Seashells

Today I took photographs of seashells that I picked up from the beach in Thailand in the summer.  They caught my eye first thing this morning so I decided that they would be what I photographed today for my shot number 13 of the 366 challenge.  I tried several angles and shutter speeds before I came up with a shot I was happy with.  The camera was set up on the tripod and I had the zoom lens attached.  I started with an aperture setting of f/5.6 and 1/10 sec shutter speed.  This produced an image that was only clear on the focal point.  I decided that actually I wanted to capture all of the shells textures clearly so I increase the aperture setting to f/32 and decreased the shutter speed to 2 sec.  The image below is the end result - I hope you like it.

The image below is one that I altered to black and white on Picasa - wasn't sure which I liked best but then the warm colours of the shells won over.  However, I like this too!