Stars & Cars

Long exposure night photographs are some of my favourite photographs to take.  They're the original reason why I wanted to learn more about photography and I still enjoy taking them to this day.  Light trails, star effects and light tricks and are some of the fun things you can create when shooting at night, and this photograph has all of them.  By combining a small aperture and a long exposure time, I can create the star effects you see on the street lights and the lights on the bridge.  The long exposure allows me to capture the streaks of light left behind by the passing cars, as well as having all of the separate colours of the traffic light appear to be on at the same time.  It's photographs like this that I really enjoy taking.  This shot was taken in Cowansville one evening and really like the way you can follow the lights left by the passing cars through the photograph, in addition to all of the other things I've already mentioned.  It was taken at f/11, 14sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.

Degrees Of Separation

It's true that I don't do very much Photoshopping with my photographs, but I do like to play with certain little things every once in a while.  One of the things that I sometimes like to do is to rotate the canvas and turn vertical photographs into horizontal shots, or vice versa.  That's what I did with this Day Lily.  You've seen lots of Day Lilies here over the past few years, and you're likely to keep seeing them as they remain my favourite flower to photograph.  However, this one has been in the archives for a while now because there was just something about it that seemed to bother me.  I had tried something different with this shot, having the flower pointed to the right of the screen rather than to the left as I usually did.  It might just be a case of my being picky, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.  So, I decided to see how I'd like the photo if I rotated it 90degrees.  I liked it.  It seemed new, fresh and interesting to me.  The base of the flower seemed to come more alive at the bottom of the screen and I liked how the stems seem to be reaching out.  I also liked how the petal, now in the background of the photo, kind of sticks out a little bit more, likening it to a kind of cap.  Maybe all of this is in my imagination and in the eyes of others there really is no difference in how you view the photograph, but the simple change of rotating the photograph did make a heckuva difference to me.  This photograph was taken at f/5, 1/320sec, ISO 1600 at 60mm.  What do you think?  Is all of this in my head?  Is there one version of this photograph that you like better than the other?  Feel free to let me know.
 

Touchdown!

A friend of mine currently plays football for the Champlain Cavaliers in Saint-Lambert.  He mentioned that his team would be playing a game this past Sunday and though I had something else planned, I managed to pass by long enough to catch a quarter of the game.  During that time, I was lucky enough to have a touchdown scored almost exactly where I was positioned.  Sadly, it wasn't Champlain that scored, but as a photographer I couldn't have been happier to capture the moment.  There's lots of action on the football field, and lots of people moving around.  That means using a large aperture and fast camera speeds to make sure that all of the action is not only in focus, but doesn't suffer from movement blur either.  I also put my camera in burst mode because in sports, if you see the moment, that means you missed the moment on camera.  I saw the quarterback get ready to throw and the receiver headed in my direction so I began shooting as soon as the quarterback began to throw and caught the whole scene.  The first photograph was taken at f/14, 1/320sec, ISO 400 at 105mm.  Here are the rest of the series.

f/14, 1/320sec, ISO 400 at 105mm

f/14, 1/250sec, ISO 400 at 105mm

f/14, 1/200sec, ISO 400 at 105mm

f/14, 1/200sec, ISO 400 at 105mm

f/14, 1/250sec, ISO 400 at 105mm

Because I was shooting in burst mode, there wasn't much of a change in how the photographs were shot.  The speed changed a little bit since I was shooting in AV.  I upped the ISO to 400 for these photos because after taking a few earlier shots at ISO 100, it wasn't giving me enough speed.  Boosting up to ISO 400 gave me the speed I needed, and enough leeway to shoot in AV and burst without having the shutter speed get to slow.  I took a few more photos during my time at the game and I'll share them with you at a later time.

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.