A Pause To Gather Thoughts

I have to get these thoughts out of my head and on here while they are there. Been sitting making a blog or two thinking about the way I go about getting the photographs. When we go on walks like we do I don"t really know what I am going to be taking photographs of. I recently started wondering, "Is this the right way to go about it?" I don't know. Some photographers have exactly what they want in their head before they even start. These people take the time collecting the gear and the help they need to get it. I watched a video of a photographer who tied up a whole city street creating a set just like a movie set and spent hours building the scene. For a photograph. It was actually quite cool. Don't think that's for me. I have planned shots but I think there was only one that I pictured in my mind and what I created was almost exactly it. It was the tank shot I put on here some time ago. I am actually quite proud of it. There is another one I had in my head but was going to be a lot of luck involved. It was the opposing Snowbirds.  I got the shot pretty much as I had hoped and am proud of that one too.

Please read further. 

If You Aren't In The Mood, Make The Mood

That title makes sense here, sort of. We were in this spot that had some wrought iron fence. I wanted make something out of the patterns. Not anything with any plan or meaning. This is one of the shots I left with. I liked this one the best of the ones I took here. When I put it up on the screen I thought about the opening scene of a mystery or some other kind of scarey movie. I sit here looking at it waiting for a hand to reach out and hang on to it or a person with a sinister face to come walking out of the blurry-ness. I really enjoy it for the mood it created.

 The 50mm at 1/2000th sec f1.7 iso 200

Rusty Old Things

This Piece of machinery is an old crane that would have been used when Granville Island was an industrial area. I've taken a few pictures of it since the 70's. Never anything that I wanted to show anyone. This time I got close. I do that now and for me it seems to work. That and this thing for shallow depth of field I have lately. It's a phase and I know it but I'm gonna keep at it for a while. I really like old rusty metal things and metal stamping. I actually tried this in b&w but came back to colour because this has a warmth that the b&w just didn't give it in this case. Anyhow, here it is. 

The 50mm 1/4000th sec (max for my camera, it was a bright day and I was shooting at...) f1.7 iso 200 Oh no wonder the shutter speed was that high, should have gone to 100.

A Merry Little Chase

This photo was one of the first of of quite a few shots of this little guy. Just after I got this one he realized I was a photographer and became very camera shy. So he kept turning and running away when I came around. So I have a lot of shots of a tiny little ladybug butt. I must have been quite the sight spinning around this yellow pole pointing my camera at the top of it. 

The 100mm Macro 1/600th sec at f2.8 iso 200

Chocolate!

Need I say more?

 This was with the 100mm macro 1/60th sec at f2.8 (widest for this lens) iso 200.  I would have never thought to saturate the colour brown. Makes sense though now that I've tried it and it seemed to work quite well.

Look A Little More For A Little Less

On Granville Island right under the Granville st Bridge is a small fishing boat that has been put high and dry on supports to advertise a restaurant there. Upon seeing it of course the first thought is "Wow! I have to get a picture of that." I to raise the camera to my eye and go click. Then looking at it I wonder "How many millions of shots like that have been taken?"  So I thought we aren't here (Yes my day with Dar and Rina) to take holiday pictures, we're here to do photography. Does that sound like photographer snobbery? Hope not. I figured I should try to come up with something a little different. One way to do that is to get close and try to be a little abstract. Here is what I came up with. 

 1/1000th sec at f1.7 iso 200. If you have been reading this blog you know I use f1.7 a lot. I am straying from f1.7 a bit more because although I really like that shallow depth of field you often need more. I use aperture priority pretty much all of the time however I do on occasion use manual and on even rarer occasions shutter priority. I use shutter priority when motion is the primary concern and I use manual for..... I don't know.. just the heck of it I guess.

A Very Calm Serious Mellow Quiet Weekend

For a couple days I did location photography for a group people who are very dedicated to their work. It was a very relaxing time with some pleasant conversation but not much excitement as people mostly quietly tended their tasks. One can only leave with a sense of well being knowing there are people in the world who can take themselves and their duties so seriously but yet can be so calm and courteous to their peers. 

My Little World

One of the things I like about this photo is the lack of reference to where it is. It lets you to enjoy the plant itself. While trying to think of things to say about it I realized I don't have a clue what it is. So here is today's lesson (for me anyhow).  If you take a photo of something it might be helpful to find out what it is. So when someone says "That's a real nice (insert name here). What type is it?" you don't have to say "Huh?". Where was it? On a shelf with a bunch of other plants and flowers. Probably had a big label on it saying what it was.

 The exposure was 1/160th sec at f1.7 iso 100. The lens of course is the 50mm. If you see f1.7 you know it's the 50mm. I don't have another lens that opens that wide.

This weekend I have been at the West Coast Women's Show helping out with photography at the booth for Westcoast Piercing & Ink Den. They do both piercings and tattoos at the show. I've been taking photo's of the procedures and the final results. It's been a great experience and I've met some really nice people. Here is Whitney (left) and Chase (right). They both had piercings done today. Whitney had hers done earlier and was there to give Chase support. Both had been quite nervous getting them done but barely flinched. I asked Chase if I could take a picture of her new piercing, she happened to be sitting on Whitney's knee at the time so this is what we got. 

  I was using the 50mm (of course) 1/30th sec f5.6 iso 200. I hand held my flash with the Lumiquest Softbox III angled up to a low white ceiling. The girls had been helping out at a cosmetic contact lens booth hence the unusually coloured eyes. Chase's are actually smiley faces.

Window Shopping

Window shopping can be fun even with a camera. I am learning you can find interesting subjects looking in the windows of shops. I spent a good 10 minutes with these bowls while we were at Granville Island. Some of the first photographs I took that day. I was off to a good start I think.

 

Shot using the 50mm  1/200th sec f2 iso 100

Nerds Rock!

Nicola seems to have come to trust me a bit more pointing a camera at her.  Once again it was a case of getting some when we had a few moments away from work. We met out front and I had her pose quickly right where we were. I shot in colour and converted to B&W. I hadn't originally thought of B&W but had some difficulty printing the colour one. My printer is quite capable with B&W so I thought I'd give it a try. I like it as much as, if not more than, the colour shot. I converted to B&W using a Photoshop Elements preset called "newspaper". I preferred it to the "portrait" preset. It pays to experiment.  I have another one I like from this set (well I like them all) which I will on another day post in colour.
About posing. I stood Nicola in front of this wall. She said "What should I do?" I said "I don't know, put your thumbs in your pockets". How could I know posing someone could be so easy?

 My trusty old 50mm at 1/1000th sec f1.7 iso 100

Hungry?

This photo was taken under tungsten light. I did a fair amount of processing on it. I first created 2 layers. Then I sharpened the lower layer and gave it more colour saturation. I went to the top layer and masked out the the raspberries so the sharpened and saturated ones showed through. I merged the layers and resized the image for the internet. My hope was to make the raspberries stand out a bit and make them more appealing. I hope I succeeded there. 
I should clarify something I was talking about in the blog from yestereday. I talked about switching back and forth. I meant the white balance on the camera. You should always make sure you check the white balance before you start shooting. Using AWB (Automatic White Balance) isn't the best route but I'll talk a bit about that another time.  Easy way to figure out which WB to use is hold your hand out and take a picture of it. If your hand is blue or some other sickly colour change the balance.

 The 50mm again 1/50th sec at f3.2 iso 100

In The Food

Went to Granville Island with Dar and Rina. We had a great day. Spent a lot of it in the Public Market so you'll be seeing a few food shots over the next few days amongst others. Some of the food was lit by tungsten light and some from sunlight. So we had to switch back and forth. It was nice we were all using RAW so if we slipped, one click fixes it. There are skylights in the building so as the sun moves across the sky new lighting situations present themselves throughout the day. Here is the first example nicely lit by a skylight.

I used the 50mm  1/500sec f4 iso 100

Another Opportunity

A while back I talked about Cathe's reluctance to have her photo taken. When I get the opportunity I make sure I act on it. When we were at the film shoot for the Fright Nights commercial I came around a corner and Cathe was standing there texting. I actually hadn't thought of a picture at this point but 2 ladies who were in the way noticed, said "excuse me" and got out of the way. The light bulb went on while Cathe stood and looked at me with that smile on her face. I acted fast and got a couple shots off before anyone changed their minds. You just have to take the opportunity when it presents itself. 

  Taken using the 50mm at 1/40th sec f1.7  iso 400

The Moon From Here A Second Look

When I saw this (or should I say when Dar pointed it out to me?) I thought of of the daytime moon photo I took and showed in a previous blog entry. The picture actually touches on another blog subject. Direct sunlight. I have always tried to avoid bright sunlight because I was told it isn't nice light. I guess that's true at times. It just works for some things. There were a couple more things I took to heart this day. If someone says, "look", do. I can't remember if this is what Dar was pointing out to me but it's what I saw. Make sure you do look up because you won't always have someone to point things out. Better yet, just keep your eyes open for opportunity but then if you're out with a camera, why wouldn't you?     

 I took this with the 100mm 1/2000th sec f5.6  iso 400

In The Night Time

Night photography presents different challenges and opportunities than photography during the day. Because of the long exposures involved you have to have a tripod.  This also helps you think more about the shot you want and plan it out.  Here I wanted to show the stars but still have the cabins part of the shot. I took 3 photographs at different exposures but only needed 2. In the photo where the stars are visible the windows in the cabins were blown right out. So beneath this layer I put another layer where the cabin windows were better exposed. I masked out the windows in the upper layer so they showed through. When I first saw the stars in this photo it made me think of the night shots in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". They were spectacular and was quite happy to see the Big Dipper here so clear.

I used the 17mm  30sec f3.5 iso 400

The Hipness

Are you hip to the tunes? Dig the music like the cool chick snappin' her fingers. She grooves to the sounds of the cat pluckin' the strings. Like, wow man....

 Took this with the 100mm at 1/125th sec f4 iso 100

The Monster Date

A while back I did stills photography for a film shoot at Vancouver Film School. It was a lot of fun. It was a real pleasure to watch these people work and learn from them. All the years of study and practice paid off.... Especially for this troll. The video was released today on youtube. See below for a link.

 Shot with the 50mm 1/60th sec f4 


Monster Date

Reaching To Great Heights

This is a bit of a interesting effect. The building isn't all that tall. I had to use a wide angle lens to get as much of the bottom in as I did. Wide angle makes a deep depth of field so the whole building was sharp. To create the effect here I started with 2 layers. I used a Gaussian Blur filter on the lower layer. I then masked the top area of the upper layer so the blur would show through. It creates a sense of distance in the photo making the building appear taller than it really is. This would be a photography for fun thing.   

 Taken with the 17mm 1/160th sec f11 iso 400

An Unfortunate Symbol

When Dar and I were in the DTES there seemed to be needles everywhere. Drug use is rampant there and it is evidenced by so many needles. We saw them being used, laying on the ground, stashed in little holes, one even stabbed into a telephone pole. I take photographs for the enjoyment of photography. I take them for fun, to try create art, and/or make a message. My hope is when you see my photo's you will get something from them. Sometimes it isn't pleasant or happy but if this photo tells you something, even if it bothers you a bit it worked for me. 

 I used the 50mm taken 1/160th sec f1.7 iso 100

I Love, Unsharpened Pictures

The unsharp mask does just the opposite of what it's called. I may have mentioned it before. I still haven't quite figured out the explanation for it but it works and I use it on pretty much every photograph I take or scan. Here are 2 different versions of the same photo. The only difference is the first one has no unsharp applied the second has the unsharp applied on the bell with the script and the bell above with the drawing. 

Taken with the 50mm at 1/200th sec f2.8 iso 200

It can be overdone so every picture is done individually. For instance here with the soft background I want to maintain that softness so it isn't sharpened at all. The same would apply to a photograph of a person. I want to Unsharpen their eyes and hair but not so much their skin. Unsharp is the very last thing I do before printing or uploading.

Awwwww

Sometimes they were just too cute for words. This is a pre-digital age photo of the kids. They could pull off stuff like this at the drop of a hat and melt their old Dad's heart. Believe it or not they can still be too cute for words.  Ha ha just kidding. They're teens now, of course they can't.

From a film scan no exposure info recorded. Some post scan processing done to soften a sharp background.

Autumn Light

This is Whiteman's Creek. It's in the Okanagan near where the family has had a place for over 40 years. I have crossed the bridge thousands of times in all seasons. Explored up and down the creek, caught fish in it, swam in it. Once 2 friends and I decided to ride a 2 man dinghy down the creek to the mouth during Spring runoff. We got about 5 feet before flipping over. The other 2 got out of the water but I ended up making it to the mouth, not quite in the manner planned. After floating down the creek over a log jam somehow, bouncing off rocks I was dragged out soaking wet, ice cold, and unable to stand.
On another trip I was lucky to be there on a bright sunny day when the leaves had turned but were still on the trees providing a beautiful golden light. It's probably starting to look like this about now.

  Taken with the 24-85 at 85mm 1/80th sec f10 iso 200

Meet Dar

I have mentioned my photo adventures with Dar a fair amount on this blog. We have enjoyed our days out and have been learning a lot from each other. So here is a photo of Dar finally. Taken in the graffiti filled tunnel at New Brighton Park.

I used the 50mm  shooting at 1/200th sec f1.7 iso 100.  Thanks Dar!

The Frightening

You really can hear laughter and screams. You round a corner and there's the roller coaster all lit up and running, and people. It looks like they are having fun, a lot of fun. Your sense of relief is almost tangible. You walk up amongst the crowd smiling, shaking off the disturbing mood you had before. Everyone is laughing and having a great time but as you make your way towards the coaster you feel something odd. What's that smell? You notice an edge of fear behind peoples laughter as they get off the ride. They don't leave but they don't look like they want to be there. You shrug and make your way to the coaster, it feels like everyone is watching you from the corner of their eyes. Like they want to look but are afraid to.  It's ok you convince yourself, one ride....... 

Are you ready for this?

 The 50mm at 1/20th sec f1.7 iso is 400. This was a bit of a grab shot so needed some tlc. Cropped a fair amount to remove some distraction. He needed to be sharper but the background kept soft. So made a copy layer. I sharpened the background (bottom) layer then masked him out of the top layer so the sharpened image of him showed through. Merged the 2 layers et voila!

The top picture is of the Roller Coaster sign at the gate of the wooden roller coaster in Playland.

Just a little note here, I did this as a fun little prequel to a commercial Jenn and Nick (Peter) were extras in. I had hoped to put a link to the commercial but it isn't out yet. I will once it is online. 





 

The Strange

As you wander and the night gets darker it just gets more bizarre. You are still alone. At least you think you are but you keep seeing out of the corner of your eye, movement in the shadows. It's still quiet but every once in a while you think you hear screams and, laughter. Something seems to fly at you but you realize you've just walked into a strange ornament hanging in the dark. You know you should leave, why haven't you? Where is everyone?

 50mm  1/250th sec at f1.7 iso 400

The Quiet

You walk around the empty fairground, not sure why you're there when no one else is. There is no sound except the occasional clinking of chains on a ride. There is a heaviness in the air, an expectant feeling. You know you should leave but for some reason you can't find the will to walk to a gate. Where is everyone?

 With the 50mm  1/4sec (very slow) at f1.7  iso 400

The Different Ways Of Seeing

When a Professional photographer goes out she/he expects to take lots and lots of photo's. It used to make me shudder to think of the cost of the film they would use. I had to pay for my film and always felt the need to conserve. Now, there's digital and you can take hundreds of photos rather cheaply. I have a new little saying now I use for my photo adventures, "If you see something worth taking one picture of, it's worth taking 20". Watching people take a picture of something then walking on makes me wonder if they're still in film mode conserving it. Here is a piece of a floating dock I spent a little time with and two different photos I got from it by trying different things. 

 Shot with the 50mm 1/4000th sec f2.8

 Shot with the 17mm 1/100th sec f13 iso 100 on both photos

Yes, But Is It Art?

 While we were at New Brighton Park we came across this wall. The ivy almost seemed to have been placed there on purpose. Actually maybe it was. It will be interesting to see if, first it is left there, and second, to see how it looks in a couple years, or ten. To who ever built this may think of it more as a weed to be got rid of. To me it's art, at least till, The Wall, comes tumblin' down. I couldn't resist. As soon as I saw this that tune got stuck in my head. 

This photograph was of course taken with the 50mm at 1/250sec at f1.7 (of course)

Let There Be Light - At The End Of The Tunnel

I'm such a card, I ought to be dealt with. On our lunch hour Dar and I went Down to New Brighton Park to see if we could get some photo's. We came across this tunnel full of graffiti. When I was taking this picture I thought of people who die and are brought back to life say they saw a bright light and were drawn toward it. I asked Dar to stand at the end so it might look like someone is waiting at the other end.  My hope is when I pass on and am walking towards the light, that I'm not being watched by large floppy eared pink and blue bunnies.

 Taken with the 17mm at 1/25th sec f3.5 iso 100

On Stand By

Just thought I'd take a little side trip here. Found a photo from my film days. A firefighting crew had come to visit my work and I just happened to be outside with my camera so took a little walk around it and got some photos. I don't think I have actually shown this to anyone even though I've always been quite happy with it. It scanned rather well too. With the scanner I have not all film scans look quite this good.

I don't have any exposure info for this one as it is film.