While His Guitar Gently Sleeps

Way back in March, My Lovely Assistant and I visited the Beatles in Montreal exhibition at the Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History at Pointe-à-Callière.  It was a display dedicated to the one stop the Beatles made in Montreal back on September 8th, 1964.  It was also a look at Montreal life, music and pop culture at the time.  There were all kinds of cool things on display at the show, including albums, all kinds of memorabilia and many of the guitars that were used by The Fab Four.  One that caught me eye was this guitar used by George Harrison.  It was sealed in a glass case, but I really liked the way that the case was reflecting the stars, even multiplying them in some cases.  It's not a perfect show, I really should have framed it a little better so that you wouldn't see the bottom of the display case in the lower right-hand corner of the photograph.  I thought about hiding it with my watermark, but I've never claimed to be a perfectionist. Besides, sometimes it's good to admit your little mistakes as it shows that you're able to learn from them.  While I'm admitting to things, I'd also probably try to get the portrait on George Harrison that you can see along the wall in the back into the shot as well, seeing as how it was his guitar.  This photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/30sec, ISO 1600, -2step exposure at 24mm.  How it didn't get blurred from camera shake is a minor miracle.  Is it the 'perfect' shot?  No, but it's one that I like, and maybe some of you out there will as well.

...And They're Off

Back in July, I posted a huge update with about 20 photographs of Geese taking off from the Chambly Basin.  If you'd like to revisit that post, you can do so by clicking on this link.  This is another photograph taken a little bit later in the day.  I drove to another side of the basin and found another group of geese on the water.  This trio took off together and while I don't feel the need for another 20 photograph bonanza, I did like this shot of the three of them together, each in a different position.  I took this shot at f/5.6, 1/800sec, ISO 100 at 300mm.  I cropped it to 12" x 4" as I felt that the background was kind of dull, and this size gave an illusion of speed to the three of them.  Well, it did for me, I hope it does that for you as well.  I really liked the details in the wings, as well as seeing their little feet splash along the water.  I had fun that morning following the Geese around Chambly, but there's still one more photo from this day to be shown.  We'll get to it one of these days.

Following My Path

The older I get, the faster time seems to pass by.  This is even more apparent to me at the moment as today marks the second anniversary of this photography blog coming into existence.  It's been a fast two years and hundreds of my photographs have been put on display over that time.  I hope that all of you who continue to visit this site still enjoy the photographs that I present to you.  I've probably said this before, but this place kind of exists as my own personal gallery.  Before, only a handful of people would get to see my photographs, but as the second anniversary of this site passes, I'm close to having a 10,000th visitor to the blog.  Now, I know that not all of those 10,000 visits are real.  The internet being what it is, some of those visits are from 'mysterious' regions, but I like to think that a high percentage of that number is real.  So, I'll continue to walk down my photographic path, much like the one you see here today.  I took this photograph while on a little walk with My Lovely Assistant.  The little walking path caught my eye, and I hope it catches yours as well.  I took this photograph at f/2.8, 1/320sec, ISO 250 at 38mm.  Thanks to everyone who passes by.  Feel free to check out the Eric Mahannah Photography Facebook Page, but more importantly, I hope that you all continue to enjoy my photographs.

Ontario Daylilies

I think that if you were to do a little informal poll of the things that I have photographed for this page, you'd probably find that fireworks have been seen here more than anything else.  Coming in a close second though, would be Daylilies.  Be they my my Mom's, Belle Mom's, or flowers found in a park, down the street of at La Minerve, Daylilies have been seen an awful lot on this page.  There was a pretty large number of links right there.  I'll give you a moment to go check them out.  I'm done chasing you around the site for the moment, though if you like Daylilies as much as I do, each of those links leads to some rather nice photographs of them, if I may say so myself.  Today's  Daylilies come from a little bit further away than usual.  These come from the town of Coburg, Ontario.  As you may have read over the last few weeks, I was in Coburg for a family gathering back in July and I took these photos while there.  The first three photographs from the front of the hotel where we were staying while the fourth photograph comes from my cousin Robin's backyard.  The first three shots are close-up on the center stems of the flowers, taken with a real nice depth of field to give a nice blur to the bright background colours, while the fourth is a more traditional shot.  The first and second shots are actually just different crops of the same original photograph and where taken at f/5.6, 1/2000sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  Here is the second photograph, followed by the other two photographs.  Hope you enjoy them.

Same settings as above, but without being cropped.

f/2.8, 1/8000sec, ISO 400 at 60mm

f/6.3, 1/250sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm

Robin's Daisies

Last year at this time I photographed a bunch of Daisies and posted them up here as a kind of memorial to my Grandmother, Grammie.  I titled the post Grammie's Daisies.  At the time, I wasn't planning on making a second such post one year later, but sometimes the hand of fate just works in some funny ways.  Back in July, I attended a big family gathering to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of my Uncle Fred and Aunt Norma.  The party was held at the home of my cousin Robin, her husband Paul and their three kids.  You've already seen one of the photographs I took while at the party.  The strange looking crystal ball that caught my attention.  They had a great flower garden out back, but the first things I saw when I went wandering around the yard was the daisies.  I guess it was Grammie's way of letting me know that she was there with all of us.  One fun thing was that I had a nicer background for my shots this year.  Replacing the grey concrete of last years photos was a nice garden green, and other daisies as well.  I even decided to try out a little bit of creative framing with the final two photographs in this update.  First I placed the center of the daisy dead center in the frame, which is kind of a photographic no-no, but I liked the way that the photograph looked.  I then took the same photograph but re-framed it, putting the center disc of the flower down on the lower left-hand side of the photograph.  I really like the visual change that re-framing the photograph caused.  The center of the flower becomes even more of an eye catcher.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/6400sec, ISO 1600 at 38mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 32 mm.  Here is the final photograph, framed two different ways.

The above photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 70mm and framed two different ways.  Also of note, those of you who were paying attention may have noticed that the first photograph was taken at ISO 1600, while the rest were taken at ISO 100.  That's right, I made my classic error of forgetting to reset the settings on my camera.  But, and this is a huge but, I actually caught the mistake and corrected it.  Yay me!  I'll go with the feelgood ending and say that it was Grammie who whispered a little something into my ear to get me to check what I was doing.

Moon Over La Minerve

Back in July, My Lovely Assistant and I had some time ff from our Day Jobs, so we decided to take a little drive up to a cottage owned by her family in La Minerve, a small village a little bit past Mt. Tremblant.  It's nice a peaceful up there.  I was up there last year and had a failed attempt at shooting star trails.  That's kind of how this photograph came about.  I wanted a second attempt at the stars, and rather than last time, I took several 30second photographs which I planned on putting together in Photoshop.  However, I then discovered that my version of Photoshop is so old that it doesn't even have the Layers feature necessary for putting the photos together.  Luckily, I also took the time to take this little shot of the moon.  I liked how bright the moon was, how the trees were silhouetted against the sky, and the reflections of the everything in the water.  You can even see several of the stars I was trying to shoot up in the sky.  This shot was taken at f/7.1, 29sec, ISO 100 at 25mm.  I had hoped to come home with star trails, but I like this photo as well.  Which is for the best since it might take some time for me to save up enough nickles and dimes to afford an updated version of Photoshop. 

My Friend Of Misery

It's been a little bit over a week since anything new has been posted on the site.  I hope that some of you out there have missed me.  I've been pretty busy of late and this site, along with my Facebook Page, have kind of been neglected.  One of the things that have kept me busy of the last little while was the Heavy Montreal music festival.  For those of you who may remember, I mentioned last year that I was going to bring my camera to the festival this year to try and get some photographs of the many bands in action.  I ended up going back n that decision, and it was probably for the best as the ban on DLSR cameras was still in place, and I didn't see any actual fans with them this year.  So, in an effort to stay musical, I've decided to post up a few portraits that I took of my buddy Louie and his guitar a few years ago.  Louie is my partner in Heavy Montreal crime and he was kind enough to pose for these photographs while I was taking my photography courses at Concordia University.  These were taken in a studio setting, using pro flashes and everything.  It was a great course.  Louie's guitar was also a popular prop that night as many of the other student's ended up asking to use it as well.  This isn't Louie's first appearance on these pages.  He also made an appearance last year in the wake of my failure to get any good Heavy MTL shots with a point & shoot camera, and was also the subject of one of my very first posts on the site way back in 2012.  The poses are similar, I wanted Louie to hold the guitar as if it were a gun as he got ready to shoot the viewer full of rock & roll. I did a better job of getting his eye in the first shot, but I like the way that I framed him better in the second shot.  Both photographs were taken at f/8, 1/60sec, ISO 100, though the first one was at 52mm and the second at 50mm.  There wasn't much use in changing the settings because, as I mentioned, these were shot under studio conditions.  We also used a white backdrop, which may be a little unsettling to the eye as they background of this page is white as well, but I really like them when their seen on their own.  My schedule should be freed up a little bit soon, so we'll hopefully get back to some more recent shots soon.

Great Gig In The Sky

The 2014 L'International des Feux Loto-Québec came to an end this past Saturday night.  I wasn't able to photograph the show as I was at the wedding of two of my friends.  However, I decided to put together a little 'Best of the Rest' post.  I went into the archives and dug out an extra photograph from each of the shows that I saw this year and have posted them here.  For those of you who are curious, the winner of the competition this year was Canada.  You can see the photographs I took of that show by following the link.  I've also attached links to the names of each Country which will lead you directly to the other photographs that I took from that night.  The first photograph was taken during the show by Germany.  It was shot at f/14, 8sec, ISO 100 at 43mm.  Here are the five other shots.

Italy 

 f/10, 9 sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

 

  Canada

f/16, 5sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

United States of America

f/16, 10sec, ISO 100 at 34mm

France cropped to 12"x12"

f/14, 20sec, ISO 100 at 75mm

Australia

f/16, 12sec, ISO 100 at 52mm

It was a great competition.  As I previously wrote, Canada was judged to be the winner this year, and from the six shows that I saw, I have to agree with the judges.  Peace will now return to the sky above Montreal, though I can't wait to do this all over again next year.

Bells Will Be Ringing

Yesterday (August 2nd) I had the honour of attending the wedding of my friends Réal and Joanne.  Ofcourse, I had my camera with me and snapped so many photos that I'm surprised my memory card didn't melt from the combination of action, heat and humidity.  This is just a single photo for the moment as I promised them that I'd get one up on the site before they left on vacation.  So here it is, a little shot taken at f/5.6, 1/320sec, ISO 100 at 48mm.  Félicitations mes amis, j'espère que vous aimez la photo.