Backyard Winter Nature in New Jersey: Light Snow.

David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Squirrel in my backyard eating a nut. Images taken with a Nikon 1 V1 camera, FT1 adapter, and 70-200 mm f/2.8 VR lens (ISO 800, 200 mm, f/2.8, 1/400 sec). Field of view equivalent to 540 mm on a 35 mm sensor camera). Animation created using Google Photo Assistant.

Backyard Winter Night Sky Over New Jersey — Comet Lovejoy.
It was cold, but very clear out on the night I got some images of Comet Lovejoy. I set up a Nikon D4 camera with a 58 mm f/1.8 lens to take 5 second exposures. Normally, when shooting star trails I go for longer exposures. The comet was visible as a faint, fuzzy blue-green ball. Three different views — still images (with different crops), as star trails, and a time-lapse video

The outdoor temperatures rose to the mid 60’s and it rained most of the day. I went outside and noticed a tiny newt on my doorstep. Only a couple of days ago there was snow on the ground. At first I wondered if it was alive, but saw it move. The arms and legs are very small. I got a small tripod and started taking pictures with a macro lens and flash. I was fortunate that it didn’t move long enough to take a series of images that could be processed with focus stacking software (Helicon Focus).

