RED...no, no - the Russians aren't coming; they're still in Crimea!  RED is the first subject that we picked for our SuntanningRedhead sitting on second-level deck of houseboat in Fisherman's Wharf new little ad-hoc camera club.  Don got a camera for his birthday last year (we won't bug him much that it's a Canon); Darcy got himself a very nice Nikon this Christmas; and I'm still learning new stuff with my Nikon D300s.  So, over some post-work beers in early February, we decided that a good way to encourage each of us to get out and use our cameras more would be to have this DDS Club.  Each month (or 4-6 weeks), we'll get together for drinks and each of us will share a few photos intrepreting the previous month's subject -- in this case, RED.  Then, we're going On Guard"Watchman" guarding entrance to houseboat in Fisherman's Wharf to pick a new subject for the next month.

I had a number of ideas for RED - everything from long exposures of red tail lights to red doors to dressing up a friend in bold red - but in the end, I just went exploring around town on George Harrison's birthday looking for interesting things to photograph.  Fisherman's Wharf was a gold mine, what with red lines on boats, red kayaks and red buoys - but even better, that's where I found the stunning redhead suntanning on a houseboat and nearby, an old watchman guarding his houseboat.

With the evening rains we had, I never did get out and get photos of red tail lights or other  night shots.  Instead, I decided to tackle something I've been wanting to try for a long time - capturing drops as they hit a surface.  I've often thought about how I'd do this but never really tried it, so RED seemed like a perfect time to experiment.  To get some colour and contrast I tried a wine glass full of milk and used red wine (with a bit of food colouring) as my drops.  I had issues with getting the scene bright enough and will need to work on that next time; plus I didn't have my macro lens and so tried a telephoto zoom (which limited exposure options), but in the end I was pretty pleased with the results of my first attempt at this sort of photography...and I'll definitely do more of this.

Red wine drop falling into glass of milk

Here are a couple of the "drop" photos.  To see these and the others as full-size or as a slidehow, click on any of these photos or just check out the RED folder in the DDS collection on my website.

Come early April, I'll be adding the new subject gallery in the DDS folder too, and more subject galleries as we progress with our little club.  If you have any ideas for a subject for us, please add a comment or send me a note -- and of course, if you'd like to join and get more use of your camera, you're more than welcome so just let me know!  Near collision of wine drops hitting glass of milk