"You mean the whole tree is dead??" My wife didn't get it, so I had to explain that its only the flower Hubert that was my model, and who now is dead...
He's dead, but not stinking yet, also he'll do this last appearance as a model... I have no idea who the other one is.
There are some flowers left of course, since there are not real winter seasons here maybe I'll always have one to use as a model? Who knows...
These images are from yet another improvised stroll in the afternoon, when the sun was getting low there was some nice light falling on the leaves coming down from the carport. So I grabbed that old Nikkor 180/2.8 from 1970, why not try it out while its available?
Of course one of the whites followed me, meowing and grabbing my feet, sometimes its hard to figure out exactly what they want, well all time time really...
She was moving around a lot, following me constantly, so I walked away from her so that there was some distance. Now I'd get to try out my own, manual follow focus!
I didn't see that dead frog at the time, but it really adds something. I used to collect pictures of flat, dead frogs too...
And that worked out better than I thought! When I've used manual focus on old lenses with my Fujifilm X-H1 before its always been stationery scenes, but I've been thinking that the highlight function is so good that I might be able to use if for basically anything.
In my ongoing, deep dive into cat's whiskers these two images fit in very well! Its kinda fascinating that I got these while she was moving, using manual focus, even the Nikon going the wrong way for me.
Yes it was a bird she saw, a big one! They often come flying over here before sundown, going in straight lines, probably back to their nests :-)
I've cheated a little in the first one here, using curves for each colour channel to give the sky a blueish tint, tiny things like that is a natural thing to do sometimes.
So, what to do the next few minutes? Why not try taking things the other way, adding all automation that I have available?
I got the Fujifilm 18-55/2.8-4 OIS instead, the one that survived being literally drowned on Bali. Then I added wide zone autofocus, or whatever its called, these things are alien to me hahaha...
That worked out very well for things like this, but actually I got a failure rate that was way higher overall!
Oh well, I'll get down on the ground with them to get closer, that works most of the time! Yes its my leg to the left there.
I was able to grab some images like this one that were both close up and with them moving around, that I might not have gotten with manual focus. Also having that zoom range available was a good thing, lying down in the gravel is enough, I'll leave crawling around in it for another day!
The other white one joined us, stretching like cats do, she'd been sleeping as they also do a lot.
This gear of course works very well for straight on, easy things like this! When I get into video for real very soon I'll need this more standard approach too, of course.
But when I'm working with stills I need something more, ideally each image should be interesting on its own, and certainly as part of a series. If it can be intriguing, surprising, compelling or just interesting in any way, well that is when it works!
And there it was, among all of the failed, blurred shots that was the result of me trusting all that damn automation, the Cat Vortex! 馃榿
Does this image work outside of this context? Maybe not, but also it fits in well with the furry post in #monomad yesterday. Maybe I'll work way more with cat's whiskers & fur haha...
That's it from this late afternoon stroll!
