The moon, Jupiter and Venus

This picture was taken the 1st of December. That day, when I quit the office I saw this strange configuration between the moon and two planets.

It has taken me time to upload the picture because I'm not happy with it, I feel I could do mutch better. I should have taken several exposures with many lighting conditions, then at home get the best of each part of the image: A well exposed moon, brighter lights from the mountains at the end and perhaps a better first term. Ok, ok, I know that for many people combining pictures is cheeting, but what can I say, I like it.

Slurp seems to say this dragonfly

Picture taken the 23rd of November. After a freezing week this beatifull insect seem to have lost its strenght and has fallen into the river. She was luky we were there to rescue her. We were also luky as in summer you don't convice them soo easily to pose.

lips and teeth

Playing with the macro.

Clowds, oaks and a house

This are the fields were Siamara, Brunet, Zalamero, Llampeg and Taquetes run free. They are not afraid of loosing their jobs, they don't care about the climate change or even loosing all their money. They are free, really free.

Brunet

Not a good day to be a free horse. Brunet under the rain begs for some food. He may wish to have a warm stall with regular food, but freedom has a price.

Don't get comfortable, make sure that you too pay the fee!

Spider taking a sip

Seems that this weekend was about spiders, this one is from Massís del Garraf near Sitges. this one I don't know but it's really beautifull.

Milky Way

Riki, from Can Jordi, showing the kids from were it comes the milk

Highway and Montserrat

Today after work.

Hot spots from the sensor of my canon 350D

The day I took this night picture I started a journey into sensor defects. Even if I reduced the image size you can clearly see red and blue spots in it. This spots turn out to be 'hot photosites' and are defective areas of the sensor were leakage current heat the sensor and burn the electronic film.

You can see in the posted image that my sensor has three types of defects, the red spots, the blue spots and the white dots. Some are bigger than others and they all increase with ISO sensitivity and time exposure. The ugly thing of my sensor is that even at ISO100 and 1/2 second I have clear defects.

What camera do you have dear reader? can you make me a favor? take a black picture with your camera, just leave the cover on and use this settings: ISO400, 30 seconds, jpg format at max resolution, no contrast or sharpening increase. Send the picture to abracaarbres(flower)gmail.com and indicate the model of your camera and the ambient temperature when you took the image. Temperature is quite inportant, in the case of my camera the defects I get using ISO1600 at 5C look similar to the defects of ISO100 at 30C

Here a list of sensor defects
Here an interesting page on sensor noise that a good friend has forwarded me

Pelican

Pelican taking off in front of Golem Grad Island. Golem Grad belongs to FYROM, while the land that you see at the end of the lake belongs to Albania. I'm spanish and was taking the picture from Grece with a Japanese camera.

Blue dragonfly

This picture was taken close to the Prespa lake. I wish I had the 100mm macro with me. This dragonfly was very beautifull and was always nicely returning for more pictures. It even opened it's wings for me.

Night image from El Quer

Since last winter I wanted to take a long night exposure. This is my best shot from yesterday's night. You can even see the milky way blurry in the center of the sky.

More on fathers and sons

Yusuf Islam - Father & Son


I've always wondered what made Cat Stevens change his name, change his life.

Thistle

I love clowdy sunsets. This spring has been a blessing one. It's a pitty not having the time to enjoy it as I should.

Ouch! that must hurt, Treehugger

I snapped my finger with the car's door. The door was fully closed and I coudn't take my finger out, I had to open the door. I still remember the pain.

Did you ever asked yourself at what speed are growing your nails? I can say that mines are doing so at aproximatelly 95 microns a day or 2.8 mm per month.

It's hard to be father

Last weekend I was very lucky to find this nest. I had a lot of fun watching a busy couple constantly up and down bringing food to their nest. They were so busy that they didn't care about me taking pictures, I was using the 100mm. I was really close.

Look at the right chick. -I'm hungy mom! bring me more food!

Like crist, crucified by us

Few days ago my brother sent me this picture. It kept moving through my head. Imagine yourself eating a delicious fish and sudently feeling a hook tearing your guts. This is us, the homo sapiens, the wild capitalism and it's colateral effects. While we seat pasively on the sofa the sixth extinction event takes place and half of the species of our planet will become extinct in the next century. It's our shame and we are all guilty.

The picture belongs to a shearwater that got trapped by longline fishing in front of l'Escala. More than 70 got trapped. 27 of them were rescued and brought to CRAM, a foundation to preserve and rescue sea animals like protected birds, tourtles, mammals... 12 were still alive I don't know how many finaly survived.

Next time you buy fish, make sure it was captured by means that minimize by-catch

Sexy Wasp

A Wasp from the 'Serra del Cadí' . This is an old friend, the same one that was fighting here with a spider.

Do you like the soup?

This picture doesn't need text.

Elena's eye and me

Here I am again reflected in another eye

Pink flower

I wish I could tell you what flower is this, but I have no idea. I can only say that it was very small and was located in the Serra de Galliners.

High macro detail of a moth

This is a crop from a Macro picture I took last summer in the "serra del Cadí". I like the little scales that cover moths wings and body. So fragile.

Butterflyes and Moths belong to the order Lepidoptera. The word Lepidoptera comes from the Ancient Greek Lepidos (scale) and Pterón (wing). So here you have them.

Montserrat again

Yes, the mountain in background is Montserrat, the sacred mountain were it was found a sculpture of a Virgin Mary in the year 880.

The pigeon I captured this morning seems the soul of the mountain.

Two Seagull chicks!

Aha! that's what she was hiding, a couple of chicks and a third unopened egg!

I have to say that I took just a few pictures to minimize the stress over the chicks and their mother. I hope the food payed for the photo session.

Note that the color and spots of the egg are quite similar to the color ans spots of the chicks

What is she hidding?

This seagull on the roof, what is she hiding?

Where's the wabbit?

My friend Frikosal brings to his blog an interesting question. Regarding the quality of his images, he asks himself what part of the beauty comes from the image itself and what part comes just from that magic moment that he experienced when taking the picture? In other words, how can we measure our pictures taking out all of our emotional links that brought us the magic moment of that shoot. It's a hard question.

Yesterday morning I saw this little rabbit. I couldn't take any good picture out of it, but besides the total lack of image quality I want to post it because I know that many of you will understand the strong emotions that I felt having this little rabbit so close to me. In the first image the rabbit was ~3 meter from my lens.

A Cistus for Katie

If an admired photographer asks for something, one has to respond.

Once, another admired photographer asked for a fork, and later for a ball pen. I had to do something. Now Katie asks me for a flower, but not any flower, a special one. This is the same flower from two posts ago but 17 minutes older and some nasty photoshop arrangements in the background to make it look better.

If you don't know Katie Barnes, take a look at this slideshow and tell me, besides the grate photos and the nice music and explanations: don't we need a hotel like this here in Europe?

With the fall of 'the wall' there is no alternative to Capitalism, we have ruled capitalism in Scandinavia, wild in Russia, and polluted in China, we have all kinds of capitalism flavours but no viable alternative. A place like 'the hostel in the forest' were everything is different it's an oasis were one can dream in a better different sustained world.

Sabadell

Sabadell, the city you see under this sunset sun, it's a really nice town. Streets smell like roses, birds freely sing and love is in the air... It's people are nice and friendly. From the many parks and gardens it's to mention the 'parc de Catalunya' with 45 Hectare, you must see it. But the best thing that Sabadell has by far is that it's only 15 minutes from Terrassa.

* To understand this post you need to be from Sabadell or Terrassa, two neigbour cities with similar population

Cistus 10 minutes before opening

This flowers are kind of magic, they live just a day. They open in the morning and on the afternoon they have lost their leaves. The next day new flowers will bloom.

I dream on a picture with many of this flowers. I have it on my mind but I'm unable to capture it. It's escaping me.

Montserrat

Photography manuals tells you that subjects at 1/3 of the image look better than in the center. I think this is an exception but I can't say if from another point of view the image would improve.

Wild Narcissus

I've never seen so many wild Narcissus all together in one place. It was one of those magic days. So beautiful. The wind was strong and chilly and there was still some snow from last night. Not usual in our March.

Praying Cistus

The first flowers of Cistus albidus from this spring.

Last year that slug called bufaforat took this image from a bee approaching a pink cistus flower. Well... I've found the location of a wonderful spot full of this plants... and they are ready to bloom...

I'm going to pray to the Indian god of photography for a dreaming day full of flowers and insects, magic light and inspiration.

Another bumblebee, this time in background

Crab spider on first term while a bumblebee stays in backfocus

Don't think that I was capturing the crab spider when a bumblebee decided gracefully to collect some nectar just in the next floor. What really happened is that I found a poor bee restless on the floor. I placed the weak bee over a nice flower and started taking some pictures. Then I realized about the spider and got this nice composition.

Bumblebee II

This is the same bumblebee over the same Viburnum Tinus flowers from previous post. Which picture do you like more, this or the previous one?

This morning I've been shooting for half an hour to all insects around a beautifully pink tree. I've been all day excited at the office dreaming about the pictures I may get from that session. Well... My excitement came to zero in front of my PC this night. All useless. All pathetic. It's hard and disappointing.

Bumblebee

The Bombus terrestris queen is the only one from her colony allowed to survive the crude winter. When she wakes up from hibernation her first task is to raise a first generation of workers to asist her. I believe the bumblebee from my image is one of the firs workers from this spring.

Treehugger through Sauron's Eye

MP-E-65 macro lens extended at 5x and f=8

Another challenge from Frikosal: take a macro picture from a ball point pen. Precisely a 'BIC' one with red ink. I increased the challenge by wondering if I could portrait myself mirrored on something as small as a pen's ball. After many tries, here it is. I believe I can do better, but I don't have what I most need, time.

Sunset in the forest

Today back from work I took this image. Look at all the branches laying in the ground, they had been there since last autumn. I hope they will clean it all before summer.

White flower in the forest

I've recently bought a 10-22mm zoom. I was eager to take a picture were I could get a flower on fist plane while the extension of the tree can be seen on a out of focus background. After three days of fight the best image I got is this one taken with my beloved 100mm macro lens. I love this lens. It will take me more time than expected to squeeze the new zoom.

Fork

EOS350D with 100mm f2.8 macro

Following this post I'm adding this image to a chain. I'm not proud of it. I would like to have more time to improve it, but as my mother in law use to say: 'la vergonya és un luxe que no ens podem permetre'*

*unacuratelly I translated as: 'embarrassment is a luxury we can't afford'

Sporophyte from a fern

For me, as well as for Frikosal, plants are a difficult subject to cover. When we capture animals, experience tells us that the eyes need to be in perfect focus, and this rule works as well for humans as for ants. With this in mind you only need to concentrate to get a good frame.

Plants and flowers are totally different beasts. This fern was easy because it was clear that the sporophyte was the topic that matter, but most plants require art, a magic intuition with no written rules that genious like nomesploraria have learned from masters like Nino di Salvatore. For the rest of us, poor mortals, it's a hard stressing job.

Jumping in motion

Photo taken at 1/60 f5.6 I followed the subject with the camera so the background got moved while the subject ended relatively in focus.

Introducing Channing Johnson

Let me introduce Channing Johnson from Boston, Massachussets. Channing is a young photojournalist that has a photoblog that I like to visit from time to time. I can't say why I like his pictures, they don't brake nothing. He even has no insect on it. But when I watch it I see harmony, I see a style, a way to look into photography and the most important, it inspires me to keep taking pictures.

My picture above was inspired by some of his 'low light' 'difficult to meter' photos.