Black & Red

Today's Picture:

I love Photoshop. This reminds me of a black and white photo of a blonde, with only her lips vividly red. Well, this is a flower but the effect is the same. I'll post some more flowers since it turned out I can't buy any compatible macro adapter and I'll have to wait until I get rich enough to buy a true macro lens - which is indeed, 500$ - but with it the only thing I won't be able to photograph are atoms (and bacteria of course).

Mantis

Today's Picture:

This one is a bit set up to be honest. You can't expect a brownish ambushing predator like this mantis to live on a green bush - it's "food" will spot it from a mile away - and birds will do too. As a result it wouldn't survive more than a minute outside in the wild.
It was twilight when I took the photo and adjusting the settings made it possible not to use the flash, which would've spoiled it all (as it usually does).

Butterfly

Today's Picture:

Whee, my first butterfly! It's damn hard to catch one of these shy insects with an ordinary point-and-shoot. But equipped with a powerful DSLR they didn't have a chance. I took a lot of other photos, most of them required hard work and planning, but I'll post the results later on. When I'm in the mood I'll probably post my "review" of the camera (what I expected and what I got), but for now I'll stick to posting pictures.

DSLR

Today is a great day for my photography "career". I finally managed to upgrade my optical inventory, and got my hands on the most sophisticated device I've ever owned... or touched.

I bought a DSLR.

Take a look at this beauty: (this will be the only picture posted here that I didn't actually make)

Olympus E-520

It's 10 megapixel. It's blazing fast. It's adjustable in every aspect. And it has a manual comparable to that of a interplanetary spaceship.
Seriously, the amount of information is crushing for a self-thought amateur. I'll have to learn every bit of the manual to fully understand how to take the best photos possible with this camera. That's why I'll take a little holiday to get used to the camera and will post any results when I'm back.

Emerald

Today's Picture:

Today I have two pictures, actually. But it's OK since the post is about editing images. You have to see the original, right?

Today almost all of the photos which purpose is to be published are edited. And it's not about using Photoshop to create a picture of you having tea with the Pope. Image attributes like exposure, saturation, contrast, and more are touched (sometimes slightly, sometimes not) to give that photo the extra bit it needs to become a piece of art.

Take a look at this stone:

This isn't a fascinating view, is it? But with some help from the in-built "Photoshop" on my mobile, this chunk of quartz became this:

Two Spiders

Today's Picture:

The creepy spider theme continues today with this picture of an unfortunate honeybee captured by a white crab spider. Although the lunch is already being digested by enzymes, injected with the venom (that's how spiders eat, cruel huh?), this isn't going to be an easy meal - a "cousin" of this white predator is trying to grab a snack too. Now it's time to choose - drop the bee and kill the intruder, or hold it and hope he'll get scared ( the white spider is almost as twice bigger and that matters, really).

I stayed there and saw what happened. What do you think was it's choice?

Coca-Cola Spider

Today's Picture:

Now this was a tough one. This spider is not one of these creepy ambushing insects which build nets to trap a hapless fly. This is an active, hunting, and jumping creepy insect, and it doesn't stay still very much. I was lucky to see it crawling on a Coca-Cola vending machine in Japan. It was a cold morning because of the heavy rain last night and the spider was still slow and sleepy. It was the perfect opportunity.

Wing

Today's Picture:

Sometimes getting up early can be rewarding, especially if you can take such a great photo as a spider's web gently covered with morning's dew. Well, an insect's wing covered with dew is as good as this, don't you think?

Colors

Today's Picture:

I post this one just because it turned beautiful. Nothing troubling in the environment, no problems with the 'model' either. No crappy autofocus, no image editing. Nature at its best (ain't that a cliché?).
Enjoy :)

Flower

Today's Picture:

Shooting flowers must be easy, right? They don't move, do they? Well they DO, to be honest, and the reason is the wind. It always starts blowing when the incredibly slow mobile camera is about to take the picture and the result is almost always a blurry photo. No image stabilization can solve this because it helps with shaky hands, not with moving things.

Orange

Today's Picture:

This photo is 100% "natural" - the grasshopper was exactly the color you see it. It was incredible sight - the first of that color I've ever came across - and I roam the country a lot. It was a must-take shot.

Macroscopic Problem №3:
While using a custom "macro lens" greatly enhances the "macro" capabilities of a mobile camera (as well as any other camera) it has a major drawback - it often gets you too close to the object of interest. It's OK with flowers, but with cowardly insects - or even worse - dangerous ones (bees, spiders etc.) it's almost impossible to take a clear shot without tele macro lens - which are ~500$ and up. At least grasshoppers aren't that shy if you are careful enough and you don't make any jerky moves - in fact you can almost touch one before it jumps away.

Lollipop

Today's Picture:

This picture is made in Japan too. I bought the lollipop in Tokyo, from a street seller. Shocking but true, most of the people in Japan don't speak English as good as I thought - not even close to what I expected. At least they're so helpful and nice that most of the time I communicated by using sign language and we understood each other quite well. This is how I bought this confectionary marvel too. It's a fresh strawberry covered in melted sugar, without even the slightest trace of burn - the sweet, but hot paste was crystal clear.

Macroscopic Problem №2:
Another problem with "mobile" macro is the autofocusing system. Most of the phone cameras don't even have the option to focus manually or even turn autofocus off. As a result, when trying to photograph a shiny reflecting object like this lollipop, the camera might suddenly decide that it must focus on the reflection instead of the object. Luckily my phone has the option to focus manually. Problem solved? Not really. In manual focus mode even the slightest move towards or away from the object makes the picture out of focus and blurry (because of the small depth of field). While in "normal" mode it wouldn't be such a problem, when trying macro every detail has to be perfectly focused - so you need super steady hands, or as in my case - several shots until the best one shows up.

Beginning

Almost anything on this planet has the potential to perform way beyond its capabilities - if given the opportunity and a little help. This happened to be the case with the flimsy 5MP camera of my LG Arena. With a simple hand-made macro lens (any magnifying glass would do, but it'd be nice to be as powerful as possible) I was able to take closeup photos which are impossible to make with a standart point-and-shoot camera's "macro" mode.

Within the next two weeks I'll post some of the best shots I took with the mobile phone's camera and I'll spice them with background details, including the major challenges which every noob photographer has to overcome.

Today's picture:

This is a delicate fern (it was originally green, i changed the colors using the in-build image editing tool) is only 1cm long. I took the photo when I visited Nikko's Toshogu Shrine in Japan. It was growing on bare stone probably because of the intense moisture.

Macroscopic Problem №1:
One of the biggest problems with "mobile" macro (as I'll call it from now on) is the depth of field (the area in front of and behind the point of focus in which things look clear). It can't be changed and that makes photographing non-flat objects a hard task.