David's Images of the Day Photoblog
While we were out on our morning photography composition lesson outside of Volcano National Park, I found this black volcanic rock with yellow-green sparkles. I brought it back to the lodge where I had a macro lens, and spent the afternoon trying to get some pictures of the crystals. Later on I discovered that the crystals were a semi-precious gem known as Peridot (Pele’s Tears).
Ten years ago, I arrived in Hawaii to attend a photography workshop with Thom Hogan. It was hard to believe the day before I was in Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge in northern Colorado. At that time, I had only been taking pictures with a DSLR camera for just over one year. Soon after getting the camera, I found Thom’s web site which became a very helpful resource as I was learning to use the camera (much more useful than the Nikon manual provided with the camera). I purchased his guides for the D200 (and subsequently the guides for all of the new Nikon cameras I have used. These guides are by far the best resource for understanding the capabilities of the Nikon digital cameras. I saw a note in Thom’s web site that there was a late opening for his Hawaii workshop over Thanksgiving week. I signed up right away since I knew that there was a lot more that I needed to learn to become a better photographer. The first evening in Hawaii, we went down to the beach for sunset. I took these two pictures of boats with the sun setting behind them. Little did I know, it would become a contest between some friends on a Semester at Sea voyage to get images of boats or ships in front of the setting sun.
The sky was clear so I put a couple of cameras out with wide-angle lenses to try to capture some Leonid meteor trails.
This is the second one of my indoor succulent plants to send up a shoot with tiny red flowers. I think the succulent may be some type of Sempervivum (Hen & Chicks). I have been told that once a Hen blooms, that it will die, and the Chicks will take over. In addition to the image of the full plant, I have blown up (cropped) the image for a closer view of the flowers. I will try to do some macro images of the small flowers.
![Succulent plant with a stalk and small red flowers. [Semlpervivum, Hen & Chicks?] Image taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/2.8 VR macro (ISO 200, 105 mm, f/16, 1 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro. (David J Mathre)](http://www.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000w5yBLeB_vRA/s/600/750/D810a-20171114-09431499.jpg "Autumn Indoor Nature in New Jersey. Succulent plant with a stalk and small red flowers. [Semlpervivum, Hen & Chicks?]")
![Succulent plant with a stalk and small red flowers. [Semlpervivum, Hen & Chicks?] Image taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/2.8 VR macro (ISO 200, 105 mm, f/16, 1 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro. (David J Mathre)](http://www.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000Cvn5NdWvTtg/s/600/337/D810a-20171114-09431499-crop.jpg "Autumn Indoor Nature in New Jersey. Succulent plant with a stalk and small red flowers. [Semlpervivum, Hen & Chicks?]")
![Succulent plant with a stalk and small red flowers. [Semlpervivum, Hen & Chicks?] Image taken with a Nikon D810a camera and 105 mm f/2.8 VR macro (ISO 200, 105 mm, f/16, 1 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro. (David J Mathre)](http://www.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000nB6pNjr8Sos/s/600/480/D810a-20171114-09431499-crop-2.jpg "Autumn Indoor Nature in New Jersey. Succulent plant with a stalk and small red flowers. [Semlpervivum, Hen & Chicks?]")
Images taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 58 mm f/1.4 lens (ISO 100, 58 mm, f/2, 30 sec). I’ve also included a slide show of shorter star trails and a time-lapsed video created with the individual images.
