I absolutely love avocados, I would eat them everyday if I could. Growing up in South Africa and Kenya meant that avocado trees were part of the landscape.
I’ve treated myself to an avocado four times this year. They mainly come from Mexico and are a lot smaller than what I’m used to. Since leaving Africa I’ve dreamed about having my own avocado tree. So I saved the four pits and have been trying to encourage them to sprout. Visit Garden Web to find out how to grow an avocado tree. So far three have rooted and one hasn’t done anything, of course I started the process at different times so they are all on a different schedule.
Today I photographed my four avocado experiments. The images are a little dark, I didn’t quite get the exposure and white balance right. Still learning!
The first picture was the first avocado I ate this year and has two very healthy looking leaves. The next two I ate within a week of each other. I tried two different methods one I potted as soon as it rooted and the other one I left in the water. The one I left in the water has successfully sprouted, the potted one is showing a few signs of splitting but no sprouting. The last one isn’t doing anything, it has been in the water for over two months now.
Anyway, I’m happy that I have one that has leaves and it may just turn into a healthy tree. The only draw back would be space, if it ever grows over 7 feet tall it may cause a few problems inside! The climate in Canada just isn’t suited to avocado trees, so I’m not sure what I would do if it actually got to that size. No need thinking about these things now, it will probably take a few years for it to grow 7 feet.
My mouth is watering with all this avocado talk!
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This is a Flickr test post.
In the near future I will be uploading experimental photographs to my Flickr account and I will use my blog to document my progress. I am very excited to have the opportunity to learn more about photography. I have an interest in macro photography, hdr and colour isolation.
Check back soon for the start of my journey into photography.
Earlier today I downloaded the Photomatix application from the hdrsoft website. While I was installing the application I was reading their site and found that they provide samples of bracketed photos. I downloaded these too and used them as I went through the tutorial. Below are the two final images from my first experiment with the application using the sample images.
My next task will be to take some bracketed photos and to create my very own HDR images. This is very exciting as I sometimes find myself getting frustrated when I can’t get all detail in high contrast images.
While I was browsing Flickr this morning I came across a group dedicated to HDR. The images in the group look interesting, my curiosity spiked. But firstly, what is HDR? HDR refers to “high dynamic range”, take a few shots with ranging exposures and merge them together. This sounds like a great technique when photographing a high contrast scene where the highlights are blown out or the shadows are dark and flat.
I have much to learn about the exact methods behind this technique and will continue to find out more. Here are some links of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/discuss/40580/
http://www.hdrsoft.com/index.html
At hdrsoft there are two options, their standalone application or a plugin for Photoshop CS2. The HDR group on Flickr mentions that many of it’s members prefer the standalone application, so I think I will try this one first.
Enough with the sitting on my bum at the computer, time to go out and shoot some high contrast scenes.
This image is from the hdrsoft website. More HDR examples can be found on the hdrsoft examples page.
