Photography Blog © Arjan Quist

Just took this picture through my livingroom window, pretty cool lightning show this evening!

(10 sec exposure and aperture decreased by 5 F stops).

Happy New Year all! We got a bunch of snow overnight to wake up to on the first of January. So we went back to the Blackwell Forest Preserve and took some real wintery pictures, they are kind of dark but hey that’s the weather….. A great day for cross country skiing, ice fishing, and snow tubing as you can see on these pics. For more pics click here.

I took my mom and dad out to the Blackwell and McDowell Grove Forest Preserves out in the western suburbs, armed with my 300 mm lens (35 mm equivalent, 150 mm in Olympus 4/3 system) and an infrared remote control. After having a day with a realfeel of -25C the weather was gorgeous, just above freezing and sunny! Click on any of the pics to get to the main picture page.

First great test of the long focal length, Mr. Squirrel enjoying his christmas lunch. He did not have very good table manners, you could hear him chew all throught the forest. He was nice enough though to sit there long enough to have about 34 pictures taken.

Next I tried my IR remote, here you see me about 5 yards away from the camera trying to see if the remote steers the focus properly, those buttons are sensitive, I suddenly saw the aperture snap and this was the result……

Although the aperture effects are not so obvious when viewing long distance, you can still see the effect. First pic below has f/3.6 (short depth of focus) and second one f/22 (large depth of focus).

You can see a similar effect when you keep the camera low to the ground and have the leaves in the center in focus while the background and foreground are out of focus.

Alright, enough play for one day, let’s wrap it up with a freaky tree picture, a leave that got stuck in a crack in the road, and a white tree in blue sky. Happy Holidays!!