“After the rain”

Yesterday me and Ani went to the little park nearby, to walk our dog Murphy and to see the nature enjoy a refreshing morning rain. These are a few shots from that walk — I am especially proud of the last one where I managed to “catch” a bee right in the moment when it was leaving a rose hip flower! :-)

Water drop pearls after the rain.
Water drop pearls after the rain.

A beautiful mushroom in the grass.
A mushroom hiding in the grass.

A white heart -- a leaf from a rose hip bush.
A white heart..

A beautiful blooming rose hip bush.
A blooming rose hip bush.

A little bee meets a spider!
A little bee meets a spider!

The Forest Beauty

This photo shows one the rare moments when my phone camera lens was able to create such a nice bokeh, a real explosion of light behind the object in focus! At macro focal lengths, I can compare the optics of the tiny Pixel 4 lens to my Pentax-M F1.7/50mm when shooting at normal portrait distances. This was an interesting experiment. :-) I love my Pentax-M lens, btw! (Here’s a sample shot with the 1.7/50, “Red and green” — in the distances between 0.4 and 2.0 meters, the large Pentax lens will truly shine!) But shooting in full manual mode is quite difficult and time consuming; so I am carrying with me much less often my Pentax K100D + 1.7/50.

When shooting macro, the Pixel 4 is as good as my old Nokia Lumia 830 with Zeiss optics (here’s a macro shot that I made with Lumia 830, “The Magical Kingdom of Mushrooms“), probably even better — which is to be expected, because it’s newer and has better optics and better imaging processor.

The Forest Beauty
A real forest beauty! Shot in the forest of Marchaevo on 30-Oct-2021. (Shot with Pixel 4; macro subject distance, minor post-processing.)

Note: I have posted this shot also at 500px.

Update (01-Nov-2021): My little moment of fame… my photo made it to the “Popular” page on the 500px website! :-)))

Ye olde water tower

This old water tower (designed and built by the engineer Franz Salbach in 1929) is located in Lozenets, Sofia. It is now the home of the +365 art gallery.

The old water tower in Lozenets, Sofia
The old water tower. (Shot with Pixel 4; Night Sight mode, minor post-processing.)

I visited this place a few days ago, it’s autumn now and the tower looked absolutely magical at dusk… :-)

P.S. (27-Oct-2021) I’ve just remembered that a friend of mine, Nixo, posted a cool (and funny) set of pictures featuring this exact same tower! Take a look! :-)