Valentine's Rosy Tulips

These are my wonderful pictures of tulips. The tulips were actually from Valentine's Day, which we bought for my Mom. I took these pictures on a Tuesday, three days after Valentine's Day (Saturday). So the flowers were still in decent condition. I should have taken them earlier, when the flowers were looking fresher. 

This is semi-closeup. I wanted to take those kinds of pictures that were close up and showed a lot of detail. Well this picture is pretty detailed itself. The front has great detail, with the back blurred.     

 

There's this vibrant mode on the camera. It basically brings out the color and gives it a serious boost, like jump to the moon. I also specially focused on the second tulip and not the one right in front. 

I have to say, this picture couldn't have turned out better, except for one thing. There's always that one thing that keeps things from being perfect, which is why the world isn't perfect. What might that thing be? The brown thing on the right edge, I don't even know what it is. Whatever it is, it should be cropped out because its a distraction from the epic subject. What's so great about the rest of the picture? The way the sunlight shines through the window and surpasses the tops of the tulip. 

Once again, everything has its flaws. This picture might just have two. The background is split in half, half the blinds and half the wall. It looks weird because it gives the picture two different oscillating feels. I could have angled differently so that the background was only one. Plus, the left most flower has too much light shining on it. It must have been the light from the upper windows. It looks really out of place because it's the brightest and only one getting direct light. 

This is also another close-up. When I was taking this shot, I noticed this picture would make a great background. 

This is a direct top view of the flowers. It's like a helicopter view of the tops of buildings. 

Moving on, this is a black and white picture. There are about 7 different effects you can choose between. The black-and-white option has an option of how strong you wanted the effect 

This was also with an effect called the "toy effect". That basically vignettes the edges and puts the picture under calm effect. 

The funny thing is that these flowers traveled all around the house. They were in a glass vase, so I was able to move them around and set them where I liked. I moved around and wanted to find a plain background. So I thought why not the white background outside? There was snow on the ground, since it recently snowed that day. Then, I opened the back door, placed the vase right by the door, and then stepped back cause it was way too cold to be taking pictures right by the door. I clutched my bigger lens, the one that can take pictures at big distance. I stood at the other end of the kitchen and snapped these pictures. 

I actually took this from the other end of the kitchen. And I guess the white background worked. Only if there was more light, but it was getting dark outside. 

The Greatest Show on Earth

Valentine's Day was spent in downtown Philly at a circus. It was performed by The Ringling Brothers who perform all over the USA, and around the world. That makes their logo, The Greatest Show on Earth.

So recently I got a new Canon camera and the circus was the first place I was able to explore the settings of the camera. I did a mistake by not taking my bigger lens because using the bigger lens would allow me to zoom in closer from a father distance. In all of these pictures below, I was at my highest zoom (55).

Taking pictures in a dark, indoor setting took a few test trials. I kept my shutter speed high so it could freeze the fast movements. I had to make sure there was enough light, so my ISO was kept at 800. This allowed enough light and clarity for the picture without a lot of grain.

The tight ropers are doing their final stunt in this picture. Unfortunately, I found it cheap that they tied down the middle of the rope. The middle of the rope is the trickiest part because it has the least support. It would have been a much better performance if they hadn't tied it down. It bothered me a little but by all means, if they need support, let 'em take it.

 Here we have the elephants, which also happens to be my favorite animal. The elephant trainer made them do all sorts of stunning tricks. Who ever knew an elephant can do it's own version of a headstand! This domino-climbing thing was their final act. If only that black rod wasn't in the way of my view.

These were some Mongolian stunters, who say they took years to perfect this one final act. If you look closely, it's a balancing human pyramid in which they said weighs 800 pounds in all. They also had this muscular man who lifted 500 pounds only with his teeth. You can kind of see him in this picture. He's the man wearing silver who has his arms up, looking at the sky, right behind the pyramid. It seems believable, right?

Here were other stunt performers. These peoples would fall off that top ledge and fall onto the trampoline. You can see one person already at the bottom of the trampoline ready to come back up. So they would do some crazy jumps and tricks with that basic idea. It looked like it took a lot of coordination because there were two of them who had to be synchronized. It should be a sport... synchronized trampoline jumping.  

Right after them were the BMX bikers. They did all sorts of tricks and spins and turns and jumps. Here, the guy is doing a 360 backflip. It took me a while to get a decent picture of a flip because I had to take the moment when they were upside down. Otherwise, you can't tell that they did a flip.