I made a conscious effort to get outside early and explore with the camera.  It wasn’t the best conditions but there had to be some pictures out there, right?  There was!  I knew there would be.  I just used it as an excuse before today, but not any more.  I guess it is going to be part of the new year’s resolutions…  get out with the camera even when it doesn’t look perfect.

I took the damp morning as an opportunity to get pictures involving water and/or water drops.  My first few attempts did not end well.  Due to the overcast conditions I had to slow the shutter speed down and once I looked at the pictures on the computer I realized I just couldn’t hold the camera steady enough.  Normally that would have been the end of it, but not this year.  I grabbed the tripod, headed back outside and was able to capture quite a few good pictures.

This is a portion of a chain holding the extinguishing cap on a lawn torch.  I really liked the wet black look against the brown branches of a lilac bush.  Once I started examining the chain closely I found the reflections in the water were even more intriguing.

I chose the square format to help balance the picture and to remove some excess white space.  With the lighting conditions I also shot 3 bracketed images at -1/0/+1 with the thought of combining them in Elements.  Once the image had the detail I wanted via the exposure photo merge I passed the it through Topaz Labs Adjust filter to add a slight HDR look.

I have a few more water macro shots from today that I will probably be posting tomorrow for the Macro Monday theme on G+.  I needed to keep a few in my back pocket to use at a later date.