The Big Photo Challenge...SPECIAL

I went kayaking Sunday with family and while moving through some lily pads a duck started making an obnoxious sound at me. When I reached for my camera I realized she was warning me to stay away from her floating nest on the other side of the kayak. I snapped a picture of a nest that floats on top of the water in heavy lily pads that had an egg and a new born duckling about 10 minutes old in it. I had already taken a picture of a Special Medal for this week's challenge but decided this was much more special and used it instead.


The picture was taken with my Canon PowerShot S3 IS with F3.5 and 1/1600 speed.




I was also able to get a quick video of the duckling.


Or go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wry-og9qGFM To see it in other sizes.



This link is to another video with the duck growling at me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wvlBBPJ_o4



This is what another duck looked like sitting on its floating nest.

The Big Photo Challenge...small

This week's challenge is small.
When I think of small, I think of macro.
So when I want to capture the essence of macro photography I use the Super Macro setting on my Canon Power Shot S3 IS.





This is a picture of a computer video board that uses Surface Mount Technology (SMT). The little blocks are resistors, capacitors, and inductors; they are only 1 MM wide. They are attached by machines and soldered all at once with a wave or flow soldering process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology . The U600 chip is the DVI output driver and is also machine soldered. I have tried to replace chips this small while in the military with limited success.

I found it very hard to get even lighting and focus. I used several lights and in Super Macro mode you can't manual focus. I took many photos with different aperture and shutter speeds and learned how to use several new functions on the camera. But when I looked at all the pictures, I found this one with shadows looked the best. It seems more 3D and surreal kind of like a moonscape.

The Big Photo Challenge...SUMMER

This week's theme is Summer! Ah... remember when you were young and looked forward to the hot days of summer so you could set up a lemonade stand and sell drinks for a quarter. Well my grandsons carry on this summer tradition with a few minor changes. Now they sell Gatorade for a dollar a bottle. But with inflation, we still got more candy per day than they do!

This picture was taken this weekend with my Nikon Coolpix S210 pocket camera. It is so small, I can carry it in my shirt pocket. I needed to force a fill flash because the sun was so bright. But the sun does make the umbrella colors bright.

The Big Photo Challenge...NEW

This week's challenge is NEW.

Lacking a cute little baby of my own

or the funds to purchase one,
(baby Piper, photo by mother Melissa)


I decided on the next best thing: New Growth


Summer seems to be coming late to our great state this year. Most of the evergreen trees are still showing their new growth. I took this shot on a bike ride this morning on the Centennial Trail near Coeur d'Alene Idaho. I used my Canon Power Shot S3 IS in program mode with the color enhancement feature on Vivid Green and the Macro setting on to get a clear and close shot.