Picture Post - Winter Garden

It's dull, grey, cold and wet outside and I have been thwarted once more in my "trailing all over town while attempting to get a WiiFit" ("We ain't gone none luv, dunno when they're coming in, they come in, they go out."), so I was feeling a little dejected. That being the case, I figured going and watching my (rather lethargic at this time of year) fish for a bit and looking at my sprouting daffodils would sort my mood out; spending time in the garden is a kind of meditation for me.

Anyway, I found the urge to see what I could do with almost no light and very little greenery, so I went inside and grabbed the camera. Here's what I came up with:
( Cut for images )

Hope you enjoyed them!

More Photography - Playing With Flash and Candles

While I was in the mood, I had a little fiddle balancing the light from 5 inexpensive candles I bought from John Lewis and a flash gun. This picture was taken with a Canon EOS 5D, 300mm f/4 lens with a 1.4X teleconverter, and it took me a few attempts to tweak the exposure time so that the flames weren't too indistinct and yet lit the tops of the candles with an orange glow, and the flash exposure so that the bodies of the candles were properly visible without being clinical, and the background stayed dark (because the top of my dining room table is not remotely atmospheric for this shot). The lens was stopped down to f/14 to stop the depth of field being too low, and the whole thing was tripod-mounted.

I'm quite pleased with the result, which is untouched from what came out of the camera other than a small nudge of the vibrance slider in Adobe Lightroom: