Man And His Moon

Back in 1967, Montreal hosted the World's Fair, which was titled Man And His World.  One of the few pavilions that remain is the American Pavilion, since transformed into the Biosphere.  As mentioned here previously, I see this building pretty much every day from where I live and you've seen it many times in my photographs.  The other day I noticed the moon passing by the Biospehere and I thought that it might make a nice photograph.  I went out the next night only to discover that the moon had changed its course, running right behind the Biosphere, making it look like the moon was trapped inside.  I still took the photograph, mostly because I had that clever play on words of a title in my head while I watched the moon slowly travel through the sky and behind the Biosphere.  I took this photograph at f/20, 17sec, ISO 100 at 68mm.  For some reason, I chose to take this photograph using a wide angle and then cropping the image instead of a telephoto lens.  I went out the next night with a telephoto lens only to discover that the moon had once again changed course, never making it to the Biosphere before it disappeared.  I'll keep my eyes on it for the next few days as I think I'd like to have a shot at re-doing this one.

Sitting On The Water

As I continue to go through the archives, I found a couple of photographs I shot while visiting my brother one day.  He has a small pond in his front yard and you can generally find all kinds of wildlife and foliage in there.  Back in 2012 I published another photo that I took from his pond.  That one of a little frog who snuck into my photograph.  There were no frogs to be seen on this day, but the water lilies were in full bloom.  I really liked their light colours against the dark background of the water, so I spent a few minutes snapping some photographs and these were my two favourites.  I also learned a quick lesson in easy problem solving.  I almost left without having taken any photographs at all because many of the green lily pads were kind of dry looking and were covered in bird droppings.  My brother saw that I was beginning to pack up my gear and asked why I wasn't taking more photos.  I quickly described my problem and no sooner did I finish speaking, my brother disappeared into the house and came out with a broom.  A few quick swishes in the water with the handle and all of my problems were gone.  Thanks Little Brother.  I've got to work on bettering my problem solving skills.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 70mm.  For the second photograph, I shot at f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 68mm.  I also tried taking the second shot with the flowers in reverse order, we could also move the flowers around with the broomstick, but there is so much more colour and detail in the red flower that I felt it was kind of a shame to leave it out of focus.  I also kind of liked reversing my usual habit of having the foreground in focus while the background would be blurred.

Cotton Candy Falls

I tend to get a little bit long winded sometimes with these little blogs, but this time we'll keep things a little short.  I like to play around with my camera from time to time and during a visit to Ottawa I was directed to a little waterfall by one of my good friends.  I figured it would be a good opportunity to play around with shutter speeds.  With a waterfall, the slower speed you use, the more solid the falling water will appear.  Almost like cotton candy falling over the ledge.  In an ideal world, I would have taken a couple of shots with a tripod, but I didn't have it with me at that time so I tried to use speeds as slow as possible without falling victim to having the photo blurred by my hand.  Here are some photos of the same scene taken at different shutter speeds.

f/6.3, 1/640sec, ISO 400 at 24mm

f/22, 1/60sec, ISO 400 at 24mm

f/22, 1/15sec, ISO 100 at24mm

1/15th of a second was really pushing my luck.  In fact, it's true that I didn't have my tripod, but there was a handy wall overlooking the scene.  I put my camera on the wall and pressed the shutter because I'm pretty sure that there's no way I could have shot at 1/15th of a second without shaking the camera.  It's a fun little exercise.  As you can see, the slower speed I used, the more solid the water became.  You can try this little trick with all kinds of moving objects.  It's fun to try with cars or bikes.  You frame something solid that doesn't move, use a slow shutter speed, and wait for faster things to pass by.  I might go out try that again some day.

Centennial Flame

I sometimes get inspired by things I see on television.  I catch a glimpse of something and think to myself, that might make a pretty cool photo.  If I'm lucky, the idea can be realized rather easily, and sometimes a little travel is necessary.  Such is the case with these photographs you see here today of the Centennial Flame.  The Flame was created back in 1967 to celebrate Canada's 100th anniversary.  It has the shield of all 12 Provinces and Territories (there were only 12 back in 1967) and though it was never meant to be a permanent fixture, it was so loved by people that it ended up never being removed.  I thought it might be cool if I could get a picture of the flame dancing in the air with the Parliament Buildings in the background.  As you can tell, it's a pretty popular place, but I was lucky that there weren't that many people there that day.  One day later we passed the buildings and the area was full of people.  I waited for some people to move away so that I could get the view of the buildings in the background and I then moved in.  I used a fairly large aperture because I wanted the buildings in the back to be blurry, making the flame the focus of my shot.  You can't really tell how the flame will react, so I set my camera to shoot in burst mode and then chose the image that had the most fire in it.  I also wanted to get a similar shot, but with no people in it, so I went to another side of the flame and shot some of the other buildings.  Once again I shot in burst mode and then chose the photograph that had the most fire in it.  I really like the way that the fire dances around the water.  The first photograph was taken at f/4, 1/1600sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/2500sec, ISO 100 at 28mm.  Some other photographs I took of only the Parliament Buildings can be seen by following the link.  The photographs came out pretty much how I had imagined in my head.  I really enjoy both of these shots.  It's fun to able to follow through with an idea and then see the final product on my screen.

Eager Model

This year seems to have gone by rather quickly.  It still seems like only yesterday that I was standing next to the Chambly Basin watching geese take flight.  It was a pretty productive morning for taking photos.  The first photograph I shared from that morning was a leaf covered by a thin layer of ice on the ground.  Since you all know I like to share, you can see that photo by following this link.  Afterwards, I took some photographs of the geese taking off, which can be seen right here.  This photograph took place a little bit after those were taken.  I was sitting on a park bench watching what was left of the geese when this little bird landed on the wall next to me.  He tweeted at me a little bit, but flew off as I slowly raised my camera.  He didn't fly very far though, landing on the branches to the left of my bench.  As I often do, I looked right at the bird and softly said I just wanted to get a photograph of it, and I meant it no harm.  I know this sounds silly, but it's something I find myself doing often when taking photographs of animals, and it generally works well for me.  As it did here.  The bird chirped something at me, turned its head slightly and waited for me to take my photos.  This shot was taken at f/5.6, 1/800sec, ISO 100 at 260mm.  I said a quick thank-you to my model and off he flew.  I like those little moments.

With These Rings

Summer 2014 is coming to an end.  Without a doubt, my biggest adventure of the Summer was taking photographs for my friends Réal and Joanne for their wedding back in August.  So, as we get ready to wrap up Summer, it seems like a good time to wrap up the photos that I took at the wedding.  You've already seen the actual wedding photographs right here.  There was one last photograph that I didn't post which I really liked, and it is this photo right here of the rings.  I was given permission to take some photographs of the rings while everyone was getting ready, so I grabbed my Macro lens, fiddled around with how the rings were placed and then tried to find a little bit of sun to light them up.  I snapped this photograph at f/5.6, 1/30sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  I liked the way that the sun lit up the inside of the silver ring and the outside of the golden one.  I also really liked all of the details in the silver ring as well as the small details in the fluff on the pillow on which the rings rested.  It was a great experience.  I hope that all of you had some great experiences this summer as well.

My Photograph At Work

Yep, that's my photograph at the bottom of the poster.  Pretty cool.  To find out more about Kaval, especially if you plan on being in the Sutton area on September 27th, visit their website right here.  Merci beaucoup Kaval.

Still Some Left In The Tank

If you have a long memory, you may remember that this blog was born back in August of 2012 because I was getting ready for my first photography exposition and I was hoping to get a little extra publicity for myself by opening this blog and  its sister site on Facebook (you know the drill by now, go there and Like the page already!).  As incredible as it my seem, and probably a compliment to my continuing to grow as a photographer, I still have some shots that appeared at that show that have yet to appear on the blog.  I kind of viewed those 25 shots as my back-up, should I get real lazy over a period of time and I went a while before shooting anything new.  That's no longer a real worry as I'm so backed up in posting photos here that I could probably go a fairly long time without shooting anything new and still have a fair amount of updates for this page.  This shot was one of my happy accidents.  I wasn't at the location for this shot in particular, but as luck would have it, I came home with it anyway.  The real reason I found myself on Old Montreal that night was to get a shot of City Hall.  You can see that photo by clicking on the link right here.  As the story goes, I walked to this site because an annoying tour bus was blocking my view of the City Hall shot.  The lights under the bridge were new to me, so I set up my tripod and took the shot.  I was really happy with the results, and it ended up not only being on the wall for a month, but someone even took it home with them.  The photograph was taken at f/9, 14sec, ISO 100 at 28mm and probably deserved better than sitting in the on-deck circle for almost a year before it finally got its chance here at bat, but here it is for all to see.

Merci Beaucoup/Thank-You

A big thanks to Kaval for featuring one of my photographs on their webpage. - Un gros merci à Kaval pour avoir utilisé une de mes photos sur leur site web.

Kaval - Photos

You can see other photographs I took of them at this link.

Réal et Joanne

Last month I posted up a photograph that I took at the wedding of my friends Réal and Joanne.  It resulted in a traffic spike here.  The both liked the photograph, as did many of the viewers out there in Internetland.  So, I asked their permission to post up a few more of the photographs that I took that day and they agreed.  I was given the opportunity to have some one-on-one time with the couple on their big day, and I was a little bit nervous about the situation.  As I've said here a few times, I'm not always comfortable taking photographs of people.  I get a little tongue-tied, and my mind goes a little blank when it comes time to ask people to pose for me.  To prepare, I searched the internet for shot of weddings and I grabbed a couple of the shots I liked.  I then saved them to my iPod so that in the heat of the moment, if my mind went blank, I could just pull out that little device and I had some handy little ideas in the palm of my hand.  The chaulkboard you see the couple holding in the first photograph, and you'll see again in this posting, was an idea I 'borrowed' from my buddy Pierre Bourgault. I saw him use the board on one of this jobs and I really thought it was a cool idea.  Another photographer who I looked at for inspiration was my friend Elisa Elliot.  While I'm not very comfortable in front of people, I look at her photographs and her subjects just seem so full of life and jump off the page.  Finally, I must also mention my photography professor, Richard Anber.  He's currently out of the Country and his website no longer works, but you can see some examples of his work on that Instagram site I linked.  I also need to thank Réal and Joanne.  They had the confidence in me to take these photographs of them on their important day, and it was a great adventure.  I know this is rapidly turning into a 'thank-you fest', but I also need to mention My Lovely Assistant, who stood by me then entire day and was full of good words of support in the days leading up to the event as the little voices in my head began to get louder and louder.  Okay, back to the photos!  My Lovely Assistant and I managed to find this great park near where the couple were getting married, so after the ceremony we whisked them away from the crowd for a few hours.  It was a sunny afternoon and I was surprised by how empty the park was.  Having free reign, we pretty much walked through most of the park, stopping at certain locations that I had locked into my head during a visit the week before.  After an hour or so of taking photos, I returned the couple to their reception party where they celebrated and danced the night away surrounded by family and friends.  I had lots of fun that day, and much more a few weeks later when they returned from their honeymoon and I gave them the pictures I had taken.  Everyone liked them very much and I was very proud of my work.  Enough about me.  Most of you are here to look at the photographs.  The first photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/1000sec, ISO 100 at 43mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/3.2, 1/200sec, ISO 800 at 105mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/20sec, ISO 1600 at 140mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/25sec, ISO 1600 at 70mm.  Here are a few more photographs that I took over the course of the day.

f/4, 1/1000sec, ISO 100 at 70mm

f/3.5, 1/1250sec, ISO 100 at 30mm

f/5.6, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 32mm

f/3.2, 1/2000sec, ISO 100 at 42mm

Félicitations Réal et Joanne! Merci de m'avoir permis de faire partie de votre journée spéciale.  It was an experience that I hope I can build on in the years to come.

Kaval

In what is fast becoming an annual event, My Lovely Assistant and I vistied the FestivArt de Frelighsburgh on Sunday.  Sadly, the weather wasn't that great and we showed up a little bit later in the afternoon than usual.  There seemed to be many fewer artists on display this year, though that may have been due to our late arrival and the bad weather.  We stopped to sit on a park bench after walking the streets for a little bit and noticed that there were preparations being made for a concert.  A small stage had been set up and the group were going through a sound-check in the rain.  I had left my camera in the car since I didn't want it to get wet, but as the sound-check came to an end and the concert began, I decided that this was an opportunity that I shouldn't pass up.  There weren't that many people at the show, again, probably due to the crummy weather, so I had free access to get right up to the front of the stage.  I took a second to ask permission from the guys at the sound board, and after getting the okay, and getting a helpful push from My Lovely Assistant, I made my way to the front of the stage and began shooting away. The name of the group is Kaval, you can follow that link to their homepage.  The also have a Facebook page that you can visit right here.  They describe their music as blend of jazz, funk, pop and reggae, but mostly as music you can make you move.  We enjoyed the short part of the show that we saw, dinner was waiting to be served and we had to leave before the concert ended.  I took a few shots, trying to keep some words advice from a friend in mind, let your photos capture the feel of the show.  I think that my photographs capture their essence, that being music that makes you move, as there is lots of movement in these shots.  I even took the time to engage in a personal challenge.  Drummers don't usually get to be photographed as they sit near the back of the stage and the lighting isn't that great.  That wasn't the case here as everyone was lined up along the stage.  I wanted to capture a shot of the drummer, with his sticks in mid-air. I managed to get that with the fourth shot you see here on the page and I was quite happy.  Here are the technical aspects of the first four photographs, and we'll finish things off with a few more of the photographs I took during my time at their show.  The first photograph was taken at f/5, 1/125sec, ISO 100 at 42mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/5, 1/160sec, ISO 1000 at 55mm.  Photograph number three was taken at f/5, 1/200sec, ISO 1000 at 51mm.  The fourth photograph of this first set was taken at f/5, 1/125sec, ISO 1000 at 63mm.  You may have noticed that all of the shots were taken at f/5.  I wanted to use an aperture that would give me enough speed to capture the action in the low light, but also nothing so large as to leave lots of the scene out of focus.  Now, as promised, here are a few more photographs that I took during the show.

f/5, 1/400sec, ISO 1000 at 70mm

f/5, 1/200sec, ISO 1000 at 51mm

f/5, 1/250sec, ISO 1000 at 70mm

To finish things off, there's a group shot of everyone on the stage that I cropped to 12" x 4" that was taken at f/5, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 68mm.  If you don't mind, I'd like to give a little bit of free advertising to the band since I was allowed to photograph their performance.  They'll be having a official launch of their first album, En Cavale, at the Sutton Jazz Festival.  You can find out ticket information, available September 3rd at this link.  That link will also lead you to more information about the Sutton Jazz Festival itself.  Kaval will also be doing an album launch in Montreal on October 4th at O Patro Vys (356, Ave. Mont-Royal, Est).  Best of luck to them.