Author: circadianreflections

My name is Deborah Zajac. I'm a photographer living in Nevada at the base of the Eastern Sierras. I am a passionate nature, landscape, night/astro photographer. I shoot predominately in color and use Nikon Digital Cameras, and lenses. I hope you enjoy seeing some of the photos I've taken while on my travels. Please feel free to leave a comment I'd love to hear from you.

” My only true love, darling. I live for furs. I worship furs! After all, is there a woman in all this wretched world who doesn’t? ” Cruella De Vil in Disney’s 101 Dalmations

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Copyright © 2013 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved

live for furs. I worship furs! AI’m continuing to play with my Speedlight off camera. I have to re-learn how to set it up before I can use it if I let too much time pass between using it off camera. For this shot I used my homemade Snoot for the lighting on this.  This is my Homemade Snoot on my SB600.

DIY 7.5 in. SnootI made it with an old tea box, and Gaffer’s Tape

DIY 7.5 in. Snoot Project “How To” make my Snoot:

What I used and did–
A tea box
Scissors
Box cutter
Gaffers Tape
Painters Tape
SB600 w/Finished Snoot

I cut the box to fit around the Speedlight then covered both the inside and outside of the box with Gaffers tape. I couldn’t find any Velcro in the house so I used Painters tape to temporarily close the Snoot around my SB600 Speedlight. I had planned to put Velcro on the seam so I can re-use the Snoot for future projects, but I never got around to that.

I think it works pretty well. These characters I’ve had stored since the 1990’s.

Glass

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GlassGlass, originally uploaded by CircadianReflections Photography.

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Copyright 2013 Deborah M Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

One of the Meet-Up groups I’m in has a Scavenger Hunt going on that sounded fun so I thought I’d try to capture as many of the items on the list that I can. It was a challenging trying to get the light just so, then developing it so the background would be blackest black. I ended up painting the background black to get it as black as this.

Nikon D700| Nikkor 24-70@f16| 1/250s| ISO 400| Manual Priority| Matrix Metering| Tripod| SB600 camera right +.33 EV

On Top

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On Top, originally uploaded by CircadianReflections Photography.

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Copyright 2013 Deborah M Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

Since Rainey and I didn’t have any luck with the Super-Moon Sat. night we thought we might have better luck birding.
We struck out for the countryside. It was a fun morning. We came across Quarterhorse ponies, some Alpaca’s: one was a fairly new mom with a nursing calf, a bull frog, a few expected birds, a pair of Golden Eagles soaring high in the sky. but too far for my lens to get a good photo of, and we spotted this American Bluebird Female taking a break on top this fence post.

Nikon D700| Nikkor 300mm f/4| Hand-held- San Juan Bautisita, CA

Super Low Clouds Foils SuperMoon

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Copyright 2013 Deborah M Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve not had any luck getting the Perigee Moon this year. Last night I went over to my friend Rainey’s and we hoped to shoot the Super-Moon together. We watched the fog get thicker and thicker all night. At 3:45AM we gave up.

Today the sky was overcast all day, but once in awhile there would be a pocket of blue. I hoped I would be able to see the Super-Moon tonight, but as it drew nearer the time to leave for my shooting location the sky was still pretty socked in so I set up my tripod in my backyard just hoping for a small break in the clouds at the right moment.
There was a thin spot in the clouds affording me this view of the Moon. It was faint, and veiled in clouds just above the top of the fence between the trees, and there was Moon glow in the bit of blue sky above the clouds. The sky was a vivid blue and the clouds picked up all the color of the city lights. That at least was pretty.

I hope those of you who tried to get the Super-Moon had better luck than me.

Nikon D700| Nikkor24-70| Singh_Ray Grad ND filter| Tripod

House Sparrow

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Copyright 2013 Deborah M Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

I hand-held the 80-400mm G lens a good deal while in Death Valley. I set up my tripod for landscape photography, but not for the birds. I confess I don’t have many keepers from the Hand-held shots. The extra length, and weight really gives me away. I have weak hand-holding technique with the long lenses.

With time and practice I’m sure I would improve, but really I think shooting from my tripod or monopod with the SideKick would net me the best photos and most keepers.

A quick note about this male. He’s the only one I saw and he had 3 or 4 females around him all the time. I notice Finches are the same. Do they have harems?

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 80-400mm G Death Valley National Park- Furnace Creek area

The Mesquite Dunes and Amargosa Range

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This is from my May trip to Death Valley. It was windy most the time I was there the first two days, but on this evening the winds subsided a little, and the sky was blue so He-Man and I struck out across the flat toward the Dunes. I stopped a few times along the way to capture vistas of the dunes and mountains behind them.
There was sand in the air and blowing off the dunes. You can kind of see that on the dune in the sunlight on the bottom left if you look around the edges around it. It gave the image a softness I like. I also liked the shadows and light on the dunes and mountains.

I rented the new Nikkor 80-400mm G for this trip and I used it to take this photo.
Someday I’d like to upgrade my 70-300mm VR with this lens.

I’m also trying out On One Perfect Suite 7 Premium. I’m a week into the 30 day trial. I’ve used Perfect Portrait quite a bit, and Perfect effects, and focal point.
I haven’t been able to figure out how to access Perfect Layers from LR yet so I sent OnOne customer service an email asking them how to do that. I’ve heard from them this afternoon, so I’ll try it tomorrow.
I’m not really skilled in Lightroom either, but with Adobe’s new Creative Cloud scheme that requires a monthly fee I’m looking into different software to do the layering development work I need.
So far I like Perfect Portrait, and Effects a lot. The presets are really nice and you can fine tune them. On this photo I used Tonal Contrast, and in the Landscape Preset Folder I used Fall Enhancer. In Lightroom I tweaked the highlights, shadows, exposure, clarity,  and did a little dodging and burning.  Then to finish up I went into CS6 to add my watermark, and resize the photo for the web.  I know…I need to figure out how to do this Lightroom. I think it’s possible.
For help with the techniques and “how to’s” in Lightroom I’m using the book by Scott Kelby called the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 book for Digital Photographers, and John Davenport’s Youtube.com Let’s Edit series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfmccqzrt18

I’ll let you know how I like Perfect Layers in the coming days.

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 80-400mm at 112m| Circular Polarizer| Tripod

Related articles

 

House Finch-Female or 1st yr Male?

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Copyright 2013 Deborah M Zajac. All Rights Reserved

I’m not getting out too much this week, but fortunately there’s been some good backyard birding the last two days.
This is a House Finch. I’m hoping it’s a junvenile or 1st yr Male, but it’s probably a Female looking frazzled.
While holding Jaxon in my lap this afternoon a Black Headed Grosbeak landed on my birdbath for just 10 seconds or so. Jaxon moved and scared it.
This evening I sat outdoors with my camera hoping it would return, but it didn’t.
Instead I saw this Finch and the neighborhood bully Mockingbird in some wonderful Golden light, and the Towhee pair that live nearby and have been daily visitors to my yard and birdbath since early Spring.

I hope the Grosbeak returns tomorrow and I’m ready.

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 300mm F4| Hand-held