Always Look Behind You

One of the early lessons I learned in photography class was to never be afraid to move around, and maybe even get a little dirty.  Most people shoot their photographs from a standing position, while the simple move of bending over or going belly-down on the floor can turn a regular photograph into something more.  I didn't get very dirty taking this photograph, but I did take advantage of the previously mentioned lesson.  Though to be honest, it was done accidentally.  This shot was taken while on vacation at Niagara Falls.  I was feeling sad by the recent death of my Grandmother and one of the final conversations that we had was about how she had visited Niagara Falls when she was younger and how she hoped that I'd make my way there as she knew I'd be able to take some nice photographs.  I walked up and down the sidewalk next to the falls, trying to get the perfect angle, but just couldn't come up with something that interested me or was a unique image.  Out of frustration, I gave the stone wall next to the sidewalk a good kick and then turned, leaning against the metal railing.  That's when I saw it.  Illumination Tower.  The concrete stage where all of the lights that are used to light up Niagara Falls are located.  Sitting just behind the stage was the Niagara Falls casino with it's bright red lights reflecting against the passing mist created by the Falls.  I quickly spun the tripod around and snapped the picture you see here, and that was one of the featured shots on my exposition last autumn.  It was shot at f/7.1, 13sec., ISO 100 at 35mm and was the jolt that I needed to get that lesson mentioned above drilled into my head.  Everybody goes home with a picture of Niagara Falls lit up at night.  But I think my photograph of the lights that light up the Falls is much more interesting than anything else I took on that trip.

***UPDATE***

During the write-up I forgot to mention that I timed the exposure for 13 seconds purely because of the casino in the background.  Lucky 13 and all.  You could get pretty much the same result with an exposure of 12 or 14 seconds.

It's Somewhat Chilly

As I write, we're currently in the middle of a cold spell that has temperatures in the minus-teens Celcius with wind chills in the minus-twenties.  However, you don't come here for weather reports, you come here to look at my pictures.  While we're all trying to keep warm, I took a trip into my photo archives to find the photograph you see above my words.  It wasn't a very long trip though as this picture was last seen as part of my exhibition this past fall, though the version you see here has been a little modified.  As with the last few days, this photograph was taken on a cold January day back in 2008.  The shot was taken at f/8, 1/200 sec ISO 400 at 18mm.  For this site, I cropped the picture to 12" x 6".  I feel that the picture does a good job of showing how cold the day was.  From the crisp blue sky to the ice floating by, just looking at this picture gives the chills.  I also like the fact that since the photograph was taken before the sun went down, there were no lights on in any of the buildings across the river in Montreal, making it the frozen city.

Newest Family Member

 Over the Christmas holidays I had the honour of meeting the newest member of my family, little Louis-Francois.  He's a couple of months old and I had been asked to bring my camera with me on my next visit to take a few family photographs.  I told them what I tell most people, I don't have much experience photographing, ahem, humans, but I'm always game for a new challenge and who could resist taking a picture of that cute face.  We found a little secluded room away from the rest of the family and went to work.  In an ideal world, I would have had some nice studio lights and backgrounds with me, but since I have yet to win the lottery, we improvised with some soft mood lighting and my Canon 580 EX II flash.  Side note to myself and any future photographers.  Always check to make sure your ISO is properly set.  I made the mistake of leaving mine at 1600 for most of the shoot and had to do some 'magic' work in Photoshop afterwards.  All of the shots that you see were taken at f/4.5, 1/250sec, ISO 1600 at varying lenghts.  I did some cropping and had to play with the levels in Photoshop.  I should have taken heed of the words of my photography professor...make sure it's right on the camera and don't waste time in Photoshop.  I delivered the photos a few days later and everyone was really happy with them.  As someone who doesn't have all that much experience photographing young children, it was truly a learning experience and one I look forward to having again.  Every little bit of practice is helpful and hopefully there will be many more opportunities like this to come.  In the meantime, if you're looking for someone who really has the art of child photography down pat, take the time to visit an old classmate of mine, Elisa Elliot (http://elisaelliot.com/).  She does some really good work with the young ones and I hope to do as well as her one of these days.  Practice, practice, practice.

Nah, -15 Isn't That Cold

Those of you who follow me on Facebook (visit Eric Mahannah Photography and don't forget to 'Like' the pages was well as all of the photos you wish) probably noticed that I changed my cover photo the other day.  Here's the story behind the photo.  I can't quite explain why, but I've always been captivated by the American Pavilion from Expo '67, or as it is known these days, the Biosphere.  I see it almost everyday from my home, it was featured in one of the photographs from my exhibition and it just generally lends itself well to being photographed.  This past Saturday was a fairly mild day, by my standards, so I decided to lug out my equipment to Île Sainte-Hélène and grab some more shots.  One evening while driving home from work I noticed how the lights from the bridge lined up pretty well with the Biosphere so I was off on a photo mission. This shot was taken at f/9, 10sec, ISO 100 at 34mm.  The long exposure time allows for the 'star' effect you see around the street light, and then I cropped the image to 12"x5".  The lights on the bridge also form some leading lines to, hopefully, capture your attention and on the right hand side is my favourite metal ball.  The photo was also taken just a little bit after the sun went down, allowing just enough light to bring some colour to the sky.  I've been several times in the past, I'll keep going several times in the future and I hope that you'll still enjoy looking at what I do.

Some Wall Hangers

Over the course of trying to figure out what to give as Christmas presents this year, I was drawing my usual blank on trying to figure out what to get people.  Luckily, the brains of this operation, my girlfriend, came to my aid as she offered up the idea of bundling up some of my photographs and creating a calendar with them.  The final results can be seen in the photos that I`ve attached with this blog post.  The lucky recipients of these calendars were some family members as well as a few friends.  This was kind of a test for me as well to see how well the finished product would turn out.  I was really happy with the calendars when I picked them up and was almost sad to see them go.  I probably should have been smart enough to get one printed for myself.  Told you I wasn't the brains of this operation.  Everyone who recieved a calendar seemed really happy with them as well.  So, my question to you, gentle reader, would this be the kind of thing that you would be interested in buying?  If the response is positive, I might look into trying to find a good printing company and maybe produce some copies and making them available to be purchased come next Christmas.  I might even come up with a better title than '2013' for the next batch of these things. 


By the way, I realize that the watermark still reads 2012.  These photos were actually prepared to be posted in late December, but then the big snowstorm hit and the pictures from that bumped this post a little further down the docket.  Then came New Year's Eve, and suddenly it was 2013.  No, I'm not trying to peddle calendars to you without actually knowing what year we are currently in.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone.  I hope you all had a great 2012 and that you'll have a great 2013.  For myself, I feel that I had a pretty good year.  I opened up this blog and it's sister Facebook page, had several photographs published in local papers and I had my photography exhibition in October.   It was a great year that I hope I'll be able to repeat again, and again and again.  So, I know what you're all asking yourselves.  How does a photographer celebrate on New Year's Eve? At a large party?  Dressed to the nines in some fancy ballroom?  With a glass of champagne in hand?  Not quite.  My New Year's Eve was spent standing in snow up to my shins, being battered by strong winds and wet snow.  While thousands of people were celebrating in Old Montreal, I was standing across the river on Île Sainte-Hélène taking pictures of the fireworks at the stroke of midnight.  This shot was taken at f/13, 5sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  It was also taken with me standing as physically close as possible to my camera in an attempt to block out the stronger than anticipated winds in an attempt to prevent the camera from moving to much and causing the photograph to be blurred.  That shin deep snow helped somewhat for that as well.  2013 was rung in with the sound of the closing shutter as I hope to continue the great momentum of 2012 into the future.  I hope that you all will continue to follow my work and have a great year as well.

 ***1/2/2013 UPDATE***

Here's another New Year's Eve shot.  This one was taken at f/13, 15sec, ISO 100 at 24mm and then cropped to 12" x 5" in Photoshop. Trying out this little update feature as I've been kind of forgetting shots that I've taken after posting one of them to both the blog and the Eric Mahannah Photography Facebook page.  Whenever I update a blog post, I'll make mention of it on Facebook so that nobody will miss anything.