Candy Jar

One of my favourite things to photograph is candy.  I mean, who wouldn't enjoy spending some time with a model that is always bright, colourful and can be eaten when everything is over.  However, something that I have found to be a problem over my last few visits to Bulk Barn is that there is only so much candy that you can photograph.  Jellybeans and Smarties look real nice in photographic form, but when you've done it once, there isn't really much of a need to do so again.  So, this is where the need to be a little bit creative comes in handy.  A little while back I took a photograph of some jujubes.  A friend of mine liked the photograph and forwarded to me a photograph of some jujubes she had placed in some plastic jars as gifts to be given to the kids who would be attending the birthday party she was throwing for her son.  I mentioned that it was a nice idea for a gift and that it might also be a cool photograph to see the jar on its side with the candies having tumbled out.  Just like that, the flash bulb went off in my head.  Yeah, I think that it would make a pretty fun photograph.  I had a fresh batch of jujubes, all I needed was a jar.  I decided to go find an expert, that being My Lovely Assistant.  She had some small Mason Jars which were the perfect size for what I wanted to accomplish.  I filled about three-quarters of the jar and then tipped it over onto a wooden cutting board.  Some of the candies tumbled out naturally, and I pulled a few more out and closer to the rim of the jar.  I then took several photographs using different settings, flash, just direct sunlight and sometimes both.  I used a Macro lens for these photographs since it does a good job of magnifying the candies and also give a little extra 'blur' to the background.  I tried to edit myself a little bit, but I figured that since nobody can eat just one jujube, why just look at one photograph of them.  Each of these five photographs had a little something that I liked.  From the colour of the candies, to the reflection of the candy colours onto the jar.  In particular, the little dash of red that you can see around the rim of the jar.  The first photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/4, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  Here are the other photographs that I took of the candy jars.

f/16, 1/30sec, ISO 100 at 60mm

f/4.5, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 60mm

f/7.1, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 60mm

The best part about photographing candies is that after you've finished your afternoon project of shooting, there is a handy little snack just waiting for you. Everybody wins!

Fresh Strawberries

I'm currently laid up with what would be called a Spring flu, which according to My Lovely Assistant Md, is one hundred times worse because I happen to be a male.  Gender roles aside, one of the last dying requests I always make to myself when I'm laying in bed and the world is swirling around me a 100km/hr is that I need to start eating better. A good way to start would be with some fresh, juicy strawberries.  We're still a few months from being able to eat local berries, like these here, but a nice serving a fresh fruit is always good, even in blog form.  These were purchased and served a little time as models before being consumed.  I used a macro lens and it really brought out the seeds in that one huge strawberry that I focused on.  I also used a large aperture to blur out the rest of the photograph, but left a little bit of green in the back of the shot to sit against all of the tasty red goodness.  The photograph was taken at f/4, 1/500sec, ISO 100 at 60mm, and if possible, they were even tastier than they look.

Strangers On A Bridge

I guess that the title may be a little bit misleading.  The two people in this photograph are obviously not strangers.  This is one of those happy coincidence photographs when you happen to be in the right place at the right time.  This photograph was taken in the Old Port of Montreal one chilly spring afternoon.  I thought that taking a photograph of Marché Bonsecours with this little pedestrian bridge crossing would be cool.  As I was shooting, this couple walked halfway across the bridge and decided to have a tender moment.  The photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/2000sec, ISO 100 at 43mm.  In an ideal situation, one shouldn't really be taking this photograph at f/2.8 as a smaller aperture would be a little more ideal.  When this couple entered the scene, I was experimenting with different apertures.  When they kissed, I was at f/2.8, and the passion didn't last long enough for me to change settings.  I was hoping for a second chance, but I think they spotted me rather quickly afterwards and moved on.  Despite the large aperture, this photograph still came out pretty well.

Spring Preview

The temperature, much to my chagrin, is finally starting to inch up into the double digits which means warmer days are on their way.  While I am no fan of summer days, I do enjoy photographing some of the flowers that need that warmth in order to properly grow and bloom.  As I continue cleaning out my photography folder, I came upon this photograph of my favourite flower to take photographs of.  The Daylily.  Daylillies have  been featured on these pages several times over the years.  This particular one was part of a little bouquet and the way it had been placed had caught my eye.  The sun coming in through the window would strike the stamens of the flower and cast nice shadows on the petals.  It made the pollen stand out as well.  I waited for a sunny afternoon and put a black towel behind the bouquet to serve as a backdrop.  The photograph was taken at f/16, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  These flowers usually bloom in the late Spring or early Summer.  So, while most of you are looking forward to the heat that the coming months will bring, I'll be looking forward to the colours of the season instead.

Dragonfly

Here's one that has been flying around the hard drive for a good little while now, and I have one friend who will be happy to see it here on the blog.  In all honesty, I hope that there will be another few people out there happy to see it as well.  This is a dragonfly that spent a good two days flying around my head while on vacation with My Lovely Assistant a few years ago.  Every day it would come out and sit on a branch or a deck chair and just tease me.  Sitting long enough for me to pull out my camera and then fly away as soon as I was ready to shoot.  Finally, on the final day, it landed on this little branch and waited.  I already had a telephoto lens on my camera as I was also stalking a heron (photographs at this link) so I slowly held the camera up and this time the dragonfly decided to stick around.  I shot this photograph at f5.6, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 300mm.  I wanted to make sure that the dragonfly itself would be very much in focus, but I also wanted to make sure that I had a nice blurred background.  I also upped the exposure a little bit in Photoshop in order to bring out a little bit more of the dragonfly and to really get the details in the wings.  That came at the expense of the bottom of the branch being a little but over-exposed, but I feel that it worth doing as the dragonfly is far more interesting to look at than the branch is.

Ready For The Playoffs

It's time once again for the mad rush to the Stanley Cup to begin.  Sadly, the home team will not be participating in the tournament this year.  They had issues with their star goaltender being injured and not knowing what to do after it happened.  I suppose that I can relate.  I sometimes find myself at a loss when dealing with my photographs.  There's only so much editing that one can do before my mind starts to wander.  Especially when I'm faced with a folder full of photographs.  So, sometimes I take a little break from the serious work and just decide to play around a little bit in Photoshop.  I try not to overly manipulate my photographs, but when you find yourself with so many different functions and filters at your fingertips, it can sometimes make for a fun little artistic adventure.  There's only one drawback.  Like with all fun adventures, sometimes you have so much fun that you end up forgetting where you began.  Such is the case with these photographs.  The original, taken at f/5, 1/500sec, ISO 1000 at 168mm was taken during a game played by my favourite goaltender, Florence, last fall.  I had several photographs to go through, and ended up playing with this one for a little while.  If memory serves, I believe I ended up using some of the Artistic and Brush Stroke filters.  The final result was an image that kind of looks like a drawing.  As someone who has trouble drawing stick men, I get a kick out of producing these photo drawings.

Car Tattoo

I recently saw a posting on Facebook advertising the return of the classic car exhibition to Saint-Lambert later this year, and it quickly made me realize that I still haven't finished going through all of my photographs from my visit last year.  I like going to the show not only to see the old cars, but also seeing the little details that seem to be missing from modern models.  Like this little design.  It was found on the front hood of a Ford pick-up.  Sadly, I did a miserable job of keeping track of what cars I was photographing, a problem I plan on not repeating this year.  I took the photograph at f/14, 1/125sec, ISO 100 at 28mm.  The little sun spot on the hood proved to be a bit of a problem, so I decided to make it part of the photograph by using a smaller aperture and getting some streaks of light coming off of it.  I thought that the logo and the design were rather cool and the bright red really catches your eye.  We'll see if I can finish off a couple more of these before the next show rolls around.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

This past Friday, I accompanied My Lovely Assistant and two of my friends to the Olympic Stadium for a pre-season baseball game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox.  I lived my nostalgia moment by returning to the Stadium for the first time since the Expos left last year, so this year I had a bit of a plan.  I wanted to get my camera in so that I could take a shot at capturing a wide-angle shot of the stadium while it was full of people.  Sadly, I had to deal with another camera ban, as "professional camera equipment" was banned from the building. and there was a nice pictograph of a camera on the list of things banned at the security check-point.  In this day and age when everyone has a cellphone with the capacity to take High-Definition videos and top quality photographs, I don't understand why they continue to ban cameras.  In any event, I still managed to get my camera into the stadium thanks, but I was limited in my choice of lens.  I ended up using a 18-55mm lens because even though it is a zoom lens, it was the widest angled lens in my bag that was small enough for me to attempt smuggling in.  I waited until the fifth inning to make sure that the Stadium would be as full as can be, and then made the trek up to the very top of Section 401 to get the photograph you see here.  It was taken at f/8, 1/60sec, ISO 800 at 18mm.  To be perfectly honest, I was a little bit disappointed with the final image because I was hoping to get more of the stands on the left and the right of the stadium into my photograph.  However, when your back is already up against the concrete wall and you can't bring in the equipment that you really want to use, your options are limited.

Eighth Wonder Of The World

It's WrestleMania Weekend, so as I continue my little stroll through the archives that has resulted from my recent computer problems I came upon these old photographs from my school days.  These were from a course on Product Photography.  We already visited that folder once a few months back  for a photograph that I took of an old camera that belonged to my Grandmother.  On another occasion, I brought in this action figure of Andre The Giant.   Andre was a legend in the world of pro wrestling, with a little bit of home town flair tossed in as well.  Andre was already well known in Europe, but made his North American ring debut in Montreal, selling out the Forum numerous times before continuing on and gaining global fame through his time in what was then known as the World Wrestling Federation, today known as World Wrestling Entertainment.  So, I brought Andre to class that night and posed him in a light tent and also on a lighting table.  Trying all kinds of different settings.  With the first photograph, which was taken at f/14, 1/60sec, ISO 100 at 28mm, I used a very bright light.  My goal was to treat the figure as if it were a real person and used the harsh light to pretty much wipe out the background and really make the figure stand out.  With the second photograph, which was shot at f/5.6, 1/80sec, ISO 400 at 24mm, I tried to use a more soft, even lighting.  Kind of as if I were posing the figure the photograph would be used to sell it on a website like eBay.  To be honest, those settings were pretty much a crap shoot in the sense that this was pure experimentation.  But, that was also part of the fun.  Despite the fact that going into the studio I had very little idea what I was doing, I felt that these two photographs came out rather well.  I probably should have gone with a smaller aperture in the second photograph, but there isn't much more that I think I would have done differently.  Andre took part in a match at the first WrestleMania, and now it's time for the 32rd edition.  Time to fire up some nachos and relax.