Hydrangea Blooming

D200, Nikkor 24mm f2.8

The Hydrangeas were beginning to bloom on Russian Hill.

--WT

Parrot Pair

Lumix DMC-GF1, Lumix 14-45mm

Their colors match the plant and berries so well that if they didn't make any noise it would be very easy to not notice them.

--Warren

Happy Easter!

Lumix DMC-GF1, Lumix 14-45mm

Greg, Gail and I were walking our old neighborhoods where we grew up, and we stumbled upon a flock of wild parrots in a park on Vallejo Street near Russian Hill. They were feasting on berries right in front of us, and they stayed there for an unusually long time allowing us to observe and photograph them.

The last time I was up close with the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill was when Steve R. came to visit, and that was a few years ago already. It is an extremely rare privilege and treat to be able to see them up close and personal like this. It really made our day.

This is just one picture. When I have time, I will post a set to my gallery site.

--Warren

p.s. Steve visited in April 2009, I just looked it up.

p.p.s. Good news! Blogger finally fixed their search feature! Try it, it works now.

Me at Russian Hill

Leica M3, 50mm f2.8 Elmar, Fuji Superia Xtra 400

As part of my day out with the M3 for the first time, I wanted to test it under different conditions. In this shot, I wanted to test the Elmar's performance using a semi-shallow depth of field. We came upon this area of open shade, and I selected 1/500, f5.6 (as far as I can remember), handed the M3 to Gail and told her to take my picture with the SF Bay and Alcatraz as the background. This was the first opportunity for Gail to handle the M3, and she did very well, primarily because Gail is no stranger to handling all my different cameras over the many years that we've been together. She took two shots here. The first one was mainly to get a feel for how the camera operates. The picture that you see here is the 2nd shot. I feel that compositionally, she nailed the 2nd shot (she has always had great instincts for composition). I did very little post-processing correction on this one.

Even with a cheap, low-resolution Walgreens scan, you can see that pictures taken with this lens have some "pop" to them. I am very pleased with this Leica 50mm lens.

--Warren