Nature – Page 43 – engloy's digital photo gallery

A Rippling Good Time

April 17, 2006

A Rippling Good Time
Updates to this photoblog will be a little slow as I will be away to the UK for some revision courses before I attempt the final portion of my career-related exam in early May…

The above picture was taken during the same trip I made to the Botanical Gardens almost 2 weeks ago. This particular duck was having a good time making ripples in the water. I made a quick switch to shutter priority / continuous drive mode and clicked a quick series of shots. This was one of the better ones with just the right composition, action and ripple patterns. I wasn’t able to dial in some compensation for the brightness of the water: the duck ended up looking a bit underexposed because of the lighting situation. Thankfully, I was able to recover the details with some RAW processing in CaptureONE. I have also done some vignette-masking/levels adjustments to darken and increase the contrast of the ripple patterns while leaving the duck highlighted as the main subject in the picture.

Fresh As Dew

April 12, 2006

Fresh As Dew
As promised, this is the vertical version of “Frozen In Tranquility”. Between the two shots, this was my favourite one initially. However, I am beginning to find the horizontal one more appealing. This one has the ‘orange bit’ cloned out for a change. Of course, the contrast and saturation was boosted up significantly to achieve this final look. Which one do you like better?

Spring Splendour

April 6, 2006

Spring Splendour
Although we do not have the four seasons here in Singapore (it’s either rain or shine here, with the weather humid throughout the whole year :P), the splendour of spring seems to be in full swing currently at the Botanical Gardens, at least by the Symphony Lake. After my initial visit 2 weeks ago, my repeat visit over the weekend saw the pond filled full of water hyacinths and lotus blooms. I managed to find this particular lotus flower isolated nicely by the morning light. Using partial metering on the flower, the rest of the background was thrown into a nice rich and dark green, emphasizing the flower as the main subject in the frame.