Fading Beauty

There is a field near my house that I've enjoyed for years.  I'm talking about since I remembered it as a kid.  Every time I passed by it, I would be taken away by it's beauty and then I wish that this will maintain it's beauty forever.  Unfortunately, this field is sold and by this time next year, the field has become a new community.  Sad, I must say...sad this really is.  However, I captured some of it's glory for my reminiscence.  I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Field of Beautiful Dreams

Shallow Depths Of Field

Learning photography is great.  The techniques will take some practising.  However, the application is really cool when it's understood.  With the following photographs, although the images is somewhat under-exposed, I purposely left it as you now see it.  My focus here is the Depth-of-Field.  Here they are:

Focus on red car

Focus on black car

Focus on silver car

Focus on all 3 cars

...and no!  You can't borrow them.  Only look at them.

Balancing white

I never knew how the custom white balance worked in a camera.  Recently, I learned how to do it.  It's quite remarkable for it yields pretty nice results.  Now I'll know how to use it.  Here is a sample of what I did.

Used the Shadow WhiteBalance

Used Custom WhiteBalance to correct the white wall

Looking at Texture

Textures I found around town.  Closing in on things gives another perspective of everyday things in the city.  Sometimes if we look up, the clouds sends us signals.  Droplets of water carry a scene that we can't see when we are too far away.  The animals also communicates with us using their contrasting skin or furs.  Nature beckons our attention with the colours they are created with.  Just that we often neglect these calls.  Our attention are diverted into our busyness.  Let the various forms of texture tranquilize you.

Bird Nest - ISO 100 at 300 mm focal length with f/5.6 and 1/60 shutter speed.  

Zebra at the Toronto Zoo - ISO 100 at 280 mm focal length with f/9 and 1/125 shutter speed.

Flowers of a shrub outside the Film building at York University - ISO 80 at 3.9 mm focal length with f/2.8 and 1/150 shutter speed.

After the rain clouds, which seems to signal more rain on the way - ISO 100 at 3.9 mm focal length with f/2.8 and 1/120 shutter speed.

Droplets for texture - ISO 100 at 3.9 mm focal length with f/2.8 and 1/60 shutter speed.

Textures of Sesame Ice Cream - ISO 1600 at 50 mm focal length with f/5.6 and 1/40 shutter speed.

Textures on Cloud Nine - ISO 100 at 29 mm focal length with f/22 and 1/160 shutter speed.

Strawberries homework that O ate - ISO 800 at 55 mm focal length with f/5.6 and 1/8 shutter speed.

Droplets after the rain of reeves - ISO 100 at 55 mm focal length with f/6.3 and 1/40 shutter speed.

Toronto Zoo imitating a forest - ISO 100 at 18 mm focal length with f/3.5 and 1/100 shutter speed.

Water texture on the Penguin display - ISO 100 at 95mm focal length with f/11 and 1/400 shutter speed.

Some previous photos

In response to this first photo assignment, I dug up some previous shots.  Here are some of the ones I've done before.  

The bird shots are of the same bird.  Unfortunately, I don't know what kind of bird.  If you know, please do tell.  This bird made a nest on my neighbour's porch light.  I told them about it and they said that they were afraid in moving it because they saw eggs in it.

While I was taking photographs of this bird nesting, it flew on to the tree.  I just followed it and made more images.

Here, well...would you like to guess what this is?