April Showers Bring May Flowers

Seeing as how the month of May is almost at an end, I was running out of time to use that rather classic title.  This photograph you see is one that was presented during my photography exhibition of last October.  It was taken in my mom's garden a few years back and remains my favourite photograph of a flower than I have ever taken.  It's an Orange Daylily, and if I may say so, I think it looks spectacular.  I took this photograph with a 60mm Macro lens, which I try to use anytime I'm taking pictures of flowers.  I love the magnifying effect of the macro lens as it can pick up even the smallest of details.  Case in point being the pieces of pollen on the filaments and anthers of the flower.  For those of you watching from home, yes, I did have to look those terms up.  I believe the term I would have used before would have been 'the stuff that makes me sneeze'.  Getting back to the photograph, the other aspect of using a Macro lens that I love is how well it throws the background out of focus.  I've always liked having blurred backgrounds when taking pictures of flowers because it allows my background to still be colourful and interesting, but takes nothing away from the foreground.  Another way to achieve a blurred background is to use a wide aperture, which I also did on this shot.  The photograph was taken at f/5, 1/200sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  Speaking of backgrounds, those of you who have been following me here of late have learned that I've taken to playing a little more with Photoshop these days.  Nothing that wild and out there, but more along the line of playing with colours.  With that in mind, I've included a different version of the same photograph here for you to see.  I used the Colour Balance tool and just put the Blue, Magenta and Cyan colours each to their maximum.  Do I think it's a better photo?  No, I still like the original better.  I do, however, think that the new version is interesting.  I like the blue background and I think the new colour mixture brings out a bit more texture in the petals of the flower.  I guess that I'll leave the final decision to you so to which photograph you like more.

Red Sky At Night, Sailor's Delight

One of my photography projects for 2013 is to work a bit more on taking silhouettes of objects against the sky.  I had found a nice spot at Seaway Park in Saint-Lambert to get a good view of the Jacques Cartier Bridge during a previous visit and then waited for a suitable sky to plan my outing.  The sky last Saturday was perfect, in my opinion.  There were some puffy clouds flying by an otherwise empty sky, which also reflected some of the red from the setting sun.  The ideal way to capture a silhouette is to kind of go opposite of what you would do while taking a usual photograph.  Instead of adjusting your camera settings for the foreground, in this case the bridge, you rather have to adjust them for the background, in this case the sky.  I took this shot at f/5.6, 1/160sec at 260mm.  Another technique that some people use with silhouettes is to take that reading, and then speed the shutter speed up higher than the camera recommends.  This can be accomplished in Manual mode by using the "-2...-1...-...+1...+2" indicator you can see in your viewfinder.  A faster shutter speed means less light gets into the camera which means that whatever isn't properly lit will probably come back rather dark (under exposed) in your picture.  I tried to use this technique here as well, but I wanted to keep a little bit of colour separation between the bridge and the trees at the bottom of the shot.  I cropped the image to 12"x4.5" in Photoshop and also had to use the Clone Stamp Tool to make a few dust marks disappear.  Time for a little lesson.  Always clean your equipment after every shoot.  I had taken this photo a few days after shooting the Romeo vs Juliette party which took place in a dusty church that was in mid-renovation.  I didn't clean my lenses or camera body after the event and when I was out shooting pictures of the bridge, I got an unwanted kick in the gut when the pictures showed up on my camera display with way more dust spots than I could handle.  As a result, the long exposure shot of the bridge against a blue sky had to wait for another day.  For 'educational purposes', I've included a shot of my dusty sky at the bottom of this post.  I suppose that with a fine hand and a good amount of time, I could sweep through the picture and get rid of the dust using the Clone Stamp Tool, but for me, I'd rather just take my lump and head back out there some other day with a clean lens and not waste all of those hours in Photoshop.  As luck would have it, it has been rather cloudy and rainy just about every evening since I took this photo, but the old Sailor's rhyme was correct.  The next morning was rather nice.

Beware The Killer Bees

I suppose that the title is a bit misleading.  I mean, B. Brian Blair and Jumpin' Jim Brunzell were pretty good workers, but they were forever doomed in being stuck behind the likes of The British Bulldogs, The Hart Foundation or The Dream Team back in the mid-1980's.  That's what I call a tag-team division that has some depth.  Oops, that's right.  This is the photography blog.  Allow me to get back on course.  I paid a visit to my parents yesterday and filled my camera with all kind of photos of flowers, critters and these Bumblebees.  To be perfectly honest, I`ve never been a big fan of these buzzing bugs due to some previous childhood experiences involving disturbing a few nests and lots of calamine lotion.  However, even I can`t deny that they look rather majestic.  Thankfully, I have something in my possession called a 75-300mm lens that allows me to photograph these bees without putting myself in danger of repeating my past experiences.  There were a couple of bees flying around my mom`s flowers so I decided to try my luck and see if I could snap a few pictures. While I`ve already mentioned that the 75mm-300mm lens was useful in keeping me a safe distance away from the bees, the downside is that the biggest aperture I can get at 300mm is f/5.6  I took these pictures late in the afternoon and it was rather cloudy, so shooting at f/5.6 caused a little bit of blurring in some of my shots, though these turned out well.  One of these days I'll be able to remind myself that it is possible to change my ISO while shooting.  Simply going from ISO 100, which I was shooting at, to a higher number would have solved the blurring problem very quickly.  I'm going to have to put sticky notes on my camera to solve that mental lapse since it's getting to be a bit more common than I would like.  Okay, enough with the negative.  I really like the first picture you see on this page.  Always lead with your best, that's why it's there.  I wasn't sure that I would be able to capture a bee in flight, but not only did I manage to do it, but I caught the bee with the orange head as well.  Nothing against the other bee, he is featured in the three other pictures after all, but that orange headed bee had a bit more charisma.  As I've already said, I shot all of the photographs you see here at ISO 100, but here are the rest of the stats, in order of appearance.  f/5.6, 1/100sec at 180mm.  f/5.6, 1/80sec at 300mm.  f/5.6, 1/125sec at 300mm and finally f/5.6, 1/160sec at 300mm.  There was also some cropping done afterwards and some Levels work on two of them to add a bit of punch to the colour.  Anything shot below 1/80sec was pretty much deleted right away as all I ended up with was a shot of the flower and a little yellow blur.  I also usually try to shoot at f/4 to get a good amount of background blur, but shooting at f/5.6, which was as far as I could go with this particular lens, blurred enough of the background to keep me satisfied.  I give a lot of grief to my 75mm-300mm lens, but it came through for me on this day.  You'll be seeing some more photos I took using it of a little furry friend in the days to come.  Much thanks has to be given to my new little yellow friends for being the perfect models.  They didn't have any demands, they were a little late and shy at first, but quickly warmed up to the camera.  Most importantly, they didn't sting me.  I've already used enough calamine lotion to last one lifetime.

Everybody Have A Good Time

Two of my favourite things are photography and rock music.  I rarely get the chance to mix the two so when an opportunity shows up, I try my best to grab it.  Such was the case on Sunday night, as I and a couple of friends found ourselves at the Théâtre Corona in Montreal to see a show by The Darkness.  The main problem I face when attending shows is that there is no way that I can get into the building with the Canon camera that I use.  Promoters and artists don't look kindly on outside sources taking photographs of their events, and I can understand this.  Which leads to my second problem.  I am nowhere near 'well placed' enough to be able to score the photography credentials necessary to find myself in the photographers pit during the show.  The 'pit' is one of those places I hope to find myself one day.  If you're ever at a concert, you'll notice in between the stage and the fans that there are a bunch of people running around, usually during the first three songs, trying to get as many photos as possible for their newspaper, magazine, blog or for the band themselves.  I didn't find myself in the pit for this particular show, but the great thing about the Corona Theatre is that when you're standing on the floor, you can pretty much put yourself within a foot of the stage.  I wasn't that close, but I was about six rows of people from the stage, just close enough to use my less than trusty Kodak Easy Share C180.  Yes, it's a cheap camera, and I had to actually clean a layer of dust off of it before leaving for the show, but you use what you have and as I've already mentioned, there was no way that I was going to be let in with my usual camera.  The show began, and I was already beginning to think that I'd blown my shot.  The camera doesn't have a Manual Mode and the closest thing I could get to a setting that would accomplish what I needed was to use the 'Sunset Mode'.  I waited for the stage to be lit as bright as possible and shot away. With no controls over the camera, I had my fingers crossed that something nice would develop.  If I had some control, I would have put the ISO up as high as possible (in my case 1600) and shot in AV mode at f/2.8 so that I could get the fastest shutter speeds possible to avoid motion blur in such a lowlight situation.  I'm happy that I came away with two nice shots of the show, but I've never been so tempted to buy a cell phone than I was during the show.  Not to use as a telephone, but rather to use as a camera.  I saw some of the shots that were being taken by others in the crowd and the quality put my little Kodak to shame.  On the other hand, while those people were taking pictures and filming their little videos, I was having a good time listening to the music.  I guess there's always a little give and take.  Speaking of which, if any of you out there have any ideas to give on how I could find myself in a pit someday, I would be more than happy to take them.  One last thing.  If the fine folks at the Corona happen to find my voice, I would appreciate it if they would return it to me.  I think it was stolen by The Darkness.

Happy 2000th...Sort Of

It's amazing what we can learn in a few weeks.  It doesn't seem that long ago that I posted a message celebrating my 1000th visitor to my site.  Here we are a few short weeks later and I've recently had my 2000th visitor.  While I'd like to think that it's a combination of my photography and my writing that has resulted in the doubling of my stats, the truth is that my site has fallen victim to SPAM.  Yes, I'm a little slow on the Facebook/Blogger learning curve.  To those real people who visit my site, there is no danger to your computers from this, all it does is boost my stats numbers on the page and fills me with the false belief that people from as far away as Russia, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand and various other exotic locals have stopped by to see my photographs.  So, while I'm no longer under the illusion that over 2000 people have stopped by this site, I do hope that those of you who do are enjoying what you see, even if I can possibly count you on one hand.

Did You Hear About The Midnight Rambler

This is the weekend where I would usually be walking around Elm Street in Saint-Lambert looking at a bunch of old classic cars.  It's what I've done for the last three years and what I had planned to do this year as well, but for some reason the classic car exhibition isn't taking place this year.  My knowledge of cars is pretty much limited to sitting behind the wheel and driving, but the old models lend themselves very well to being photographed.  Which brings us to the main problem when trying to photograph old cars at these exhibitions.  The cars generally have cardboard signs on them explaining the history of the car and are often surrounded by people standing around and looking.  I'm not the kind of person to shoo people away from a car I want to photograph, especially since I'm seriously outnumbered in such situations.  What I try to do instead, is to try and single out certain features of the cars and photograph those instead.  Such is the case with this 1967 AMC Rambler.  I really liked the lines of the front grill and how they led to the headlight.  Everything was very symmetric and I thought it would make a nice photograph.  I took the photograph at f/4, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 51mm.  I then cropped the image to 12" by 6".  I enjoy taking photographs of the little details of these cars and I have lots of them.  It's a safe bet to say that you'll be seeing more of these over time.

Up, Up And Away

I suppose that I should have saved my tribute to Dave Van Horne for a photograph taken at a baseball game, but every time that I look at this photo, I hear his classic homerun call in my head.  This photo was taken at the closing party held by the Choeur Vives Voix in celebration of their show, Romeo vs Juliette.  You may have heard me talking about it before.  I was invited to the party and given permission to sell CD's of the photographs that I had taken during the show.  While I was there, I was asked if I had my camera with me.  The answer to that question is always, yes.  It was explained to me that there would be a little celebration planned involving a pinata and I was asked if I would mind taking some photographs of the event.  I couldn't refuse.  It took a while for the pinata to break.  The first stick that was being used actually broke before the pinata did.  Twice.  Finally, contact was made and as you can probably tell by the picture, I found myself in the middle of a chocolate shrapnel shower.  It's pretty cool how the chocolate is frozen in the air after that Babe Ruth swing.  The picture was taken at f/10, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 38mm.  Obviously, flash was used and there was some cropping done in Photoshop.  Getting back to myself for a moment, I previously mentioned that I was selling CD's of photos I took during the show.  Last year I managed to sell 23 CD's and this year I had the good fortune of beating that total by selling 31 CD's. One of my photos was even used on the packaging of the DVD they produced of the show.  Everyone was very nice with their compliments and my photos even ended up being projected onto a wall.  It's quite cool to see your photographs displayed at 2ft by 3ft.  With that, my 2013 Romeo vs Juliette adventure came to an end.  Can't wait for next year.

Thank-You Very Much/Merci Beaucoup

I know that it was just a little over a week ago when I said that I'd be taking a little break from the Romeo vs Juliette pictures, but I recently got the news that I managed to sell 28 CD's of the pictures that I took during that show and felt that at the very least, a public 'thank-you' note was the least I could do.  I can't really put into words the feeling I had when I got the news, but it was obviously one of happiness and joy.  So, a giant thanks, and an equally large merci beaucoup to everyone who decided to part with their hard earned money to buy a CD of my work.  Each CD features 200 photos from the show, including all of the photos that I've displayed here on the website as well as my Eric Mahannah Photography Facebook Page.  The few people who have seen the CD have complimented me on being able to get photographs not only of the important parts of the show, but also being able to have gotten a photograph of just about everyone was was involved on stage, no matter how large or small their role may have been.  That last comment really made me proud because I remember actively thinking the exact thing during the show.  This photo was taken at the end of the first act of the play and I was able to get thanks to the fact that the actors didn't move at all.  As you can tell, the lighting was very dark at this point, so had they moved just a little bit, it would have likely caused some blurring.  Instead, the actors are silhouetted against the background lights.  It was shot at f/2.8, 1/100sec ISO 1600 at 24mm.  So, once again, a very big thank-you, merci beaucoup to you all.  I hope that we get to work together again next year.  To keep up to date with their activities, you can follow the Choeur Vives Voix at their website.

Purple On The Water

I guess that last post made me a little nostalgic.  I went back and took another look at my Vancouver photos and realized I had yet to share this one with you.  As luck would have it, today is also this photographs birthday.  Yep, it was taken on May 7th, 2010.  It's also the very first photograph that I ever sold.  I arrived in Vancouver on the 6th for a friend's wedding and found myself wide awake at 5:00AM the next morning.  Little jet-lagged I guess.  After a few minutes of tossing and turning I did something that goes a little against character.  I went out for a walk.  I'll never be accused of being the most physically active person on the face of the Earth, but the photographer in my blood wasn't going to let me sit in my hotel room and watch TV while there was a whole city I had never visited that was waiting to be photographed.  After a few hours of wandering, I wound my way down to the waterfront site of Expo '86.  I guess it's only natural that I was drawn in that direction considering all of the time that I spend at the Expo '67 site.  While walking past the dome along the boardwalk I was stopped by these wonderful purple flowers.  I was just taking photos of the plant itself when I took the extra second to notice the skyline of Vancouver not only in the background, but also perfectly reflected on the water.  I felt that the flowers should remain the focus of the shot, so I focused on them and shot.  I took the photograph at f/4 , 1/200sec,  ISO 100 at 24mm.  Before leaving for Vancouver, I was asked by a friend of mine to get a nice shot of the mountains that he could buy and then give to his mother as a gift.  Sadly, I never made it to the mountains on that trip, but when I got home I showed him this photo and he loved it.  And just like that, I had my very first sale.  This photo also made it's way into my first photography exhibition last October where several other people got to see it and I discovered that it was liked by several other people as well. 

My Very First Photograph On The Internet...

...and why you can't see it here.  This was going to be a trip down memory lane as I introduced you to the very first picture of mine that had found its way onto the internet.  I was going to plaster it here on the page like all of the others you have seen over the last several months.  Instead, I'm going to force you all to follow a link to another website to see my picture, all because I was an idiot and didn't follow the first rule of digital photography.  BACK EVERYTHING UP!  Much like Fight Club, that is also the 2nd and 3rd rule of digital photography.  It's important to take care of your digital files because without them, you have nothing.  I'm actually kind of a nut when it comes to backing things up, which makes the disappearance of this particular photo all the more perplexing.  All of my pictures find their way quite rapidly onto three hard drives and 2 CD's.  Yes, some may call that extreme, I call it being extra careful.  The photo I have misplaced was taken on May 2, 2010 for a project by the New York Times called A Moment In Time.  The goal of the project was for people all around the world to stop whatever they were doing at 15h00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time..which made it 9:00AM local time) and take a picture.  You would then send that picture to the New York Times and they created a whole website/photo album of all of the photographs that were sent to them that day.  To this day I sometimes like to introduce myself as a New York Times published photographer just to bump up the old ego, though I'm always quick to point out the real reason behind why my picture is there.  Back to the story, the whole concept of the project was to get a real person's view of the world they live in.  However, and after having gone through several of the photographs on the website I can say that I wasn't alone in doing this, instead of taking a photo by chance, I purposely placed myself somewhere I wanted to take a picture.  In this case, the Saint-Lambert War Memorial with it's tulips just coming into bloom.  9:00AM came, I took the picture and moments later it was sent to the New York Times.  A few days later it showed up on their website, complete with my name, and my day was made.  And that is forever, where it will stay because my file of the photograph is MIA.  All the more strange is the fact that I do have the back-up files for all of my photos from my Vancouver trip which began only five days after this particular photograph had been taken.  So my friends, hear my words, and heed them well.  Make sure you take the time to back-up all of your photographs, or make sure that they're good enough to be published by the New York Times so that you can still always see them.  Yes, that was a joke.  By the way, if you would like to see the photograph I just went and blabbed on about, you can follow this link.  Try and show a little love for the dandelion who managed to sneak into the shot without my being aware.  Also, as their tag-line says, if you have a couple of hours to kill, take the time to look at as many of the other photographs that can be found on the site as well.  Some of them are quite spectacular.

Romeo vs Juliette - Part 2

Do you remember about a month ago when I promised everyone Part 2 of my story photographing the show Romeo vs Juliette?  Yes, I promised that Part 2 would be in a few days, and in theory, it has been a' few days'.  I'll be honest, this took a bit longer to write than I had planned, but since being a photographer is not my 'day job', sometimes real life gets in the way.  So here we are.  When we last spoke I was talking about the near heart-attack I had when trying to download my photos to my computer.  That seems like a pretty good place for us to begin.  I kind of had the bad feeling that something was wrong when I was trying to thumb through the photos on the camera and there would be a long delay.  I just took it to mean that the camera was reacting a little more slow than usual due to the high number of photos that were on it. This was the point where I was getting some cold chills, but I wasn't into a full blown panic just yet as the photos were there and I could see them.  I got home and plugged the camera into my computer and that's when the call to 911 was almost made.  The first photograph tried to download and I was met with a message that read 'Error - Cannot Read File'.  I then had the option to 'Try Again' or to 'Skip File'.  Obviously, I pressed 'Try Again'.  Again, and again, and again.  After that failed, and with the sweat coming down my back starting to get real cold, I chose the 'Skip File' function with my fingers crossed.  The exact same thing happened.  I began to have visions of 1800 photographs that would never see the light of day and an entire choir that was going to be disappointed when I had to tell them that I had zero shots of their show.  This is when my lovely assistant, who I have said several times is the brains behind this operation, told me to go take a shower because I smelled really bad.  Did I mention that she's also very honest?  She told me to take a shower and to calm down so that I would be able to think a little more straight. Damn, if she didn't know what she was talking about.  Fresh out of the shower it struck me that I could also access the photos by using the computer's directory to plug into the camera's memory card instead of the method I usually used by letting the photos download directly using the wire than came with the camera.  Hallelujah!  We have pictures!  I cannot put into words the relief I felt at that moment.  It took about an hour to download all of the pictures, meaning we were closing in on 2:00AM at this point and I was due to be at the day job for 8:00AM.  Gone was the dread as it was quickly replaced by the sheer joy of seeing my photographs were safe and sound.  It was a great experience and one that I enjoyed so much that I actually went back a few days later.  During the first night I was there, some of the actors had asked me to take some pictures of them in costume.  Things were pretty rushed that night and with the knowledge in my head that there might be troubles ahead, I didn't stick around very long afterwards, though there wouldn't have been any time that night either as they had a production meeting.  I returned the next week and took a whole bunch of pictures of anyone who wanted a memento of themselves in costume.  It was a great time as I was literally speed shooting the entire night as actors would come backstage after their scenes had ended and be photographed quickly before going back out to the stage.  Several more were taken during the intermission as I had a line of actors waiting to be shot, not only in character but also as small groups.  It was a great rush as person after person stepped into my makeshift 'studio' and we snapped away.  I also found the time during the intermission to take a group photo, something else that had been 'forgotten' the first night I was there due to the lingering thoughts about my camera.    As with last time, all of the shots during the show were taken at f/2.8, ISO 1600 due to the lowlight.  I absolutely love the 4th picture you see on this page as even with the low light, I was still able to get the shot with her hair frozen in the air as she turned.  That shot was taken at 1/320sec.  The other shots of the show, in order of appearance were shot at 1/400sec., 1/160sec and 1/125sec.  I had shot the show in AV mode so the camera took care of the shutter speeds for me.  The group shot at the beginning and the smaller group photo were both taken at f/6.3, 1/250sec, ISO 100.  Obviously, I used a flash. I also had another thinking on your feet moment.  As previously mentioned, many of the actors wanted full body shots in their costumes, so I was quick to accept the job.  Only there was one problem.  Not having studio lighting, I have to rely on my Canon 580 EX which doesn't really provide good lighting when trying to shoot vertically.  To solve this problem I shot really wide at 24mm so that I could later crop the photos horizontally once I was home.  And just like that, my two weeks of fun came to an end.  This is the second time I got to shoot for the Choeur Vives Voix and I can't thank them enough for having the confidence in me to shoot their yearly production and for so warmly allowing me into their lives.  You'll probably be seeing a few other photos from this show over the course of the year because there were so many that I loved, and I hope to be able to work with them next year as well.