Levina de Ruijter's photos

A first and a lifer for me! These are the tiniest birds I have ever seen.

The usual suspects. Just testing out the "new" new camera. :)

It's just a gull shot to test the AF of the new camera. Well, it works fine and has no problems whatsoever with moving subjects like birds in flight. :)

I took the 1D3 back to the shop. It had a serious AF problem. Especially with moving birds it could not focus properly. I tried for a month, read everything about the 1D3's AF drive and Custom Functions menu III, but to no avail. So I gave up. I went to the shop yesterday (last day of 2014) and they were wonderful and they gave me another 1D3 and this one is brilliant. Just absolutely perfect. I went to the park this afternoon. Nothing much to see there and bad light. Very grey and dark, but the camera performed beautifully. I had the 300/4 with me and this lady came too close so I cropped her a bit more to get a portrait. I shot it wide open so DOF is shallow. I am struggling with processing the files though as they are very different from those from my old 1DIIn, so if this duck doesn't look good, it's not the camera but me doing bad things in Photoshop. Seriously! :)

A very grey, dark day so I took my 300/4 with me and came away with one shot that I liked.

You would almost forget that I also shoot birds. Just didn't have a lot of time to go out lately. I took a stroll yesterday, went to the park, but too many people, too many dogs so not a songbird in sight. There was a group of these pretty gulls very active near the edge of the lake, so I sat down, covered myself and waited for them to come back. The water was simply gorgeous. There is a fish in there, you can see a hint of it just at the bottom. I will upload another one or two shots tomorrow that show it more clearly. It's a fish but I also saw legs! You'll see. :) NOTE: I welcome all comments, from everybody, but I do ask to not use comment codes and please, no group promotion of any kind. Thank you.

Theme: Make a photo Meaning, create something that doesn't exist in the natural world (in that location, in that shape, in that combination of things, etc.) I knew almost right away that I wanted to do something with these mannequins, these dolls. But I wanted them to do something they can't: move. More particularly, I wanted them to dance. I tried all sorts of things to make that happen. Yesterday I realised I had an old turn table somewhere and I used that for two of the other shots. It worked well. But in the end this turned out my favourite dancing shot. And wouldn't you know, it's one of the first I took. Go figure... NOTE: I welcome all comments, but ask you to not use comment codes or group promotions of any kind. Thank you.

Theme: Things that start with "E" I decided to do another Egg cartoon. :)

Theme: Things that start with "E" There are a lot of things that start with the letter "E" but I thought one was more boring than the next, so I decided to have some fun with eggs...

Almost no light left so I couldn't stop down and get the driver and all of the carriage in focus as well. On the other hand, the horses stand out more now.

He came too close... The whole colony was up in the air, alarmed by a buzzard passing over.

Theme: Landscape On my way back and standing on the Schellingwouderbrug (bridge) this most beautiful rainbow formed and stood forever. I'm glad I had the Samyang with me because anything less wide would not have been able to capture it all in one shot. The second rainbow is better visible here. The sky began to clear up and light is returning to normal now and soon after this shot the rainbow began to dissolve.

Theme: Things that start with "B" Balance Somebody at POTN said I had a shot with forks, one with spoons, but where were the knives? A challenge that had to be met, of course. But it took 4 knives to keep the egg up... :)

Theme: Things that start with "B" Balance...