Saturday, August 21, 2010

Assassin Bug And His Breakfast

                                              Come on CLICK the picture don't be afraid..it's just a bug!
This Assassin Bug I photographed one morning on one of our orange trees he didn’t really like me photographing him; one of the disadvantages of 60mm macro is you have to get in close but he wanted to finish his breakfast so he just kept an eye on me and when he was finished he just knocked off the self contained meal from his proboscis. These guy’s are stealth killers, lying in ambush and when the target comes within reach they really stick it to there victim with there long rostrum and then inject a lethal saliva that liquefies there insides and then they just suck there victim dry much like a spider does, oh boy sounds yummy.

 Using my tripod like a monopod holding the remote shutter release and the tripod with my left hand manual focusing with my right hand, aperture priority shot at f/8, 1/25, iso100 into a raw format. Then into camera raw, basic adjustments then I use Topaz Labs Detail, NIK Define or Topaz’s Dnoise both are noise reduction software, then sometimes I use NIK’s Output Sharpener. I usually use Topaz Detail on most photos before I use noise reduction software it’s backwards from what they say to do but I feel the pictures come out better.

The Bug Facts:
Common Name: Assassin Bug
Order Name: Hemiptera
Family Name: Reduviidae


Thursday, August 19, 2010

A View From The Amasa Back

                                                                         Click on Picture
Some friends and I would make the pilgrimage every year to Moab, Utah for the Fat Tyre Festival which took place at the end of October we would spend a week or more riding our Mt Bikes and getting in a hike or two; the Amasa Back was one of my favorites to ride it’s a tough ride out to the end and back but the views are awesome, 360 degrees of some of the most amazing geological real estate to be seen; one of the few places that I’ve ever been to where you can see the Earth’s curvature including a mountain range, you can see this in the picture above of the La Sal range in the background.
 These photos (3) were taken on the Amasa Back in 1991 with my Pentax ME Super. A 50mm f/2.8 lens and Kodak Gold 100 print film was used to capture this picture. Scanning the negatives with my Canon 9950 F scanner into 16 bit tiff files then processing them in Camera Raw and then merging them into a panoramic using Photoshop’s photo merge, it did a good job but not good enough I had to manually do some editing, the final print size is a 6300x1650 or 21”x5.5” at 300 resolution. If you would like to see a better picture follow this link....
      http://williambraucksiekart.zenfolio.com/p270041601/h206e30b#h206e30b

Sunday, August 15, 2010

A View From The Porcupine Rim, Utah

                                                                     Click Picture to enlarge
 One of my Pastel paintings; a view from the Porcupine Rim looking across and down into Castle Valley, Utah the picture was taken in the late morning at the top of the trail head, a very tough climb on a Mt. Bike, but oh so worth it. Most my paintings are from photographs. There’s this age old argument about painting from photos; that you don’t get the right perspective, colors are not true and blah this and blah that and if you don’t paint out doors your not a real painter, WHAT!!! Garbage, Degas used photographs for some of his paintings but then again he didn’t paint out doors either, so there…..anyway I don’t care how anyone paints just paint the damm thing and feel good about it that’s all that matters. This photo of my painting has a Photoshop made frame the painting and matting where photographed using a Canon 60mm f/2.8 macro lens (this is my favorite working lens) it has very little lens distortion if any. The frame is actually the spruce top of my B.C. Rich guitar photographed then in Photoshop I make selections out of the photo, it doesn’t matter what dimensions you use; I usually go the length of the photo by 1 inch makes a nice digital piece of lumber I also make several selections of the photo so each piece is unique and then store it in my digital lumber yard for other projects down the road, yes you could probably build a digital house with my digital lumber yard in Photoshop, that’s something Bert Monroy might do, if you have never seen any of Mr. Monroy’s work you owe it to yourself to take a look, you’ll swear it is a photograph but it is a Photoshop built picture; here take a look for your self……..http://www.bertmonroy.com/ be prepared for a realty check, it’s that good. “It is not the destination that is important—it is the journey. The incredible challenge of recreating reality is my motivation”. —Bert Monroy: Thank you, Bert that pretty much sums it up for me too!!


ENJOY, Bill B.