30 Days and 30 Photos – Day 8

I heard about the Bar Harbor Inn Arts Festival happening in town today, and decided to jump on the shuttle after work to go and check it out.  I slung my camera over my shoulder to see if I could get some inspiration for my Day 8 photo in “town.”  Walking through the art festival booths,   I was intrigued by the photography art – especially some that were displayed on canvas.  I’ve never printed any of my photographs on canvas.  I’m now motivated to choose a photograph that I think would lend itself to canvas and experiment with this medium!   After viewing the art – all of which was out of my price range – I headed down towards the harbor hoping to see a scene that would catch my eye for a photograph.

It was the dahlias that did it.  There was an island flower bed (and I’m a sucker for perennials) that was strategically placed overlooking the harbor and the dahlias were stunning.  I decided to use a short depth of field and focus on the dahlias – with the harbor a blur in the background.  I took several shots before heading up to catch the shuttle back to the campground.  I have found in my travels to various gardens on the island that dahlias are a favorite perennial here.  I’ve never in my life seen so many different cultivars and varieties of dahlias!  I will confess that I broke one of my rules on this photo – I did not use a tripod.  This was a quick trip to town with minimal baggage.  Well – I’ve always said that rules are meant to be broken.  🙂

• I used the Aperature-priority setting and had it set to f/4.  My ISO was set at 100. The final shot was recorded at 1/1000 sec. f/4 82mm
• I used autofocus and the viewfinder to frame the photo trying to focus on the dahlias in the foreground
• This was a hand-held shot – no tripod!
• Exposure Compensation setting was at 0.00 for this photograph
• In Lightroom, the adjustments I made were to the Highlights, Shadows and Vibrance settings.  I did significantly crop the photo to make the dahlias more prominent.  I should have zoomed in on them more closely right from the start – lesson learned.

After I got home and had prepared and eaten dinner, I got the urge to try a night sky photograph.  I’ve never experimented with this.  A quick scan of the sky showed very little cloud cover, and brilliant stars with no moon.   It seemed like a perfect opportunity to give this a try.  I set my camera up before leaving, grabbed the tripod and my headlamp, and thought I would try to secure a spot where I had taken my latest sunrise photo.  There were too many people there to suit me, so I trekked off down the park loop road to a quieter spot and ended up with a good place to get plenty of sky with evergreens framing the photo.   It took some editing to bring out the foreground trees and I altered the exposure during editing to lighten up the sky a bit, but not bad for my first try.  I decided it was about time I splurged and purchased a cable release so I can get some longer exposure times.  It was pure joy capturing this night sky!  I’m guessing the planet that is shining so brightly is Mars with it’s reddish tinge.  I know that I am now hooked on sharpening my nighttime photo skills!