Keeping My Eyes Open

Yes, you've all heard this a million times by now, but I like to follow the creed that just about anything can be photographed and become something interesting.  Here's another example of that.  Back in the summer, My Lovely Assistant and I spent a few days at her father's cottage near Mt. Tremblant.  We liked to eat lunch on the dock and seeing as how the sun is kind of strong at that time of the day, we'd open up the dock umbrella for a little bit of shade.  At one point, I looked up and saw the the different effects the sun was creating with the fabric.  As usual, the camera was right besides me so I pointed it upwards and snapped away.  This photograph was taken at f/5, 1/800sec, ISO 100 at 150mm.  I really liked the different colours that the sun brought out of the umbrella and how the sun also brought out all of the different lines of fabric on the umbrella.  A little bit of sunshine and an umbrella, that's all it took.

Feeling Hungry?

It's been a while since we've featured any meals here on the blog.  Mostly because I feel that food photography is an area that I still need much practice in.  My Lovely Assistant is a wonderful cook, so I can't blame the lack of opportunity.  The things she makes are so good that when it comes down to spending several minutes taking a photograph or digging right in, my stomach often wins out.  Things were a bit different last night.  She was trying a new recipe and when I saw her taking the time to shred the flakes of Parmesan, I knew that I had to grab my camera.  These are veal polpettes with a red pepper on the side and some flaked Parmesan cheese on the top.  I shot this photograph at f/8, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 42mm and used a Speedlite flash.  I hope that this photograph does justice to how good the meal was.  So good, in fact, that we're going to end this entry right here because there are some leftovers calling for me from the fridge.

How Much Is That Birdie In The Window

Part of the fun of visiting my parents is that there always seems to be something around that I can take a picture of.  You've seen a wide variety of flowers, insects and critters.  The one thing that you haven't seen very much of is birds.  I managed to grab a quick shot of one last year, but I always end up leaving expecting to have shot more.  Especially since my Mom has a variety of bird feeders on the property and when my camera is safely in its bag, they're always full.  The lot of them seem to be very camera shy.  I still remember a Christmas morning a few years ago where I spent close to an hour sitting outside away from the feeders, waiting for a Blue Jay, Cardinal or any kind of bird at all to come by for a little Christmas breakfast.  No luck.  Now, I know any of you out there with any kind of experience shooting birds or wildlife will be quick to tell me that an hour waiting for my model to arrive is not very much time at all.  Keep in mind, this was Christmas morning, and presents under the tree were calling my name.  My most recent visit saw my luck change.  We were sitting at the dinning room table when my Mom told me that some birds were visiting the feeder.  I went for my camera right away.  I began to shoot with my 24-70mm lens with the idea that I would crop down the images later but quickly realized that the called for the telephoto lens.  It was a little grey outside, and I was shooting through the glass of the patio door, so I upped the ISO and began shooting away.  I also shot at the bit smaller aperture than I usually would because I wanted to make sure that the bird would be in focus.  Those are small little things, and shooting from the distance that I was, I didn't want to risk shooting at f/5.6 (the largest aperture available to me using my telephoto) and not getting the bird in focus.  Thanfully, most of the background was far away and so became blurred in photographs anyway.  The first photograph was taken at f/11, 1/200sec, ISO 400 at 300mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/11,1/200sec, ISO 400 at 300mm.  Here are a couple more shots.

 

f/11, 1/200sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

f/11, 1/200sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

I really like the third photograph in this series.  The look on the face of the bird as another joins it on the feeder caught my attention.  I'm not expert on the mental capacity of birds, but it's almost as if the first bird is giving an unwelcome glare to his newly arrived feeding partner.  That could also just be all in my imagination.  I also like the little details in the feet of the bird, though as I said to my Mom after taking these photographs, they're much less cute in a close-up than they are from afar.  I guess that was my superficial side coming through.  I also like the little flakes of snow that you can see falling in the background of some of the photos.  It was a fun afternoon.  Now I just have to wait for all of the Cardinals and Blue Jays to get the memo that my parents moved and maybe I'll be able to snap some of them next time.

Bright Lights

I was visiting my parents on Saturday and was in the process of trying to photograph some birds that were taking advantage of the free food that was available at my Mom's feeder when something strange caught my eye.  It was a solar light, that I guess in warmer times would have been planted in the ground.  However, it was now sitting on the outside table, half covered in snow.  I asked what it was doing there and then went back to trying to photograph the birds.  Supper time quickly arrived, and with the sun now gone from the sky the light had turned on and it caught my eye once again.  I really liked the way that the light lit up the snow on the table.  If you look real close, which might be hard with the low resolution version that I'm putting up here, you can see the individual flakes.  I shot this photograph at f/2.8, 1/40sec, ISO 640 at 60mm.  I needed to use a high ISO because I had left my tripod at home, but I didn't want to use a very high ISO because I didn't want the resulting grain to show up in the black background.  Sometimes it pays off to notice the strange things...even if it makes you late to the table when you go outside to photograph them.

Was It Valentine's Day?

It has been a while since you've seen any photographs of fresh flowers up here at Eric Mahannah Photography.  That's what happens when you live in an area where flowerbeds all over are covered with several centimeters of snow and any kind of life that dares stick it's head of it's snowy bed is quickly reminded by -20something degree weather that doing snow was not a very bright idea.  That's what is fun about February.  If you can hold out a couple of days, you can get flowers at very cheap prices around the 15th of the month, every single year!  I'm just kidding...or am I?  Only My Lovely Assistant and myself know for sure, but the fact that you're seeing them here, or more accurately, the fact that I'm still able to type today, should let you know everything you need to know about when they were delivered.  As with last year, I needed to find a nice way to photograph these flowers.  I still haven't invested in studio lighting so I had the choice of either using my Speedlite flash or going with that big bright light in the sky, otherwise known as the sun.  I chose to go with option #2.  The sun was shining bright this morning so I made like Pebbles and Bamm Bamm by opening up the blinds and letting the sunshine in.  With the lighting now taken care of, I needed to find a nice background.  No matter how nice these flowers are, the effect would kind of have been lost if you were seeing a far off view of my kitchen counter and tables in the background.  I'm not really known as a Mr. Do-It-Yourself, but I'm kind of proud of the little solution I came up with.  I took a couple of chairs from the kitchen and placed them behind the vase.  I then took My Lovely Assistant's blanket and draped it over the chairs.  Voila!  Instant backdrop.  I felt that the grey blanket would serve well in bringing out the colours of the flowers, as well as blocking out the view of the kitchen sink.  These photographs come from my second shooting session with the bouquet.  A second was necessary since I had once again left my camera at ISO 1600 after having taken some photographs last night.  Atleast I spotted this before I had put everything away.  However, I didn't bother to re-shoot a couple of close-up shots that I had taken a little bit earlier as there didn't appear to be any of the grain that would usually be associated with such a high ISO in the photos.  One of these days, I promise, I'll learn to reset my ISO before putting my camera back into the bag.  Either that, or I'll have to invest in a label maker and print the message directly on my camera.  The first photograph was taken at f/13, 1/80sec, ISO 100 at 34mm.  I needed a small aperture like f/13 to make sure that all of the flowers would be in focus.  The second photograph was taken at f/7.1, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  I used a slightly larger aperture, but still small enough to keep everything in focus.  Next up are the close-ups.  The first picture of the rose was shot at f/4, 1/1600sec, ISO 1600 at 60mm.  I focused on the middle of the rose and you can really see the details in the rose's petals while everything goes gently out of focus all around the edges.  I used the same technique for the other flower, which was shot at f/4, 1/5000sec, ISO 1600 at 60mm.  One adjustment that I did with the fourth photograph was that I rotated it 90degrees clockwise and then cropped the image so that the middle of the flower would be brought down a little closer to the bottom of the image.  I felt that It looked better that way as it bring more attention to the center of the flower, making it more of the star of the photo instead of just sharing the screen with the petals.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and buy myself a label maker.

Shadows And Memories

There are two reasons why I ended up doing this update.  The first one was because I felt like playing around with some shadows while the sun was rather bright the other day.  Reason number two we'll get to in a few moment.  I guess that taking photographs of a chess set falls into my personal belief of photographing everything and that anything can make an interesting photograph.  The main subject of these photos aren't the chess board or the pieces, but rather the shadows that the pieces cast.  I took the board out and placed it by the window that had the most sun coming in.  I then placed the pieces on the board and began to make several moves, but making sure not to eliminate any of the pieces.  I suppose that I could have made things a little bit less cluttered by eliminating some of the pieces, but I didn't want to have any pieces missing from the photo, not did I want to just line up the eliminated pieces on the side of the board.  I then rotated the board a little bit so that I'd get the largest shadows possible and then began to shoot away.  I shot the first photograph while standing over the board and shooting down at it.  I liked the way that the shadows stretched out from the pieces.  This shot was taken at f/9, 1/50sec, ISO 100 at 34mm.  I used a small aperture to make sure that as many pieces as possible would be in focus.  For the second photograph, I kind out went the opposite way.  I wanted a close-up look at one of the pieces and it's shadow.  This photograph was shot at f/3.2, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 28mm.  If I could do it again, I'd probably want to redo this shot using a Macro lens.  For the third photograph, I again wanted to get the entire board in the shot, but using a larger aperture in order to blur out the background.  No need to showing you all my living room chair.  This photograph was shot at f/5.6, 1/125sec, ISO 100 at 28mm.

Now, if I could be serious for a moment.  I mentioned earlier that there were two reasons why I ended up doing this update.  The second one is a little more personal.  The chess set that I used to take these photographs was a Christmas gift given to me many years ago when I was 8 years old.  It was given to me by my Aunt Juliette, or Tante Poulette as we called her.  I was just learning how to play chess in school and a set was something I was really hoping to get.  Sadly, my aunt passed away last week after a very courageous fight against cancer.  This chess set will probably stay with me for the rest of my days, and with it, will always be the memory of the person who gave it to me.  Tante Poulette, merci beaucoup pour le jeu d'échecs.  That Christmas memory, and you along with it, will always remain with me.

Good Morning, Montreal

Since going to the observation deck on Mt. Royal last March, I've wanted to return to photograph the sunrise from the same spot.  I thought that I had done my homework.  Before going to bed I checked the weather.  Sunrise was due for 7:04AM and the sky was to be only partially cloudy.  When My Lovely Assistant left for work at a little after 6:00AM, I soon followed her out the door and drove over to Mt. Royal.  Sadly, the 'partially cloudy' part of the weather forecast from the night before was not exactly accurate.  There was a thick cloud cover over Montreal and my hopes for the sun coming up into a blue or red sky were shattered.  Still, I had made my way to the mountain, and I finally had my camera back after getting the censor cleaned by the fine folks at Simon's Cameras in Brossard so I wanted to take some photographs.  The first photograph was taken at f/8, 1/80sec, ISO 800 at 34mm and the photograph just below was taken at f/8, 1/30sec, ISO 400 at 24mm and then cropped to 12" x 4" to give it a panorama type of feel.  This means there will be another early morning in my future.  Hopefully the sky will be a little bit more clear when that day comes.

Standing Out

Over the course of the last 16 months you've all seen a bunch of photographs on these pages, read a bunch of words that I have written and seen some technical information on how the photographs were taken.  I thought that I'd take a few moments to explain what some of those numbers and settings mean and the effect that they have on the photograph.  I haven't been specifically asked to do so, but much like a substitute teacher on a warm May afternoon, I'll just push ahead and pretend that you all are listening.  Today we'll discuss aperture.  In photography, the aperture defines the size of the opening on the lens that allows the light to hit the sensor, or in the old days, the film.  This is done by using different focal lengths, or f-stops.  When you see me write f/whatever, that's the focal length.  I generally like to use large apertures (f/4, f/2.8, f/2) because I like the effect of having the background of the photograph be blurred out.  I feel that it really helps to make the main subject of your photograph stand out.  You can use smaller apertures (f/11, f/14...all the way to f/32 and sometimes higher) to achieve the opposite effect.  This is useful in taking nice landscape shots as more of your frame will be clear.  That's pretty much a very simple definition of depth of field.  The smaller the aperture you use, the more of the objects away from your main subject will be in focus.  There's much more involved than the simplicity of a clear or blurred background, but I don't think any of you are here for a big science of photography lesson, and I'm just the substitute teacher.  I've always been a firm believer that a picture is worth a thousand words, which is one of the reasons I like photography, so here are three photographs that I hope better explain what I've tried to say.  These photographs were taken back in October in a apple orchard.  You can see another photograph that I took at the same location by following this link.  I actually took these photographs with the intention of one day using them to explain aperture and demonstrate the different effects, which I kind of found to be a little bit weird while I was doing it.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/2000sec, ISO 100 at 38mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/500sec, ISO 100 at 38mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/11, 1/125sec, ISO 100 at 38mm.  As you can see, the small the aperture got (in photography, the smaller the aperture gets, the bigger the f/stop number gets), the more of the photograph came into focus.  I prefer the first photograph because as I have already said, I liked blurred backgrounds and being able to separate my subject from the background, but I can understand why people would like the third one as well.  A fun way to learn more about how the aperture can change your photograph is to put you camera in AV (Aperture Priority) mode and shoot away using different apertures.  Take a look at your results and find out what aperture you prefer.  There you go, the bell has just rung to end the day, off you all go to play outside.

A New Record

With a big thanks to the link provided to this blog by The Lost Fingers, we set a record for the most visitors in a month.  Eric Mahannah Photography was viewed 756 times in January, which shattered the old record.  While it would be nice to continue having such a high number of visitors, I'm pretty sure that it will be hard to repeat that number.  So, in an effort to keep things short, thanks to all of you who have passed by.  A big thanks to those of you who are repeat visitors, and I hope that you'll all keep returning in the future.