Chocolate Birthday Surprise

It's been a couple of days since the last update, so I decided to bring a tasty treat with me upon my return.  Recently, My Lovely Assistant celebrated her birthday and the cake for the event was made by her Aunt.  The same Aunt who has just finished classes in creating these chocolate creations.  I was asked to take a few photographs of the cake, and it stressed me out a little bit.  I've never been totally happy with my cake photographs, and I wanted to do my best to make a nice photograph with this one.  That resulted in an almost 40minute photo session while the others in the room waited in silent patience while I pretty much rearranged the entire dining room table, several times.  I tried bouncing the light of my flash off of several surfaces, but couldn't get a result I was looking for.  There was a large shadow that was falling on the near side of the cake, and I really wanted to see all of the layers.  So, I thought to myself, what's the best way to get rid of a shadow?  Add some more light.  We found a flashlight, put some white wrapping tissue over the light to soften it, and My Lovely Assistant lived up to her name by putting up with my directions on where to point the flashlight.  That's right, I made her work during her birthday supper.  Looking back, I kind of wished that we had a second flashlight because there was another shadow that I would have liked to get rid of in the second photograph.  Shadow notwithstanding, I actually really like these photographs.  They're maybe not as good as the cake was tasty, but I think they're the best cake photographs that I've taken to date.  I also really liked how well the lighting made the colour come of of the wood in the first photograph.  The little candle holders in the background added a little something to the photograph, but I also took one with nothing in the background, to see the difference.  I like them all.

The first photograph was taken at f/5, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 24mm and the third photograph was taken at f/5, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  Can't wait for the next birthday.

He Shoots & Scores! - UPDATED

A few days ago I found myself with a free Sunday morning while My Lovely Assistant was stuck going to her Day Job.  Trying to think of something to do, I decided to head over to the Bell Sports Complex in Brossard.  I was hoping to get lucky and find a hockey game that I could shoot.  I suppose some people might find that to be a little weird, as I suppose some of those players might have though seeing me up in empty stands taking photographs of them.  But, the best thing about empty stands is that it means I had free reign to set up anywhere I wanted.  I looked at the scoreboard and noticed that the red team was leading 4-1, so I chose to place myself near the net of the yellow team.  As luck would have it, the yellow team ended up scoring more goals the rest of the game and I failed to take advantage of my empty stands by moving around, but I did manage to catch this little sequence with #19 scoring a goal.  I was a little disappointed that I didn't manage to freeze #19.  All of the photographs were taken in Manual mode at 1/250th of a second so I thought I was using a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action.  What I think might have happened was that I left the auto-focus on and my camera ended up focusing on the backboards rather than the goaltender as orginally intended.  What I usually do is use the auto-focus to focus the goaltender and try to frame the shot a little bit before shooting.  #19 broke in on a break-away after a quick turnover and I guess I wasn't fast enough to switch the auto-focus off.  I was happy to have frozen the goalie and the puck though, especially in the second shot where you see the puck going into the top corner.  All of the shots were taken at f/6.3, 1/250sec, ISO 1600 at 85mm and I over-exposed each shot by +0.3 step in order to try and get as much speed with the available light that I had.  It was a fun way to pass the morning and to practice my shooting skills.  I'll try and do that again a few more times.

*** UPDATE ***

After looking at those photographs again one day later, I came to realize that they were much darker than I had thought they were.  So, I went back and played with them a little bit in Photoshop using the Levels tool.  I played with the Midtones a little bit and brightened up the shots a little bit.  I won't delete the other photos, but here are the new ones.

Feel free to let me know if you like the brighter shots or not.

Icy Water

I suppose we've all been looking at the video of my photograph being on the news long enough.  How about I fill you all in on how my photograph ended up on television last week.  Everything began last Tuesday morning.  I believe that the outside temperature at the time was -16C, a bit colder with the wind.  Last year I had gone to take some cold weather pictures of the steam coming off of the water down by the Old Port.  Back in the Fall, I had seem some photographs taken by some friend of a friend (who I sadly can't remember or I'd link to them here) of some photographs they had taken near the foot of the Victoria Bridge.  I thought it would be good location so I and My Lovely Assistant got bundled up and hit the road.  Once at the location, I was kind of disappointed that there wasn't much steam at all.  Also, it was a bit past 10:00AM and the sun was high enough in the sky to cast a shadow of the Victoria Bridge over the water where the steam was.  I was kind of disappointed, but we were there so I decided to snap off a few photographs anyway.  The sky was a nice blue and there was a little bit of steam so I wasn't terribly disappointed.  This photograph you see here was taken at f/11, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 43mm.  Later that night, the weather forecast called for a very cold night and an even colder morning the next day.  My decision was quickly made about what I would be doing on Wednesday morning.  Stay tuned for Part Two.

My Television Debut

 

I recently submitted a photograph to CTV News Montreal as part of their WeatherPix series.  It was a really cold morning and I decided to trek down to the Victoria Bridge to see if I could grab a cool photograph.  I felt that I did, and my parents have been saying I should send stuff in to WeatherPix for a while now, so I figured, why not give it a shot.  Here is some video I grabbed from the newscast of Wednesday, January 15th.  You could probably get a better version from the actual website, but some people have been having problems accessing it, so here's a little version for you to look at.  Thanks to CTV Montreal and Lori Graham for using my photograph...and for spelling my name correctly.  For those of you looking for more of the story behind the photo, you'll probably find it up here on the blog in the near future.

A Second Exhibition - Une deuxième exposition

Beginning March 10^th, and going until April 2^nd, my photographs will be on display at the Claude-Henri-Grignon Library in Longueuil.  This will be the second solo exhibition of my photographs and I hope many of you will be able to see it.  The show will be called ‘Colourful’ and the vernissage will be from 7:00PM – 9:00PM on March 13th.

À compter du 10 mars et ce jusqu’au 2 avril, vous pourrez voir mes photographies exposées à la Bibliothèque Claude-Henri-Grignon à Longueuil. Haut en couleur sera la deuxième exposition que je présente et j’espère bien que vous aurez l’occasion d’y assister. Le vernissage aura lieu le 13 mars de 19 heures à 21 heures.  

***CORRECTION***

Wow, sorry about the large letters...not sure how that happened.

Festival of Lights

Christmas time is sometimes referred to as the Festival Of Lights.  Understandably so, whether is be Hanukka candles of or Christmas tree decorations, there is a lot of light associated with the season.  So, with all of that light at your disposition, why not have a little bit of fun with them.  These photographs were taken using a little but of trickery, but nothing really new.  It's a little technique that I had buried in the back of my head, but was reminded of after having seen it in practice in a magazine that was given to me as a Christmas gift by one of My Lovely Assistants sisters (merci Alexandra).  All you need is a Christmas tree full of lights, and a tripod.  I say 'all you need', but it was surprising how difficult it was for me to find a light display that I felt comfortable using.  There were lots of lit trees on the property of people's homes, but I didn't feel those people would appreciate having a camera pointed at their living room windows as many of those trees were on front porches and next to large bay windows.  So, I wheeled around town a little bit until I found this collection of lights in Saint-Lambert.  After that, I played around with different exposure times, finding one that I liked and then I'd go about taking the pictures.  After deciding on a time, I'd take the photograph and during the final five seconds, I'd begin to rotate my camera on the tripod, creating the streaks of light that you see.  It's good to make sure that there isn't a light source to the left of your camera as it will bleed into your shot, but otherwise, because it is dark outside, the objects that are not well lit, such as the building or trees in the background, don't appear to move at all.  It's a fun little trick to try.  You can see the results in the first two photographs.  The light streaks appear more solid in the first shot as I turned the camera slowly, while I spun it a little more fast in the second.  While out there, I also tried the same trick, but instead of rotating the camera, I pulled the zoom in and out.  You can see that effect in the third photograph.  The first photograph was taken at f/16, 12sec, ISO 100 at 45mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/16, 16sec, ISO 100 at 45mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/16, 17sec, ISO 100 at 45mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/16, 13sec, ISO 100 at 32mm.  Be sure to shoot at an aperture around f/16 so that you will get the little star effect on the lights in their original position.  You can see that best in the first and second photographs. To give you an idea of what I was shooting, I included an regular shot of the scene as the fourth photograph in this little set.  As you can see, it doesn't take very much light to make some fun little streak shots.

Bonus Telus Coverage

Have any of you ever tried to take photographs of fireworks during a snowstorm?  Well, I hadn't so I figured I wanted to give it a shot.  Last Saturday we ended up having a huge snowstorm, and I decided to go out and give it a shot.  Probably not my greatest of ideas, especially since people were telling everyone to stay home and off the streets, but sometimes my ideas aren't always the greatest.  We drove over the Jacques Cartier Bridge to Île Sainte-Hélène and were promptly kicked out of an empty parking lot my a security guard.  I suppose she was in the right, but it was annoying just the same.  Anyway, long story short, the idea of shooting fireworks in the snow may have been interesting, but it was the wrong night.  Wrong location as well.  I could see very little across the river and after taking five photographs I quickly packed up my gear and headed for home.  So, always looking for a reason to post stuff here, I went back over the last few Telus shows and scooped out a few shots that I hadn't used before and put there up here.  The first shot was taken on the first night of the shows and was taken at f/16, 9sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  Here are a few more stretched out shots from the second night.

f/16, 13sec, ISO 100 at 40mm

f/16, 9sec, ISO 100 at 40mm

f/16, 13sec, ISO 100 at 40mm

And so ends another edition of the Telus Fire on Ice winter fireworks displays.  Weather wise, it wasn't the greatest year as two of the shows were pretty much unwatchable, unless you were on the actual site, but I did discover that location on the bridge, which I will probably use again in future years.  It was fun.  Hope you all enjoyed my photographs.

Santa's Favourite Dessert

It's been a while since any food has been served here on the Blog.  That's not to mean that I have given up on food photography, but rather that I haven't been having as much success with it as I would like.  Fortunately, My Lovely Assistant is as good of a chef as I like to think that I am as a photographer.  There is never really a lack of opportunity around the home, just a lack of belief in my ability to properly represent My Lovely Assistant's tasty creations.  Such was not the case with this one.  I think the photograph came out quite well.  I really like the texture of the chocolate log and I managed to bounce the light from my flash at an angle where there wasn't much in the way of shadows.  Now, if I would have taken the time to compose a nice background the photograph would probably look a little bit better, but I and everyone else in the room were kind of really looking forward to eating it.  This photograph was taken at f/11, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 24mm and the model was eaten very shortly thereafter.

Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year everyone!  It's hard to believe how fast times seems to fly.  We've just wrapped up a second full year here on the Blog.  I know, I can't believe that I've managed to keep that up either.  What better place to welcome in a new year, then where the last one began.  Some of the first photographs seen on this page in 2014 were of the fireworks celebration and a free concert put on by The Lost Fingers.  Once again this year, there was a concert scheduled for the Old Port, but upon arriving on the scene with My Lovely Assistant, we immediately noticed a big difference from last year.  There were way more people.  Last year I was able to walk up to the front of the stage with relative ease.  This year, there were several thousand people between the stage and I, meaning that my hope for some concert photographs quickly went out the window.  I figured that with the sudden addition of free time before the fireworks, it would be a good idea to try and find a new spot to shoot the show this year.  I thought that I had found the winning location when we climbed a few staircases and found ourselves on an observation deck on top of one of the parking garages.  Sadly, I miscalculated the distance between us and the fireworks display.  We ended up being way to close to catch the large explosions, but after getting over the initial deception, I tried to focus on coming home with something.  I keyed in n where the mid-sized fireworks were coming from and tried to shoot those. By looking at the second photograph, you can kind of see my problem.  That photograph was taken after I had already abandoned my initial position and moved further back on the deck.  The rest of my shots were pretty much taken while aiming for that batch of smaller explosions.  They aren't all spectacular, but I think that some of them are pretty interesting.  I especially like the first, fourth and fifth photographs of this batch.  I like the fine lines of the explosions in the first shot.  In the fourth photograph, I really like how some of the light from the larger explosion bleeds into my shot, creating some nice lines horizontally across the screen, and in the fifth shot, I like all of the gold sparkles.  The end result looks almost like a golden tree of light.  The true credit for these photographs once again belongs to My Lovely Assistant.  I was rather upset when the show came to an end, but she told me not to relax, she was sure that I'd be able to find something in the shots I took.  Maybe my 2015 resolution should be to give up arguing and finally just admit that she is always right.  She's got a pretty good success percentage in that catagory.  I guess that's what makes one a good Lovely Assistant.  The first photograph was taken at f/16, 25sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/16, 7 sec, ISO 100 at 24mm and the third photograph was taken at f/16, 27sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  Here are a couple more shots taken from the roof of the parking garage.

f/16, 8 sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

f/16, 4sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

And so begins another year of photographs here at Eric Mahannah Photography.  Here's to hoping that it will be a good one.