This years first macro pictures

First of many bugs finally woke up from winter. I went to our garden and started looking for them. Although there weren't many I managed to take photos of few.

Taking photos of the night sky

Recently I have seen some really good photos of other galaxies and so I thought: WOW! There was a description: iso of about 800, 4-5 minutes and some photos were taken with less than 200 mm. So I thought: hmm... that can't be that hard. So I tried it out and realized that it is very difficult. When I shot at 300mm I realized I didn't have the basic accessories or knowledge to make them. So I put on 18mm and left it for about 30 minutes. I also used semi-fish eye.

First spring day

Short snowy and cold days have finally ended. Longer and warmer days are ahead.









That's what I thought yesterday. I woke up this morning looked outside the window and this is what I saw :D

Gerlitzen II

Here is part 2. from Gerlitzen. I played around again with panoramic and HDR function.











I went for a walk with my dad, where we found many birds. Because the sunset was closing in I was only able to capture some silhouettes of the birds.











We also wanted to go to "Minimundus" but unfortunately it was closed in that time of the year so instead we went to a reptile zoo. There were a lot of snakes, lizards and other exotic reptiles. Although the animals were behind glass and the light wasn't very good I still wanted to get a good close up shot at 300mm. My hand had to be really steady what was quite difficult to achieve because I had to use longer exposure time. Besides that I also lost quite a lot of photos due to a problem with my computer.










When we had come out of the reptile zoo I saw a lot of birds on the fence. Luckily they weren't afraid of people so this was the first time when I could take macro photos of birds.

Display of orchid and exotic butterflies

On 9.3. I went on a exhibition of orchids and exotic butterflies. At first I thought there are simply going to be some lovely orchids and gorgeous butterflies behind glass. But I was very wrong. Firstly I saw many beautiful orchids. But when I walked through a net into the next room I was stunned. There were about a 100 huge butterflies and they stood perfectly still. They didn't mind all those people in the room and they were one of the best posers I've ever had.

Gerlitzen

Finally I found some time for a new post.
Last week I was skiing in Gerlitzen with my parents. First night I went out to take some night photos. I found a great place from which you could see the whole of Villach. I set up my tripod and started taking photos with longer exposure - 2-4 minutes. When I headed home I caught a sight of a couple of tree stomps so I started taking some photos of them with me sitting on one for about a minute.

This was just the first day and I will soon post more photos.