Photo day again at Maplewood Acres Labradors in upper Bucks County, PA. These puppies are the 2022 litter of Diane's sister's dog Maple. Look at these little models, the picture of cute! How did we get these energetic little bundles of fur to pose you ask? It takes many hands to capture all this cuteness...literally!
You probably are not surprised that we always get some volunteers from the family to help out with the puppies, sometimes they even beg!
So in they go again...and again, until we know we have what we want. The goal this year with a litter of 4 was to get a few great shots of all of them together, not something we had even attempted other years with larger litters.
Eventually we let the pups have a picnic in the grass, and they were enthusiastic!
After they got cleaned up they had to pose for us...
...but sometimes there was too much energy for all that standing around!
Our nieces Victoria and Kristyn, and friend Tyler were our assistants this year, Thanks!
Photography by David DeBalko, taken with a Nikon Z9, lens Nikon Z 85mm f/1.8 S
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All photos by David DeBalko except the cover which used stock graphics.
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We were so happy to celebrate Nick and Karen's wedding in June this year, and are thrilled to have a new daughter in the family. Cheers to you all and high hopes for a good year to come. Click PLAY to view the short video.
Nikon D850, Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G ED lens
Nikon D850, Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G ED lens
Red tulips shot with a Nikon D850, Nikkor 200-400 f/4G ED VRII lens
...then in May capturing bearded iris (divided and transplanted from my mother's garden, but having enjoyed our garden for 20 years.)
Both Iris shot with a Nikon D850, Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G ED lens
This red honeysuckle vine, "Major Wheeler" crawls up over our pergola to help shade the pond. It blooms fully in May then continues with flowers throughout the summer.
Honeysuckle shot with Nikon D850, Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G ED lens
And by mid-May these cousins of the onion, Allium, send up their dramatic round balls on top of sturdy stems.
shot with Nikon D850, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G ED
These 2 allium shot with a Nikon D850, Nikkor 200-400 f/4G ED VRII lens
Nikon D850, Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G ED lens
These past couple of weeks, in late May and early June, the foxglove have been showing off. They have spread from just a few plants in front of our porch railing, all the way down the sidewalk to our driveway. Foxglove are self seeding and if you leave some of the flower heads on to go to seed each year, and refrain from pulling them up as weeds when the plants appear in new areas of your garden, you can get a gorgeous display of tall (varying from 2' to over 6') stems with heavy bells (or gloves for foxes?!) and draw beneficial insects like ladybugs and bumblebees. Don't worry, the bees are completely focused on the flowers and have no interest in us!
All foxgloves shot with a Nikon D850, Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G ED lens
Here are a couple of photos from my iPhone, NOT Dave's photos but I just want to show you the overall look of foxglove in the garden.
This first photo up by the front porch...
...and this a cluster near the end of the sidewalk.
last 2 photos shot from Diane's iPhone
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Every once in a while we have sanded them down and given them a new coat of paint. While sanding, colors from the past are revealed, and memories are relived. Some layers are before our time. This chair was white when we got it, but we could see the original teal paint as the sander dug deeper. Our first coat of paint was a dusty green, which was all the rage in the late 90s. Over the years we found that it visually blended into the grass too much, and when it started to chip we went with a buttery yellow. We sat on these yellow chairs and watched as the boys practiced lacrosse in the backyard, and enjoyed our new pond and pergola. Next thing you know, we had red accents on the deck, and the chairs had to go red. Another coat of darker red topped them off to get them ready for Diane's parent's 60th anniversary party in 2009. Now they've sat chipping for years, begging for some attention. With our homebound status this is the spring to take on a project, and why buy new chairs for our fire pit when we had 2 perfectly good ones already? So we are going back to the chairs' roots, and have found a nice vintage teal, which will be remembered as the color of the quarantine year of 2020. We're looking forward to relaxing on the chairs around the fire pit. And what else is there to do?
Shot with a Nikon D850 with Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8G lens
This and the first photo were shot with a Nikon D850 with Nikkor 105 f/2.8G micro lens
Magnolias have such a nice tonal range, I knew they'd make great black and white shots. It had rained earlier that day, and the rainwater was clinging to the flowers in the afternoon. When I first started photographing I shot b&w in the camera, just to see how it was going to look, but then I switched to shooting color in camera. If you are able to shoot camera raw* files, both the color and b&w information are retained in the file for you to choose in post production. If you shoot jpegs I would recommend shooting color and converting to b&w in your computer software.
* A Camera Raw image is an unprocessed photograph captured with a digital camera. After the photographer processes and manipulates it as desired in computer software, it is usually saved as a Jpeg or Tiff.
I went into the shoot planning on using these photos as b&w, but there are some that I might prefer in the color version. Leave a comment, do you prefer black & white or color, and why?
Shot with a Nikon D850 with Nikon 200-400 f4 VR II Lens with a Gitzo GT2530 Tripod and a Manfrotto MHXPRO-BHQ2 Ball Head.
Everyone has their own way to stay busy while social distancing. I've been out in the studio playing around with something I've been meaning to try for a while. Focus Stacking. The photo above may look like one photo but it's actually a combination of 25 photos. Photographers usually don't want out of focus images unless they are trying to achieve a soft background. You'll see below the first and last photos of the 25 shot, which show the focus range of the group.
Focus Stacking allows photographers to work around limitations of depth of field and create images that would be impossible to capture otherwise.
Depth of field can be so shallow that interesting aspects of the photos are not sharp. Setting to a smaller aperture may be used to increase depth of field, but that will move the aperture farther from the lens's "sweet spot." That will introduce diffraction into the image, giving the feel of some fuzziness. The lens used in this photo is the Nikon AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED, I find the "sweet spot" for this lens to be at F8, which is what I used here. I also want to shoot with a low ISO so as not to introduce digital noise to the image. It's important for the camera to be mounted on a solid tripod.
My first image is focused on the front of the foreground apple and then 24 additional images taken all the way to the back of the bowl. You can work with less photos but you'll get a smoother transition with more. I didn't include images of the background board purposely, keeping that in soft focus.
Camera used is my Nikon D850. Lit with Dynalite pro lighting system with a medium Chimera softbox.
The next steps are done in Adobe Photoshop, and Diane did this part. First, open all (25!) images at once (jpegs downsized from original first to make reasonable sized files.) Go to File>Automate>Photomerge and choose the option "All open files." Uncheck "blend images together." If you are using 25 photos like we did, it may take a little while. Next, select all layers in your layers palette. Now go to Edit>Auto Blend Layers and choose the option "stack images." When it was done, we could see the 25 layers with layer masks on each, and there were "cut-outs" in the layers to reveal the focus areas. She flattened and saved, and then did a little editing.
Everyone stay healthy and stay home for now!
