prop), and there wasn’t much light, so I was quite restricted in what I could do.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III lens @ 55mm, 1/320 seconds @ f/5.6, ISO 1250.

The theme for this outdoor week of the photo challenge is Death in Nature.

I wasn’t really feeling it this week, and with the football season now in full swing, my weekends are a little busy, so I don’t really want to go wait for a better photo (I have a few half-ideas, but they all involve that precious resource: time during the day). On Tuesday, I went to Newtown for a site visit, and came back over the hill via the Southern Walkway. I had my camera with me, so I took a few photos that I thought fit with the theme for this week. This is the best of a bad bunch, unfortunately. It’s a leaf that has shrivelled up and died, with the other leafs around it showing different stages of death: some have been gnawed on, and some are starting to brown.

Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to manage my time better. We’ll see.