There Is Trouble With The Trees

This is one of those odd photos where something grabs my eye and I need to snap away.  What we see here is a tree that is comfortably planted along the Rideau Canal in Ottawa.  The front of the tree appears to be rather dead, with two branches reaching out like arms.  That's what drew me to this tree in the first place.  It looks like a refugee from the Lord of the Rings films.  I was on a boat ride along the canal when we passed this guy, thanks Paul's Boat Lines, and I had to take a picture.  I noticed that a cyclist was coming down the path near the time when we would be passing the tree, so I crossed my fingers that he would pass at just the right moment since I couldn't ask the skipper to stop the boat.  I think I got him at just the right time where it looks like the tree is reaching out to try and scoop up the cyclist.  That's what I saw anyway.  My Lovely Assistant claims that I have quite the imagination in order to see all of that.  Guilty as charged.  This photo was taken at f/6.3, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 48mm.  I shot at ISO 400 because it was a rather cloudy day and I figured I'd need the extra shutter speed that the higher ISO would allow me, especially if I wanted to freeze the cyclist.  Shooting at f/6.3 was important because I didn't want to risk having the tree or cyclist be blurred out by using a larger aperture.  So there you have it, most people see a cyclist going by a tree, I see a dangerous man-eating tree about to snack on a cyclist.  Maybe my imagination is a little out of whack after all.  Wouldn't have it any other way.

Time To Relax

Ahh, that's more like it.  Just getting back from a relaxing trip to Ottawa and then Lac Desert in the Mt. Tremblant region.  The camera got a good workout with the wide variety of buildings, statues, critters and insects that I found.  Most importantly, it was essential to take a few minutes and relax, as My Lovely Assistant is doing here.  She doesn't really like to have her picture taken, so I had to wait for her to have her back turned before I took this shot.  I also had to explain to her that I set the camera to better capture the lake and forest, rather than where she was sitting, thus keeping her in the shadows.  It's fun to throw the camera into Manual Mode from time to time.  I took a reading of the lake/trees and then set my camera.  I even slowed down the speed that the camera suggested by one stop as I found it to be nicer than what the camera had suggested.   This photo was shot at f/5, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 50mm.  We had a great couple of days up at the cottage and in Ottawa and there will be some stories to tell and photos to show.  I'm going to need another vacation in order to process all of the photos that I took.  Something tells me that the photos I took back in May are going to be bumped to May 2014.  Either that, or we'll have to go with five updates a week.  Nah, I don't see that happening either.

Better Luck Next Time

One of the little projects I wanted to try out this year was to try out capturing light from passing stars in the night.  As you can see from the image on the left, I kind of succeeded, but not really.  I needed to photoshop the crap out of this image, using the Levels tool to get the sky to be black.  There is also a bright spot in the middle of the image and all kinds of red pixels.  I had used some tips I read online to try this photograph and it was shot at f/2.8, 93min15sec, ISO 100 at 70mm.  Obviously, this wasn't what I had in mind.  I read somewhere else that I should have shot several 30minutes exposures and put them together in photoshop.  If anyone out there has any ideas, it would be appreciated.

Keep Photographing Everything

Those of you who were here over the last year have probably seen me write several times that the best way to get better at photography is to keep on shooting things.  Photograph everything is something that has been written several times on these pages, with examples always included.  Here's another little situation that I believe helps my case.  From the 16th-21st of August there was some work being done on the building where I live.  The metal guardrails were removed and repaired, but before they were replaced, I took out my camera and took a few shots of the old wood that the guardrails had previously been connected to.  I then used photoshop to crop the photos into different sizes and do some re-framing.  The first photo you see at the top of the page was shot at f/5, 1/2500sec, ISO 400 at 60mm and then cropped to 12" x 6".

f/5, 1/2000 sec, ISO 400 at 60mm

f/5, 1/2500sec, ISO 400 at 60mm

f/5, 1/2500sec, ISO 40 at 60mm

I like doing little projects like this where I take one photograph and I end up turning it into four, or more, separate photographs.  This also something else you've seen me do if you've been here for a while.  I think that all four of these are interesting photographs, and the subject was nothing more than a weathered piece of wood.  Get out there and shoot.

Happy Birthday!!!

The blog turned One today.  I'm actually very happy with this place as it has forced me to go out and keep taking photographs and experimenting with photography.  I hope that all of you out there have been enjoying it as well.

Good-Bye Cotton Street

Here's a bit of news that I didn't think I'd write.  My parents sold their house.  This bit of news wouldn't really figure to be that important in my little world of photography, but where my parents live has provided me with many flowery models through the years and produced some of my favourite photographs as well as providing all kinds of practice when it comes to framing and experimenting with aperture and shutter speed.  In other words, my Mom & Dad's backyard has kind of served as a photography school where I have shot hundreds of photographs over the years.  I ended up paying my last visit to their house today, and in-between moving boxes around and picking over family relics, I did what comes natural for me.  I took some pictures.  This isn't really the end of the line for photos from what will now be know as my Mom & Dad's old backyard.  I have photos taken all the way back in May that I still haven't had the time to share with you just yet.  As a matter of fact, I may need to keep those photos in reserve for a while if my Mom doesn't have the time to weave her magic on a new flower bed for me to take pictures of come next Spring.  An obvious choice for my final Cotton Street picture would have been a Day Lily.  They're the flowers that have seen the most screen time here on the blog.  You can see some shots of my Mom's Day Lilies here and here.  Instead, I chose to go with something a little more colourful, because my Mom's flowerbed has always been full of colour.  This photo was taken at f/4, 1/800sec, ISO 100 at 51mm and features some yellow Rudbeckia Hirta's (otherwise known as Brown-Eyed Susan's) as well as some blue and pink Phlox.  We had some good times on Cotton street, and don't worry Mom & Dad, we'll have plenty more at the new place as well.

Grammie's Daisies

August 22nd will mark the second year since my Grandmother, Grammie, passed away.  I'm not really the sentimental sort, but Grammie was kind of important to me.  I know that I have the full support of my entire family and friends, but I always seemed to feel it that much more from her.  She was always a big fan of my photographs and one of my big regrets was that she passed away before my I had the chance to have my exhibition.  I really think it's something that she would have really enjoyed.  I remember showing her some photos I had taken of the Victoria Bridge one time and she went on to explain to me how the way that the shadows of the bridge fell on the water must have caught my eye and been the reason why I took the photo. I won't lie, I was impressed.  Most people had commented on how nice the bridge had looked, but nobody had ever mentioned the shadow.  For the record, she was right.  I did take the photo because of the shadow.  If the photo was digital, I'd probably show it to to you all here, but it was taken back when I was still using film.  One of these days I'll get around to scanning all of those old photos, when I have a year or two free to spare.  Since the bridge isn't available, these Daisies will have to do.  I chose the Daisy because it's a flower that I always associated with her.  It might be because they always grew everywhere around the farm that my Grandparents lived on.  Back in the summer when I'd stay with her while my parents would be away on business or vacation, we'd go out into the field and pick them.  I was even introduced to the famous 'She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not' game thanks to Grammie and her Daisies. I like to take pictures of Daisies whenever I see them, just because they remind me of my Grandmother.  Keeping the family connection going, these Daisies came from my Mom's yard where, much like many places, they grow wild pretty much wherever they want to.  I used my 60mm Macro lens to take these photos for two reasons.  The first being that it really brings out the center yellow disc of the flower.  The second being that since these flowers grow wild anywhere, these found themselves around the cement deck in the backyard.  Cement isn't really all that interesting to look at, so by shooting these flowers with a wide aperture, the cement in the background gets blurred, which draws more attention the flower while making what would be a rather drab background, look a little bit more interesting.  In order of appearance, the photographs you see were shot at f/4, 1/60sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  f/4, 1/50sec, ISO 100 at 60mm.  The third photo was shot using the same settings as the second, and the fourth photograph was taken at f/4, 1/800sec, ISO 400 at 50mm.  Those of  you still reading will have noticed that the final photo was taken at a different focal length than the previous three.  This was done because while the Macro lens does a great job of magnification, it doesn't work so well when you want to take a wide angled shot.  For the final photo, I also wanted to show some of the cluster of Daisies that were all growing together.  The Macro lens couldn't get the job done, but the wide angle worked great.  My Grammie was never big on computers, but I'd like to think that somewhere up in the sky she gets the chance to look down once in a while and sneak a peak at all of the photos that I've been sharing with all of you.  Maybe she's even letting the others up there know what I was thinking when I took the pictures they're looking at.