Had some free time at my parents' house so I did some random photography. This was a hard shot to compose and capture with the light.  Just going for something a bit different from the norm. Smoked meat.  Enough said! And a few macros while we're at it: And my favorite shot of the day...    

I've been here a lot lately, but I wanted a short trip and an opportunity to use my 10 stop ND filter.  The above photo was taken with two shots.  One for foreground and one with the 10 stop filter to make the waterfall and water silky smooth.  The waterfall ended up being a 4 minute exposure.

Today I purchased a years membership to Garvan Gardens in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Since I'm more serious about my photography now, I thought this would be an ideal situation.  They have year-round photo opportunities!

Ok, so we aren't supposed to play with matches or fire, right?  Time to break the rules!  FYI, if you try something like this, please don't burn your house down!  This was a fun little project I wanted to try and I had a few minutes of free time this evening.  So, here goes... ...

  I had some time to shoot a few macros today.  The challenge today though was low light and a bit of wind... not good for macro photography!  I decided to crank up my ISO to speed up the shutter and avoid motion blur.  I went as high as 5000 ISO!  I'm still amazed at the low noise levels of the D600.

I decided to test out my new Nikon D600 with some macro photography.  I don't have an actual macro lens so instead I use Kenko extension tubes.  For these shots I stacked the 36mm and 20mm and shot with my Sigma 70-200 F2.8.  This was my first time to use the 70-200 for macros.  I love it!  Firs the zoom lets me shoot macro without being right on top of the subject which is quite nice.  Also, the D600 allows me to shoot a high ISO to speed up the shutter so I don't get motion blur without much noise.

I'm amazed at how macro photography can reveal the extraordinary in what is seemingly ordinary. A single water drop, who cares? Yet look at the beauty when you're able to freeze time to look closer... deeper. The clarity and reflection in the drop itself could never be seen in real time. The pattern of the ripples from the drop's impact go unnoticed. This is what draws me in to macro photography.