WesDotPhotography

07/05/2025

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07/04/2025

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!
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Happy Fourth of July! Be safe out there today.
I tried something different in 2018 as I wanted the Tillicum bridge in the foreground so shot from the Ross Island bridge. The fireworks were just too far away. I'll be trying a different bridge this year. Also this is a composition, I added a few fireworks bursts from the same night into this image.

07/04/2025

Happy Fourth of July! Be safe out there today.
I tried something different in 2018 as I wanted the Tillicum bridge in the foreground so shot from the Ross Island bridge. The fireworks were just too far away. I'll be trying a different bridge this year. Also this is a composition, I added a few fireworks bursts from the same night into this image.

06/30/2025

As our temperatures increase today I will go back to some February images of this cross fox that needed editing. I couldn't decide which one I liked better so did them both.
Which one do you like better and why?
The cross fox is a variation of the red fox. It is identical in it's body as a red fox. They are slightly larger with a bushier tail. It's name comes from the the dark band of fur running down the back which is crossed at the shoulder with a horizontal dark band. Their back and sides range from mostly reddish with areas of grey fur and the muzzle, ears and legs are black. The long hairs of the tail are dark with the tip of the tail always being white.
It tends to be more abundant in northern regions and is rarer than the common red form, but not as rare than the even darker silver fox.

06/29/2025

Just a couple from a fun MMA Powder shoot along with a non-MMA model. 😄

06/29/2025

Yesterday I shared some closeup photos of the newest member to the Asian elephants herd at the Zoo named Tula-Tu. Today I am sharing the mischievous and loving side of baby and family elephant life.

The Asian elephant is distributed in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west to Borneo in the east, and Nepal in the north to Sumatra in the south. It frequently inhabits grasslands, tropical evergreen forests, semi-evergreen forests, moist deciduous forests, dry deciduous forests and dry thorn forests. It is herbivorous, eating about 330 lb of vegetation per day. Cows and calves form groups, while males remain solitary or form "bachelor groups" with other males. During the breeding season, males temporarily join female groups to mate. Wild Asian elephants live to be about 60 years old. While female captive elephants are recorded to have lived beyond 60 years when kept in semi-natural surroundings, Asian elephants die at a much younger age in captivity; captive populations are declining due to a low birth and high death rate.

06/28/2025

This is the newest member of the Asian elephants at the Zoo. Her name is Tula-Tu and she was born Feb. 1, 2025.
The Asian elephant is distributed in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west to Borneo in the east, and Nepal in the north to Sumatra in the south. It frequently inhabits grasslands, tropical evergreen forests, semi-evergreen forests, moist deciduous forests, dry deciduous forests and dry thorn forests. It is herbivorous, eating about 330 lb of vegetation per day. Cows and calves form groups, while males remain solitary or form "bachelor groups" with other males. During the breeding season, males temporarily join female groups to mate. Wild Asian elephants live to be about 60 years old. While female captive elephants are recorded to have lived beyond 60 years when kept in semi-natural surroundings, Asian elephants die at a much younger age in captivity; captive populations are declining due to a low birth and high death rate.

06/27/2025

Now for the FLIP side of doing focus stacking. These are all single images taken with natural light (btw....the focus stacked images posted yesterday were taken in natural light also).
I went way extreme on the DOF/FStops on these to just show what can be acquired for different looks.
Image 1: This is a single image shot at f/16, 1/125sec and ISO100 and using a tripod. While a lot of the image is very sharp there are areas towards the bottom which are blurred.
Image 2: This single image was pushed to the maximum aperture of f/32, 1/60sec and ISO100 and using a tripod. Again there is a lot in focus and areas that are blurred.
Image 3: This is an older image taken with extension tubes and was handheld. What are extension tubes you might ask.......They are hollow tubes that fit between a camera body and a lens, increasing the distance between the lens and the camera's sensor. This increased distance allows the lens to focus closer than its minimum focus distance, effectively enabling macro photography with a regular lens.
Shooting with a very narrow depth of field DOF like I did here gives a totally different look. This was handheld as I was moving the camera on manual focus and grabbing a point and shooting away. This was 1/2000sec f/2.8 ISO100.

06/26/2025

Here is a brief explanation of what Focus Stacking is per the Canon Website: Focus bracketing enables continuous shooting with the focal distance changed automatically after a single shot. From these images, you can create a single image in focus over a wide area by using an application that supports depth compositing. And that's a brief, easy peasy explanation 🥹😄. I have been using Focus 8 which I highly recommend.
The first image I am sharing is in according to my newly adopted rule of 'screwed up again but here.....let's share that with everyone' 😛 Where I screwed up was I didn't check my settings (can hear Wes in the background saying DIDN'T YOU CHECK YOUR SETTINGS). I shouldn't have been shooting at f/14! Because my DOF was so wide I ended up with only 4 usable images when it should have been much closer to the 12 images I had my camera set to.
SO......1st image is the finished picture. 2nd image is the first image in the stack of 4 showing the middle of image is blurry. 3rd image is the last image in that stack with the middle of image sharp.
Hope this helps others plus shows none of us photographers are perfect, LOL!