Photography
I find it amazing that such a beautiful bloom can survive in such harsh drought conditions.
Visited the Cockrell Butterfly Center in Houston today. I wanted to try my hand at macro photography using the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens with the 500D macro adapter. I don’t have a ring-flash, so everything was done with available light and handheld. The butterflies were fairly cooperative, although some did not want to open their wings. The exhibit is well worth a visit if you’re spending the day at the museums or zoo.
Visited the Texas A&M Horticultural Gardens near Hensel Park this morning. The soft morning light and calm air provided excellent photo opportunities. I’ve always enjoyed visiting this garden for a moment of quiet and reflection.
The Horticultural Gardens at Texas A&M University are a student managed and maintained facility within the Department of Horticultural Sciences. The landscape and plant collection consists of over 2,500 specimens in 30 different planting areas, ranging from bog and wetlands to desert southwest. The numerous demonstrations throughout the garden provide excellent lifelong learning opportunities for home gardeners and horticultural professionals alike.
This little treefrog hitched his way to my garden on a bag of mulch from Lowe’s. Once discovered, I moved him over to the herb garden. He found a nice spot in the lavender. Time for a photo-op. I used a Canon 70-200 f/2.8 lens with 500D macro lens attachment. Sometimes I can handhold the shot, but this day was windy and my subject wasn’t moving too much. The camera was mounted on the tripod directly above the tree frog in the lavender. I took quite a few photos as it was quite a challenge to get the tree frog’s head into focus with such a shallow depth of field. I tried a higher f-stop without much success. I’m happy with the results and hope to see this tree frog around the garden more.
Tis the season for Christmas Trees. I setup mine up today and decided to try something different while taking a photo of the tree. Instead of using the available light in the room, I opted for turning off the lights and doing a long exposure. I first started with f/22 and 15 seconds. The results were ok, but the photo was a little dark. After several more extended exposures at f/22, I went all the way to 2 minutes using the Canon TC-80N3 remote timer. Now I was getting the proper lighting I wanted and a twinkle in the lights. I think the tree turned out well, but would like to find some more possible ways to photograph a Christmas tree in a unique way.
David Riggs is an avid cyclist and photographer hailing from Texas. When he's not shooting bike races, wildlife or scenic landscapes, he's busy building custom carbon bicycles with 
