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Favorite Photos: January 2024

5th February 2024 Mihaela Limberea

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This is post 13 of 24 in the series “Favorite Photos”

This series contains my favorite photos processed in a particular month.

Close-up of white calla on a light blue background.

Another year, another month, other photos. I took this photo of a calla back in July when there was plenty of natural light. I usually take a lot of shots during spring and summer, which I can later edit during the long, dark winter days.

For this particular photo, I decided to give it a cool edit to complement the winter season.

Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus) in the snow.

Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus), winter edition. I love how the few remaining leaves poke through the snow and add a splash of color to the wintery scene.

Wood nuthatch (Sitta europaea) striking a pose. Nuthatches have such a graceful way of landing and taking off, pausing for a few seconds while posing like a model on the catwalk!

I photographed this common redpoll female (Acanthis flammea) back in 2022 but only got around to processing it now. When I looked through my photo library for an image to edit, I realized I hadn’t seen many redpoles last year. I’m not sure why. I do hope they’ll return that year; they’re so beautiful and always fun to photograph, especially the males; they have pink breasts!

Blackbird female (T. merula). I shot this in the darkest December last year at ISO 12.800. It was 11am, and the brightest light you could get was some kind of grayish twilight. You wait and wait for the daylight to appear, and then, suddenly, the sun starts to set, and it gets dark again.

As mentioned above, I rarely shoot in November/December because it’s too dark. As you can see, you can still get beautiful photos, but I find it’s too much work; it’s not worth it. I ran the image through Topaz Photo AI to reduce the noise and then Nik Color Effex to retrieve some feather details.

To get away shooting in low light with a high ISO, you do need to shoot to the right (of the histogram), as noise hides in the darker areas. It helps if you have a lens with a large aperture (f/2.8 or F/4) to let in more light, but unfortunately, I don’t. My Canon RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM lens’ largest aperture is f/7.1 at 500mm.

On the other hand, problems are good; they force you to get creative and work around them. As I always say, creativity thrives on constraints. Look past the issues and see the opportunities!

As an avid birdwatcher and photographer, I always try to capture the beauty and grace of these magnificent creatures. Birds are fascinating creatures that come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and taking their photos can be a challenging yet rewarding experience.

Overall, these photos are just a tiny glimpse into the incredible beauty of the natural world. By taking pictures like these and sharing them with others, I hope to inspire a love and appreciation for nature that will hopefully last for generations.

I hope you enjoyed these photos; there are more to come next month.

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A Great Photograph

15th January 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Photography Quotes

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Ansel Adams Birds

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West.

To read more quotes, click here. To read more on photography, click here.

Beyond Reality: The Beauty of Photography as Art

5th January 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Art Photography

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Birds Wildlife

“This is not what that background looked like,” my friend said in a half-puzzled, half-accusatory tone. “And it wasn’t snowing.”

My friend had dropped by for a cup of coffee and some girl gossip and was peering at my computer screen while I was making coffee. The screen showed a before and after photo of a blue tit posing on a perch.

And this is the trouble, I thought, with everybody being a photographer nowadays. You snap a picture with your phone, and there you go, a dog, your children, a blue tit. What you see is what you get. Change that, and you alter reality. You fake it. You cheat.

What they fail to see is that even a “real” picture that seems to show you precisely what you saw is a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional reality. Our eyes see more than that camera does. What you’re looking at is what the camera saw, not you.

And what you see is different from what I see. Ask a group of people what they saw, and you’ll hear different accounts of the same thing. We’re different, and we’re interested in different things. If I walk into somebody’s house, my eyes will instantly travel to bookshelves and pictures while my husbands will find the LPs. Same reality, different outlooks.

The important thing here is not what you look at but what you see. Some people would see a blue tit on a perch, and this is what they would attempt to record, the photograph an exact recording of reality. The result may be technically perfect but also impersonal. A good illustration for a bird guide, maybe, but no indication of the creator’s personality.

An artist, on the other hand, has a vision. S/he sees beyond the obvious, beyond the “bird on a stick.” S/he sees the promise, what it could be, the hidden layers of reality. S/he doesn’t attempt to record reality but create it anew.

Photographs are subjective, and it is the photographer’s vision that shapes the final result. This is where the line between photography and art blurs. While anyone can take a photograph, not everyone can create art. An artist sees beyond the obvious and captures the essence of a moment, not just the physical reality of it. They see the hidden layers of reality, and their photographs are a reflection of their unique perspective. The beauty of art is that it is not limited by the camera’s lens or the photographer’s perspective. It is an interpretation of reality; therefore, it can be anything the artist wants it to be. It is a creation, a representation of the world as the artist sees it, rather than a simple recording of it.

Everyone can be a photographer, but not everyone can be an artist.

To read more on photography, click here. Artsy has a good article on how to learn to see the world as an artist here.

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My 2023 Favorite Photos

28th December 2023 Mihaela Limberea

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As 2023 draws to an end, it’s only natural to review the past year. Let’s have a look then, shall we?

Kangaroo Island Kangaroos (Macropus fuliginosus fuliginosus)

This is my absolute favorite photo this year, by far: a Kangaroo Island kangaroo tenderly licking her daughter. It was amazing to see how the mother cared for her little one; they had such a special bond! Witnessing moments like these is why I love wildlife photography.

The KI kangaroo is a subspecies of the Western Grey Kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus). Because of their long period of isolation from mainland Australia, the KI kangaroos are pretty different from the Western Grey kangaroos. They’re shorter, darker, and much cuter if you ask me!

Mother and daughter kangaroo, the joey suckling her mother on Kangaroo Island

The same mother kangaroo as above keeps a watchful eye on her surroundings while her joey suckles. Incredibly, the mother kangaroo can carry joeys at different development stages in her pouch. She can also provide different nutritional content milk in her four teats to cater to the various joeys’ ages.

A standing Kangaroo Island kangaroo male

Standing tall at almost 1.8m (5.9ft), a Kangaroo Island kangaroo male (Macropus fuliginosus fuliginosus) surveys its surroundings at sunset on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. This one was quite tall and showed plenty of muscle, so I kept my distance 😉.

How this photo came about: I’d seen some cute photos of squirrels and strawberries on Instagram, and I decided to give it a try. Said and done. I picked up the most beautiful strawberries I could find at our little market, set up my hide, and waited. For a long time. I had almost given up when this cute red squirrel finally showed up and approached, oh, so cautiously, the strawberries. Quite suspicious of the whole thing, I can tell you.

She picked one up, sniffed it carefully, and then threw it away. Not interested, apparently. I barely had time to take a photo. Then she selected a large walnut instead and ran away with the treasure.

Experiment over, and I’m happy with the outcome. One photo but quite pretty, isn’t it? It was enough for me and even for Canon Sweden, who picked it up as their Facebook cover for October.

I love this photo so much that I turned it into a Christmas card. Don’t you love that mischievous look?

Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) posing in our backyard. This is the old oak tree that both squirrels and birds love.

We call it the Tree of Life. Woodpeckers and squirrels chase each other up and down its trunk, small and not so small birds land on its branches first before jumping down to the bushes closer to food and water, and a lot of insects call it home. It provides a quick getaway for birds and squirrels when they get startled, and even our tabby Minette climbs it every now and then to survey her domain. (I suspect the woodpecker may have something to do with it.)

Close-up of a young Kangaroo Island kangaroo female

A young Kangaroo Island kangaroo female (Macropus fuliginosus fuliginosus) that used to come with her mother by our Ecopia Retreat villa almost every day. She’s so cute 😍 I probably took hundreds of photos of her!

I love photographing wood nuthatches (Sitta europaea); they usually strike a pose when landing and again before taking off, checking their surroundings. I can always count on them to sit still long enough for me to get a decent photo.

Did you know that nuthatches can forage when descending trees head first? Inveterate hoarders, they store the food in the bark of the trees, then conceal it with moss or small pieces of bark.

A European honey bee feeding on an allium flower, photographed in my garden with the Canon RF100mm F2.8 L MACRO IS USM lens. I love the simple composition and complementary colors.

As with most of my macro shots, it was handheld. No tripod or focus stacking for me; I love to keep things simple.

Portrait of a scaly-breasted lorikeet (Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus) sitting on a branch

Scaly-breasted lorikeet (Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus). I love parrots, and this one was so much fun to photograph! It didn’t sit still for a moment, jumping nosily around as these parrots do, but it did take a break for a few seconds, and I was ready with the camera!

A pair of Kangaroo Island Glossy Black-Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus lathami halmaturinus) sitting on a tree branch

Bonus: the very rare Kangaroo Island Glossy Black-Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus lathami halmaturinus).

My photo of this Glossy Black-Cockatoo couple has been published in the Journey Beyond Magazine in Australia. This was a special moment for me, not only because it’s my first photo to be published in Australia (a dream come true!) but also because it was taken at the Ecopia Retreat on Kangaroo Island (South Australia), a place very dear to me. Yael and Rob, the Ecopia Retreat owners, have created a haven for these rare birds around Ecopia, planting She-oak trees and putting up bird boxes to help them survive. I was thrilled and awed to be able to find them and see them going about their business in the wild.

The Kangaroo Island subspecies of the Glossy Black-Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus lathami halmaturinus) is listed as endangered, with a population of about 450 birds before the devastating bushfires of 2019/2020. 75% of their habitat in the western part of Kangaroo Island was impacted by the bushfires. They feed exclusively on Drooping She-oak seeds and only on particular trees in the forest, making their survival even more challenging.

New year card showing a red squirrel holding pink balloons on a light blue and pink background

I hope you enjoyed looking at the photos. Here’s to more, better images to come in 2024!

I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! Gott Nytt År as we say in Swedish.

Favorite Photos: December 2023

26th December 2023 Mihaela Limberea

Photography Wildlife

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Birds Blue tit Ibis Kangaroo Island Lorikeet Squirrel Wildlife

This is post 12 of 24 in the series “Favorite Photos”

This series contains my favorite photos processed in a particular month.

Scaly-breasted lorikeet (Trichoglossus chlorolepidotus) sitting on a branch

Australian white ibis (Threskiornis molucca) standing on top of a dead branch.

I photographed this Australian white ibis (Threskiornis molucca) on my January 2023 trip to Kangaroo Island but haven’t edited it until now. Many believe they’re a feral species introduced to Australia, similar to foxes or hares. But these ibises are, in fact, native Australian birds.

A cute tiny blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) stopped by and posed so nicely for me. A blue tit weighs around 11-12 grams. A lot of attitude in such a tiny package, wouldn’t you say?

And a couple of squirrels, of course! A good ending to the year.

I hope you enjoyed these photos; there are more to come next month.

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The Earth Is Art

15th December 2023 Mihaela Limberea

Photography Quotes

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Yann Arthus-Bertrand

“The earth is art, the photographer is only a witness.”
Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Yann Arthus-Bertrand (b. 1946) is a French environmentalist, activist, journalist and photographer.

To read more quotes, click here. To read more on photography, click here.

Favorite Photos: November 2023

3rd December 2023 Mihaela Limberea

Photography Wildlife

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Bee Birds Flowers Reflection Squirrel

This is post 11 of 24 in the series “Favorite Photos”

This series contains my favorite photos processed in a particular month.

Baltic Sea reflections. I hoped to photograph some beautiful swans that day, but they were nowhere to be found.

Instead, I stumbled upon the most breathtaking reflection of pine trees and birches in the sea, which looked like a Monet painting. I tried to do justice to that feeling in the editing.

Close-up of a a tiny snail peering down over the edge of a cone flower

A macro shot I haven’t gotten to process until now, a tiny snail peering down over the edge of a coneflower. I usually take lots of photos during spring and summer, when the light is good in Sweden, and then process many of them during late autumn and winter when there’s hardly any light. It’s a way of reducing my frustration during that dark time and enjoying spring and summer again.

This is another shot from the archives that I just processed. I had almost deleted it. It wasn’t a bad photo, but there wasn’t anything special about it. Something about it made me give it a three-star rating and keep it to try processing it on a rainy day. Now I’m glad I did; I love it!

Another photo from the archives, a European honey bee feeding on an allium flower.

This November has been one of the darkest I can remember, and the snow came first at the end of the month. I use only natural light, so taking photos this time of the year is a challenge. The sun goes up around 8am, and it starts getting dark at 2pm already this time of the year. Unless it’s sunny or snow, there’s no real light in between, just some kind of grey curtain hanging over the world. On heavy overcast days (and we had many of these this month), you wait and wait for the daylight until you realize it’s getting dark again!

I’m glad I still have many photos left to process. Other people may be stressed by having many unprocessed photos, but I don’t. I know November will come, you see.

What a difference some snow makes! It acts like a giant reflector, hides messy backgrounds and dampens colors.

I hope you enjoyed these photos; there are more to come next month.

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We’ll Always Have Paris

26th November 2023 Mihaela Limberea

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Paris

I was going through my Paris photos and was surprised to see how many door knockers I seem to have amassed. I love architecture and shoot many buildings and details when traveling, so I shouldn’t be surprised. It appears that Paris brought forth the architecture nerd in me, though.

Paris is a haven for architecture lovers, indeed. This is one of my favorite door knockers of all time. I do have a faiblesse for ornate lion heads.

Close-up of an ornamental door knocker in Paris

One more!

If you’re interested in architecture, too, I recommend you read “The Architecture Lover’s Guide to Paris” in preparation for your Paris trip. I used it to plan our time there.

Surprise: another lion head! I love the distressed look on this one. It sat on a dilapidated building, and as soon as I saw it, I knew exactly how I wanted to edit it.

The light was fading fast, so I only had a little time to experiment. I was also exhausted, having been out and about Paris for the whole day. We were on our way to the hotel, and I wasn’t in the mood for more photos that day, but I couldn’t resist it!

I’m pleased with how it turned out in the end, considering it was a “quick & dirty” job.

Paris Is Always A Good Idea

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Favorite Photos: October 2023

2nd November 2023 Mihaela Limberea

Millesgården Photography Wildlife

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Animals Autumn Birds Fall Nuthatch Squirrel

This is post 10 of 24 in the series “Favorite Photos”

This series contains my favorite photos processed in a particular month.

Glowing autumn foliage at Millesgården, Stockholm, Sweden

Autumn has never looked more stunning than at Millesgården. The vibrant colors of the garden are simply breathtaking, and that Lensbaby Velvet 85 lens creates the most delicious blur and bokeh. Can you believe this is a real place?

I usually use my Canon RF50mm F1.2 L USM lens at Millesgården or the Canon RF100mm F2.8 L MACRO IS USM one, but this time, I wanted to test my new toy, the Velvet 85. I bought it for flowers and still-life photos, but I was curious about other images.

All Lensbaby lenses use only manual focus, so it’s best to take lots of photos to make sure you nail the focus – especially when shooting at large apertures, as I do. I love to shoot for the blur, and I usually love F/1.8 to F/2.8, but I noticed that F/2.8 to f/4 works best for me when using a Lensbaby – for flowers.

It turned out that F/2.8 is the only aperture I love for this type of photo. F/1.8 is wonderful; the blur is insanely soft, but it only suits some photos, and getting the focus is really tricky. F/4 and up is fine; it’s pretty easy to focus, but as more of the background comes into focus, some of the magic disappears. Hence, F/2.8.

St. Martin fountain by Carl Milles at Millesgården, Stockholm, Sweden

Another shot from Millesgården. It is such a magical place in the autumn! This is the statue of St. Martin on the lower terrace.

Millesgården was the home of Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (1875 – 1955); he designed and built it, and it is now a museum with Milles’ antique collection, sculpture garden, and art gallery. The garden is inspired by Italy’s Mediterranean gardens, and it’s a work of art in itself. Carl Milles and his Austrian wife Olga, an artist herself, spent the winters in Italy that both loved.

Squirrels! As soon as there are fewer squirrel photos on my Instagram or Facebook accounts, someone will wonder where the squirrels are. Somehow, I became the squirrel whisperer. Not a bad thing when it comes to social media.

This is a photo from last year that I hadn’t processed. I thought it would make a nice Halloween card and processed it accordingly. You can see the card here.

A red squirrel eating a hazelnut atop a pumpkin

Just squirrel-ing around and finding its inner peace, ha, ha!

I had a few pumpkins out in the garden to get some photos for a squirrel Halloween card, but I wasn’t pleased with the images. They were fine, like this one, but didn’t work for a card, so I gave up in the end and used that photo from last year.

Did you know that nuthatches can forage when descending trees head first? Inveterate hoarders, they store the food in the bark of the trees, then conceal it with moss or small pieces of bark.

I hope you enjoyed these photos; there are more to come next month.

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Autumn at Millesgården

20th October 2023 Mihaela Limberea

Millesgården Photography

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Autumn Fall

Glowing autumn foliage at Millesgården, Stockholm (Sweden). Millesgården is one of my favorite places to both stroll in and photograph; it’s beautiful and peaceful.

It was the home of Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (1875 – 1955); he designed and built it, and it is now a museum with Milles’ antique collection, sculpture garden, and art gallery. The garden is inspired by Italy’s Mediterranean gardens, and it’s a work of art in itself. Carl Milles and his Austrian wife Olga, an artist herself, spent the winters in Italy that both loved.

The photo was taken with Canon R5 and Lensbaby Velvet 85 mm at F/2.8, 1/125 seconds, ISO 100. I applied basic adjustments in Lightroom, processed it in Photoshop using Nic Color Effex 6, and finally added Photoshop warming filter 81.

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To read more posts on Millesgården, click here.

Mihaela Limberea

Category: Photography

Favorite Photos: January 2024

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A Great Photograph

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Beyond Reality: The Beauty of Photography as Art

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Favorite Photos: December 2023

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“The earth is art, the photographer is only a witness.”

Favorite Photos: November 2023

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We’ll Always Have Paris

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Favorite Photos: October 2023

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Autumn at Millesgården

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