What A Save/Merci Denis Brodeur

Hockey season is about to begin, but the hockey and photography world was dealt a blow on Thursday by the announcement of the death of photographer Denis Brodeur.  Also known as the father of current New Jersey Devil, Martin Brodeur, Denis Brodeur was a world class goalie himself before taking up photography.  I first became aware of his work by looking at the photographs he had taken in both the monthly magazines printed by the Montreal Canadiens and the Montreal Expos, for whom he served as official photographer for several years.  You could also expect to be looking at one of his photographs of just about any sporting event, be it golf, auto racing or pro wrestling, that took place in Montreal during the 70's or 80's.  Until recently, you could still see him from time to time in the stands of the Bell Center whenever the Devils would be in town, taking photos of his son in action.  His most famous photograph was probably the shot he took of Paul Henderson's winning goal during the Summit Series of 1972.  In his honour, here's a photograph I took back in March of my friend's daughter, Florence, in action.  I released several other photos of her back in April.  This photograph was shot at f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  I'm nowhere near the same level of Denis Brodeur, but I thought a photograph of a goaltender making a save would be a fitting tribute to a goaltender/photographer who's work I liked very much.  His photographs will live forever.

Even Bugs Get Thirsty

This photograph is kind of a bonus shot from my raindrops photos that I put up on the blog back on Sunday.  I've never really been a big fan of insects, but they've been very good to me as models so far this year.  Last week I showed you a large spider, and back in May I showed you some Bees.  Today's featured model is your common house fly.  I guess he was feeling a little bit thirsty and stopped to have a drink on one of the plant leaves I was photographing.  I don't know if it shows clearly at this resolution, but you can clearly see a drop of water next to where I guess his mouth would be.  I get a little strange when I photograph insects.  I end up talking to them, as if my words will serve to reassure the bug that I only intend to take a photograph, and not squish the little guy.  More often than not I guess I end up looking a little silly, but sometimes it seems to work, such with this guy.  He stayed perfectly still long enough for me to snap off a few frames.  When I was done, I thanked him for his time and he quickly flew away.  Yes, that little conversation did actually take place.  Just call me the Fly Whisperer.  Not to be forgotten in the silliness, I also need to mention how much I like the texture of the plant on the right-hand side of the photograph.  The drops of rain add a bit of style to the shot as well.  This photograph was shot at f/4, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 60mm using a Macro lens.  I also cropped it a little bit in order to better draw your eye to the fly.

The Menu Grows

My Lovely Assistant was hard at work in the kitchen again earlier today, trying out this recipe for the very first time.  This tasty creation is called a Spinach and Cheese Polpettes in Tomato Sauce.  For those of you who are unaware, Polpette is the Italian word for Meatball.  There was no meat in this, however, as it was a mix of Spinach, Parmesan and Ricotta cheese.  For those of you wondering at home, I was once again in charge of cutting the cheese.  Yes, I did laugh to myself as I wrote that.  It was quite delicious and I couldn't help but to take out my camera and try to capture this culinary masterpiece.  I didn't like the shadows that shooting with flash was creating, so I simply used the lights in the room.  It was shot at f/6.3, 1/50sec, ISO 1600 at 40mm and then eaten with a fork and knife.  It was so good, that My Lovely Assistant might be disappointed when she returns home tomorrow to discover that the leftovers might have disappeared. 

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

It's funny how time flies.  These pictures that you're about to look at were taken all the way back in May.  When I was taking them, I was rather happy because it gave me some photos I could hold in reserve.  I took these photographs the same day as some chipmunks, a small bird, a small red tree, some forget-me-nots and some bees.  As you can see, it was quite the productive day.  At the time I was a little worried about having enough subjects/photos to keep the blog going as I had hit kind of a wall back in the Spring.  This one visit resulted in six blog posts spread over four months and kind of gave me a confidence boost that maybe I could keep this little page going.  Oddly enough, the photographs that I'm presenting here today, were the first photos that I took that day.  First one on, last one off.  We arrived a little bit before lunch, and it had rained earlier that morning.  I took a quick look around the yard and saw that there were still drops of rain on several of the flowers.  The sun was starting to come out, so I knew that the odds were not that great that the drops of rain would still be around after lunch.  I grabbed my camera and Macro lens and bolted out the basement door.  Lunch may have been served a little bit later than usual that day, but I refuse to say that it was because of me.  Though it probably was.  I've said several times over the last few months that my Macro lens doesn't get to see the light of day that much over the Winter, but it sure gets a work-out in the Spring and Summer.  The lens does a wonderful job of bringing out the smallest of details in the plants and flowers.  In this case, it was the raindrops that I wanted to capture and I think they came out great.  Even if it did take me four months to finally publish these photographs.  I say that as a joke, of course.  The quality of the photographs was never in question as far as I'm concerned.  It's more a case of them falling victim to a busier than usual Summer where I used my camera an awful lot.  Since that was actually the reason why I keep running this blog, I take it as a great sign that it took so long for me to bring these photographs to this page.  It means that I've been taking lots of photos, which is the goal that I hoped to achieve when this page began.  The first photograph on this page is some Day Lily foliage.  It was shot at f/4, 1/125sec, ISO 100 at 60mm. The second photograph is an Azalea and it was shot at f/4, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  Here are the rest of the photographs.

Foliage from the Flox flower

f/4, 1/125sec, ISO 100 at 60mm

A Hosta plant

f/4, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 60mm

Some more Day Lily foliage.

f/4, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 60mm

I really enjoyed taking these pictures.  I especially liked the photographs I took of the Hosta plants.  The way that the water collected in the middle of them almost looked like little chunks of ice.  The way that the drops of water formed perfect crystal balls on the foliage was also very cool.  Believe it or not, I still have another blog post left to write from this one visit to my Mom's backyard.  Quite the productive morning indeed.

A Little Bit Of Photoshop Required

For some unknown reason, my camera decided that it just did not want to co-operate with me last week.  My Lovely Assistant had gathered a little bouquet of wildflowers which I tried to photograph, but for some reason, everything came out way over-exposed.  I couldn't figure out why.  I tried everything.  I shot in AV Mode, I shot in Full Manuel Mode, I even took out my flash and tried using that.  Still, everything was over-exposed.  There was no texture in the flower you see in the foreground and the background was way washed out.  So, I took to photoshop and played around a bit.  I ended up playing with the Levels function for a little while and finally found some of the texture of that flower.  The only drawback was that the background was not a shade of blue...but one I can live with.  This photograph was shot at f/2.8, 1/40sec, ISO 100 at 60mm, using my Macro lens, though my flash wasn't used on this shot.

A Real Spider, Man

The last blog post began with a picture of Spider-Man, so I guess a natural follow-up to that would be a picture of an actual spider, man.  While walking home from Comiccon, I passed by this monster and the web he had spun against a no-parking sign.  I admit, I have a serious dislike for spiders.  They freak me out, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in sharing that opinion.  In an attempt to try and grow closer to these eight-legged beasts, I've taken to photographing them.  This isn't the first spider to find it's way here, though I think this one is a bit better looking.  I must admit that the little pattern on his back pretty nice and I like how well the web stand out.  The background of the photograph is kind of busy.  Trees, a restaurant and a parked car, but shooting at a wide aperture does a nice job of blurring all of those things out.  Instead of taking your attention away from the spider, they now serve as background colour.  Well, that's what I'm hoping that I've done here.  This photograph was shot at f/3.2, 1/8000sec, ISO 3200 at 24mm.  Yep, I fell victim to the old "didn't reset the ISO" trick again.  I had been shooting at the high ISO to compensate for the lighting at Comiccon and shot this picture before I had the chance to get home and re-adjust my camera.  Didn't even check the ISO before I shot.  Luckily, the noise isn't that bad, and I would have had to shoot at a high ISO anyway since it was very overcast and getting late in the afternoon.  Thus ends Spider Appreciation Day.  I can appreciate a spider outside, but he'd still meet the wrong side of my Size 13 shoe if he were to find his way inside my place.

2013 Montreal Comiccon

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Since there are more photos in this update than any I have done before, I think that we'll put that little saying to the test.  Earlier today, I went to the Montreal Comiccon, the place to be for all things 'geek'.  I say that with as much respect as possible, as I'm a bit of a geek myself.  There was everything you could want to see.  Wrestlers, movie stars, people dressed up as wrestlers and movie stars.  There were robots and superheros, zombies and Storm Troopers, and dozens of other characters that I couldn't identify if my life depended on it.  All of that, and more merchandise of all kinds than you could image to go along with boxes and boxes filled with comic books.  A real-life episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Trying to use my inner Photojournalist, I tried to grab a few photographs of everything, but it wasn't an easy task.  At times, we were herded together almost elbow-to-elbow, making it rather difficult to get a good shot.  Another problem was that as soon as someone would stop to pose, there would be a stampede of people rushing over to try and snap off a photo as well.  It was all well and good, though I need to get a little more work in when it comes to going up to people and asking to photograph them.  I tried telling myself that these people got dressed up and are expecting to have their picture taken, but I'm not quite at the point where I feel totally comfortable when it comes to invading the personal space of other people.  So, here is a selection of photographs I took during the day.  The first photograph is Spider-Man.  He was taken at f/3.5, 1/100sec, ISO 1600 at 50mm.  The second photograph you see are some guys dressed up as The Ghostbusters.  This photo was taken at f/5, 1/30sec, ISO 1600 at 28mm.

A Collection of Super Heros & Agents

f/2.8, 1/30sec. ISO 800 at 30mm

I was worried that shooting at f/2.8 would put some of the characters out of focus.

The Incredible Hulk

f/7.1, 1/13sec, ISO 1600 at 42mm

One of the most impressive costumes I saw

The Bounty Hunter, Boba Fett

f/5, 1/40sec, ISO 1600 at 38mm

You're no good to him if you're dead

The Dark Side of the Force

f/5, 1/25sec, ISO 1600 at 34mm

Didn't I just photograph these guys?

f/7.1, 1/15sec, ISO 1600 at 48mm

My friend Benoit Mercier at work for Les Mystérieux étonnants.

f/5, 1/20sec, ISO 1600 at 24mm

I failed Photojournalism 101 on this one, I didn't get their names

From The Watchmen, this is the Silk Spectre

f/5, 1/40sec, ISO 1600 at 24mm

With that, my Montreal Comiccon adventure comes to an end.  I got those photos and also went home with a print of  Movie Monsters Last Supper by Toronto artist Chris Roberts.  It was great way to spend a day.  Hope I get to do it again next year.

All You Need Is Love

It's the odd things that nature seems to put out there that makes photography fun.  This is one of those things.  A few weeks back, My Lovely Assistant called me from her mother's house, saying that I should bring my camera with me the next time I visit because a couple of branches had formed into an interesting shape.  Sure enough, the next time I visited Belle Mom, I took one look into her backyard and saw what My Lovely Assistant was talking about.  From a certain angle, the branches of the tree had formed into the shape of a heart.  The only problem was that the close you'd get to the branches, the lesser the optical illusion would appear.  So, I had to either shoot from odd angles, or go far enough back into the yard so that the heart could be seen.  Here are a couple of photographs that I took that afternoon because I think that such a natural happening deserves to be shared.  The first photograph that you see on the left was shot at f/5.6, 1/50sec, ISO 400 at 300mm.  I took the telephoto shots at ISO 400 as it was getting late in the afternoon and the trees cut into much of the sunlight that tries to get into her yard, meaning I needed as much shutter speed as possible since my lens only goes to f/5.6 at 300mm.

f/2.8, 1/60sec, ISO 100 at 70mm

f/4.5, 1/25sec, ISO 100 at 105mm

f/5.6, 1/80sec, ISO 400 at 180mm

For those of you wondering, the lovely lady in white is Fiona, one of Belle Mom's creations that decorate her yard.  I included the pictures with Fiona in them because I also like how one of the branches was extending into her little wicker basket.  Just another cool, little backyard photography experience.

Another Of Those Strange Things

I know that I've said this before, but those of you who have been hanging around here for a while, know that I like taking photographs of odd things.  This kind of goes into that category.  What you're looking it is part of a panel wall at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in the Living in Space exhibition.  This panel was, I believe, an image of a rocket ship lifting off.  I was drawn by the different lines of colour against the black background.  I also like how when you look deeply at the photo, it puts you into kind of a trance.  You will now send me all your money.  I said, you will now send me all your money.  After I count down from three, you will return to your normal lives and send me your checks in 3...2...1.   This photo was taken at f/2.8, 1/4sec, ISO 100 at 50mm.  Yes, I'm as surprised as you are that I managed to shoot a hand-held photo at 1/4sec with no camera shake.  Must have been the trance I was in.

Another Item For The Menu

My post last night kind of has me on a food photography kick.  It's not something I do very often, but it is something I want to get better at.  So, how to we get better at something?  Practice, practice, practice.  Thankfully, my Lovely Assistant is much more talented in creating these dishes than I presently am at photographing them, but I hope to be able to bridge the gap in short order.  Tonight's Pièce de résistance is a Vol-au-vent with a ham, leek and cheddar filling.  I tried to better fill the frame of the picture with a candle and a bread basket.  I also shot the picture at kind of an angle rather than straight on.  I took the picture at f/4, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 34mm.  Once again, lighting consisted of my kitchen lights and my Speedlite flash.  If there are any of you out there with any pointers in shooting food, please feel free to share.

It's What's For Supper

By the time this thing gets posted, it will probably be close to 11:00PM, and by then, I may be close to needing a midnight snack after having looked at this photograph for so long.  One aspect of photography that I don't practice nearly enough is food photography.  Especially when you consider all of the terrific dishes that My Lovely Assistant creates.  I took a picture of some Parmesan crisps that she made back in March, but the camera has not really gone near the kitchen since.  This tasty dish is a tomato stuffed with rice, sausage and Parmesan cheese.  I suppose that I should also mention that I helped in the creation of this culinary masterpiece.  I shredded the Parmesan.  It was such a lovely dish that I just needed to take out my camera and shoot a few photos before it was eaten.  I probably need to find a better lighting solution than the one I presently use, which consists of my kitchen lights and my Speedlite flash.  I ended up shooting this photograph at f/6.3, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 35mm.  I chose to shoot at f/6.3 because I wanted to blur out the background of the photo, but didn't want to blur the parsley at the front of the photo or the second tomato.  For those of you wondering at home, yes, it was delicious.

Leaving Our Mark

Here's something you may have heard over the last couple of updates.  These photos were taken during my vacation.  For those of you who are brave enough to take a trip back in time to March, I posted a picture of my foot in the snow and then played around a little bit with it in Photoshop. While at a cottage in Lac Desert I stepped out of the water and was immediately reminded of that snow picture when, for some reason, I turned and noticed my footprint on a rock.  I thought it might be fun to make a 'summer' version of that snow photograph and see how it would turn out.  Oddly enough, it took more shots to find one I was happy with than I did back in March.  Of course, it was in the minus-teens when I took the March photo and in the mid-20's by the lake, meaning I didn't take much offense in putting my feet in the water.  For a little perspective, I managed to convince My Lovely Assistant to donate her foot to this little project as well.  My foot was shot at f/6.3, 1/200sec, ISO 640 at 57mm.  My Lovely Assistant's foot was shot at f/6.3, 1/160sec, ISO 640 at 52mm.  Yes, that is a rather odd ISO setting.  I usually try not to shoot above ISO 400 for regular photos, but the sun suddenly decided to hide behind some clouds as we were getting out of the lake and I needed to be able to get a good shutter speed for shooting hand-held and I didn't want to use a wide aperture like f/2.8 to risk putting parts of the footprints out of focus.  ISO 640 gave me enough speed to not have to worry about going to get my tripod or to use my flash.  I kind of like these feet photos, they're unique and personal.  Just another cool idea for a vacation photo that not many people would think of.

The Power Of The Dark Side

Before we get any further along into this conversation, I suppose that full disclosure is called for.  I know that the big words on the top of the page say 'Eric Mahannah Photography', but at this moment in time the blog is going All Star Wars, All The Time.  Well, for this post.  As part of my vacation this year, My Lovely Assistant and I made the trek, err trip, down the highway to Ottawa.  Most people go to Ottawa for the museums, the flowers, the history or the Parliament buildings, and so did I.  But first, I needed to experience Star Wars Identities.  I didn't really need to travel the 200+ kilometers to see the show as it was actually one very short Metro ride away from me last year.  However, every time that I tried to see the show, it was always sold out.  In hindsight, I probably should have bought my tickets in advance.  We'll keep that lesson in mind for later.  I was planning on meeting up with my good buddy Dave as he was going to take in the show with his two kids to keep us company.  The drive up to the Aviation and Space Museum went well, but when it was time to pay the parking meter, a familiar sign from my past crept up and bit me.  The show was sold out.  We still took in the sights at the museum, but seeing old airplanes, no matter how cool some of them were, just couldn't ease my pain of not seeing X-Wing fighters, Star Destroyers and the Millennium freakin' Falcon.  Thankfully, My Lovely Assistant is patient and understand, thus we returned the next day and got in to see the exhibition.  What can I say, I was a child of the 80's.  Star Wars was just as important as...well nothing was more important than Star Wars.  My Mom was quite impressed a few weeks ago that I remembered her taking my brother and I to see a double bill matinee of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, back-to-back.  I was even more impressed that she managed to sit through both of those movies.  I had never known my Mom to be much of a movie person, but again, I was six years old at this point.  Other than 'This is awesome', I didn't know that much.  After the movies, came the action figures.  I still have them all, though My Lovely Assistant doesn't know why, and probably will keep them for all of time.  So, now that all of that is out in the open, how do we swing this little article back towards the topic of photography so that I don't feel like this is totally misplaced.  Well, I had my camera with me, and there was no chance that I wasn't going to be taking lots of photos, but I tried to think of a way to mix photography and Star Wars.  Then it hit me, this is the perfect place to practice taking some portrait style photos.  Mind you, I had no control over the lighting, most of my 'models' were behind glass cases and there were people walking all over the place.  My 'models' weren't very receptive to my direction either.  It's kind of hard to ask a Stormtrooper to smile, seems George Lucas had the same issues.  Other than that, it was great.  We were asked at the beginning of the exhibition not to use any flash, so I immediately cranked up the ISO to 1600.  I tried to position myself so that as little of the glass would be showing, and more importantly, there would not be any reflections of light from the other displays on my portraits.  I'm not trying to fool anyone, I know that these aren't perfect 'portraits', but I think they turned out pretty good, and I just wanted to put some Star Wars pictures up on the site because little 6-year old Eric thinks that it's pretty cool.  Darth Vader was shot at f/2.8, 1/30sec, ISO 1600, at 51mm.  Boba Fett was shot at f/2.8, 1/50sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm.  The Stormtrooper was shot at f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm.  Here are the rest of the photos.

f/2.8, 1/15sec, ISO 1600 at 34mm

f/2.8, 1/30sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm

f/2.8, 1/60sec, ISO 1600 at 34m

f/2.8, 1/50sec, ISO 1600 at 32mm

Those of you wondering why all of the portraits are of the 'bad' characters.  The truth is that all of the 'good' character in the movie were human, and we human's don't really like being imprisoned behind glass.  Their costumes were there, but on faceless mannequins.  Much like the one you see next to the speeder bike.  So there you have it, a little portrait taking with the Star Wars characters.  Maybe we'll find a way to get some portraits done of real people up here soon.  In the meantime, May the Force be with you.

Appearing Now In A Salad Near Me

Now now, you didn't think that I would forget, did you?  Those of you who have been paying attention should remember that back in June I put up a picture of some cherry tomato blossoms that My Lovely Assistant and I were growing.  Okay, she was helping them to grow, I was watching them grow.  A few months have passed since then and we've been eating the tomatoes of her labour for a while now.  I just wanted to wait for the right time before taking pictures of the tomatoes and the right time was the morning after a little rain shower had passed.  Once again, I used my 60mm Macro lens for these shots as I not only wanted to make the tomatoes look as big an juicy as possible, but I also wanted to make sure that I'd properly capture the little drops of water that had formed on them. Some of the drops of water were so big that they even reflected the metal guardrail that is situated behind the plants.  Other drops seemed to even take the colour of the tomato and appear as little red orbs, like you see to the right with the second photograph.  The Macro lens even picked up some things that I hadn't even originally seen, such as the very slim spiderweb that you can see in the bottom right-hand side of the first photograph.  It also really captured the little hairs on not only the vine, but on the tomatoes as well.  I also chose to shoot at ISO 400 because it was still a little cloudy after the rain and I wanted to make sure that I had enough shutter speed available to shoot without needing to use a tripod as it wouldn't have been easy getting around the plants in the small space that is my deck.  The first photograph was shot at f/5, 1/60sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  The second photograph was also taken at f/5, 1/60sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  There are two more photographs that I would like to share with you. 

f/5, 1/125sec, ISO 400 at 60mm

f/5, 1/80sec, ISO 400 at 60mm

I know that I usually have more writing to go along with these four-photo blog posts, but it's hard to write when your hands are busy shoving cherry tomatoes into your mouth.  For those of you wondering at home, yes, they were very tasty indeed.