C B Images

Photography by Chris Bates

Rose

Leaf, color, colour, red, orange, rose, decay
Fall 2011: ISO 200, 90mm, f/8, 1/125

Fall is here. Time to put the outdoor gear away for winter hibernation.

This is a picture of rose leaves from our backyard garden. These add the traditional fall colours to our garden. Red, orange and yellow.

Winter, snow, rose, Alberta, Canada, winds
Winter Roses: ISO 400, 126mm, f/4.5, 1/1000

A winter storm is upon us. The snow shovel has gotten a work out.

This is our roses along the back wall of our house. The high winds have not taken the snow off them.

House Sparrow, Rose Bush, Autumn, Fall, Fence, Colour
House Sparrow on the Fence: ISO 320, 240mm, f/4.5, 1/2000

My previous post I showed you the rose leaves on the ground. This post I will show you the ones still remaining on the bush.

It has been unseasonably warm here and the animals in our neighbourhood are taking full advantage of this. The house sparrows were playing in our backyard this morning paying me no attention.

Rose Leaves, Nature, Concrete, Chris Bates Photography
Rose Leaves on Concrete: ISO 100, 10mm, f/5.6, 1/80

I was walking to the garage this afternoon to dig out our outdoor Christmas decorations today and noticed that a few rose branches had fallen to the ground. They were showing off very autumn like colours (Red, Yellow, Gold).

I grabbed my camera and picked up some of these leaves and placed them in the sun. Since it is close to winter here our sun now tracks in the southern sky and does not cross directly above us. Because of this we get very long shadows this time of year. I wanted to show these shadows so I placed the leaves on a somewhat plain background.

The top picture is after some post processing work done with an Apple Aperture Plug-in that I have talked about before. The image directly below is the original image.

Rose Leaves, Concrete, sidewalk.
Rose Leaves on Concrete Original Image: Same setting as above

Rose Leaves Alberta Canada Autumn Fall Colours Nature Photography
Fall Rose Leaves: ISO 400, 35mm, f/5, 1/100

My last post showed some bright colours of summer. This image is of some rose leaves changing to their fall colours.

For some reason when I transfer the image to my website it does not look as sharp as it does on my computer. Click on the image or HERE to see a sharper image.

I took this shot today on a very overcast sky without the use of flash.

Dragonfly, Chris Bates Photography, Nature, Macro, Red Deer, Ablerta, Canada
On Top Dragonfly: ISO 125, 6.2mm, f/2.8, 1/250

Dragonfly, Chris Bates Photography, Nature, Macro, Red Deer, Ablerta, Canada
Dragonfly and Rose Leaves: ISO 125, 6.2mm, F/2.8, 1/500

Dragonfly, Chris Bates Photography, Nature, Macro, Red Deer, Ablerta, Canada
Up Close Dragonfly: ISO 80, 6.2mm, f/2.8, 1/1250

Angela and I were preparing our supper on the Barbeque when I noticed this dragonfly flying around our one rosebush. Angela just happenned to have her Point and Shoot Compact camera outside because she was taking pictures of our cats.

I set her camera to macro mode and played around. If I had gone inside the house to grab my camera I probably would have lost track of this little guy.

Point and Shoots are great for macro photography. The small sensors capture the details nicely. For me the drawbacks are the camera chooses the settings and only shoots JPEGs.

Angela's camera does allow manual settings but by the time you change everything the shot is gone. When you set Angela's camera to Macro mode it fixes the Aperture to f/2.8 and the camera's processor figures out everything else.

When I shoot with my DSLR my cameras are set up to shoot in RAW instead of JPEG. RAW means that the camera has done very little processing work. When I import the RAW image to my computer it allows me to do the processing work as I would like to see it. If I do that too much to a JPEG you will notice image quality will decrease.

The very top shot you can see camera noise in the dragonfly's body and the rose leaves. I adjusted the exposure to bring out the details in the dragonfly as he was pretty dark in the original shot. With RAW I could have brought out more detail and colour without so much noise. However, if I used my camera I might not have gotten any of these shots at all.

To me Photography is all about catching the moment. You can only catch these moments with the camera you have with you.

Oh Look! Another Frost Picture.


This is another image I took back on the 12th. It’s too cold to go out now to take new ones! Minus 30 Celsius then add the windchill factor.

This was a rose. Now it looks like something right out of a science fiction movie. Where is Sigourney Weaver when you need her?

Crown of Frost


Another image from earlier this week. Frost on a rose branch.

Frosty Rosehip



Cold Roses


Second day of snowfall and it looks like today the snow will stay longer than a couple of hours.

Fall Showers bring October Flowers?


It finally rained! It will be interesting to see if we still have rose blooms at this time next year. As you can see by the picture there is still buds on this plant waiting for rain and the warm weather to continue. This was taken yesterday afternoon (September 26, 2009).