Sun Goes Boom

Dritvik Elephant Foot

2011-04-18T04:43:00.001-07:00

Dritvik Elephant Foot, a photo by Pantheroux on Flickr.

Here's an oldie, but a goodie. Taken on a black sand beach called Dritvik on the Snaefellnes peninsula in Iceland. These rocks were interesting in real life, but only came to life through the camera lens when I brought out the wide angle.

So far my experiment with posting photos to the blog from Flickr is working. The photos no longer appear in a public Picasa album, which is good. The downside - I think Flickr automatically crops the photos to square... so in some cases the composition is messed up (as with my gooseberries). I also have to log into the blog to tag the photos and reformat my text.

I have taken ~100 new photos in the past few weeks (some long exposures of Ottawa at night, and some shots on the Jack Pine Trail). Unfortunately, I can't upload them until my hard drive issues are fixed.

Five

2011-04-16T11:07:00.001-07:00

Five, a photo by Pantheroux on Flickr.

I have unfortunately just been afflicted by a hard drive crash. With frequent backups, I have only lost a handful of photos. Unfortunately the lost ones include some of my recent favorites like my long exposure gooseberry shots.

I go stir crazy over the winter. I hate cold weather and don't have much patience for ice and snow. Graem bought me some cut flowers to photograph, and while sitting in front of the computer munching gooseberries, it occurred to me that they might also make good photo subjects.

I wanted to take long exposures by candlelight, but it was harder than it looked. I wanted directional lighting, yet the falloff from candlelight is so abrupt that I had to bring the gooseberries so close to the candles I was worried about them catching fire...not to mention getting the candles in the frame. I ended up with 2 groups of 5 candles each, one off to camera left, and the other to the right of, slightly behind the gooseberries. I was pretty happy with some of my results. I still have the edited JPEGs, but unfortunately with the hard drive crash, my RAW images are lost.

Forgotten

2011-04-08T14:19:00.001-07:00

Forgotten, a photo by Pantheroux on Flickr.

This is currently the most viewed photo in my Flickr photostream. Taken in spring 2009 in Bents, SK with a Holga Toy Camera. The Holga is the perfect camera for photographing a ghost town. This is another test post... still learning how to post from Flickr to my blog.

Pantheroux's photostream

2011-04-08T14:14:00.001-07:00

Pantheroux's photostream on Flickr.

I haven't posted here recently. I haven't had a chance to take many photos, and I'm still going through a bit of angst trying to figure out the optimal method for displaying my photos.

In the interim, I have created a Flickr profile. I'm supposed to be able to post photos from Flickr to my blog, but it will take a bit of figuring out. This post is mainly an experiment.

2010-12-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

This shot was taken in Reykjavik at the harbour on one of our first 2 nights in Iceland. Believe it or not, it was taken near midnight. Nights are short in Iceland in late May. The building under construction is a concert hall/convention centre. I wish that the conferences I attend would be held in interesting places like Reykjavik!

2010-12-05T09:33:00.000-08:00

I decided to post an Iceland photo today, just to switch things up a bit. This photo was taken on the first day we left Reykjavik to drive around the island. We had all sorts of lofty plans for how far we would make it, and where we would spend the night. We ended up hiking in these hills less than 30 minutes outside of Reykjavik, and that took most of the day! It was stressful at the time, as I was worried about seeing everything in Iceland in our 2 short weeks. In retrospect, these unintended side journeys yielded some of the best photos and some of the best memories.

Waterfalls are everywhere in Iceland... We saw so many that it was impossible to keep track. This is only the second waterfall we saw on our journey (the first being at Thingvillir). I have a few photos of this waterfall, most of which didn't turn out. I didn't hit my waterfall photography stride until much later on in the trip. Most of the shots are taken with the 50mm lens and a neutral density filter, as I'm trying to capture the motion of the water. This one was taken with the wide angle lens, and it's the unique perspective that makes it an interesting shot.

2010-12-04T23:26:00.001-08:00

This is my favorite photo from our fall visit to Parliament. The clouds, the trees and the spires of the church all came together to make the scene interesting - not to mention some good light. This was another good use of the telephoto lens. I haven't had nearly as much opportunity to use it as I would like.

2010-12-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

This shot was taken in my backyard in early August. I don't see anything particularly special about it, but for some reason I liked it then, and I still consider it postworthy - if only because it reminds me of summer. I hope I have the chance to take some photos this weekend. I'll be heading to Saskatoon for a while, and I don't know if I'll bring the camera. It's tempting, since I'll have a few days free to roam around the old stomping grounds. On the other hand, I probably already have too many things that need to be taken as carry-on, and the weather forecast on the prairies doesn't seem conducive to photo walks. Maybe living out east has just turned me into a cold weather wimp.

2010-11-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

When I was just starting out with photography about 2.5 years ago, I read a magazine article where the author spent a whole summer photographing nothing but the brown-eyed susans in his yard. It seemed like a waste of a summer to me, but he did come up with some of the most interesting flower photos I have seen. More recently I have been reading posts on The Online Photographer blog where readers are challenged to spend a whole year using only one camera and one lens. These exercises are designed to enhance one's creative vision... When restricted to a single subject, one quickly becomes bored with all of the usual clichéd shots and starts to see the subject in new ways; a 'flower' becomes a hodge-podge compilation of parts that are interesting in their own right. Ditto with being restricted to one focal length.

I haven't undertaken anything that extreme, but this summer I did spend a couple of days photographing nothing but my geraniums. I got lots of boring shots, lots of shots spoiled by blur and bad light... and a few keepers. This is one.

2010-11-28T19:00:00.001-08:00

I honestly don't recall where this photo was taken. I know that it was taken in early September. We left town on a photo journey, but as usual ran into problems with there being nowhere to turn off of the highway. Also, every square inch of waterfront property seems to have someone's house or cottage plopped on it. I miss the desolate prairies sometimes!

Although I have no idea where this photo was taken geographically, I know that there was a bridge to the left of the frame. Directly across from me there were little kids playing in the water with homemade boats. I was a bit angry with myself - so many interesting things to take pictures of, but I was obsessed with getting a good shot of this tree. I tried a few different lenses before settling on the wide angle. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence, but the tree shot was the only one of the whole lot to turn out.

I still can't figure out how to reply directly to comments on Blogger, but someone asked me if I am thinking of making my own site to display my photos. The short answer to that is 'yes'. I spent most of yesterday looking at other photographers' sites and figuring out what I like and don't like. I guess that's a bit of a start. I've also gone way back and read this blog from beginning to end and realized that I do have a bit of attachment to it. I figure I will probably make a site to view the photos larger and uncluttered with text. I will leave a link to my blog, or maybe have a 'find out more about this photo' link which leads to more of a blog-like post, plus or minus camera settings. I'm not sure how many people will look at my site, but it will be an interesting diversion for those (too plentiful) days when the weather is too bad for photography.

2010-11-27T11:34:00.001-08:00

This photo was taken in mid October when we went to visit the Parliament buildings. I thought I would visit Parliament as soon as I moved to Ottawa, but it actually took me 1.5 years to get there! It's impossible to find parking there, and the grounds are always crowded - hard to take pictures without a thousand people in the frame, especially since the architecture lends itself so nicely to wide-angle photography.

I did manage to get a few good shots on this visit to Parliament, especially once the sun decided to come out. This shot was actually taken while standing on Parliament Hill and looking across the river. For this shot, I used my telephoto lens at 70mm focal length. I have another shot taken almost from the same vantage point with the wide angle. I think this one is much better. The telephoto is an amazing lens, but I haven't been able to find many occasions to use it. This is one instance where it really shone.

2010-11-26T16:20:00.000-08:00

Today I'm posting one of my favorite spring photos and one of my favorite fall photos... kind of a juxtaposition of 2 opposite seasons, I guess.

The tulip photo was taken at the botanical gardens in early May. The colors seem impossibly bright now, in the midst of winter gloom.

The leaf photo was taken in my backyard just a couple of weekends ago, before the weather turned nasty. Fall shadows have a magical quality sometimes. I tried all last fall to get photos of the fall leaves with shadows from adjacent leaves and branches superimposed. Every effort was a failure. This year things came together - I think mostly because I lucked into the very best kind of light. I have lots of good leaf and shadow pictures... it would be nice to post the whole lot of them somewhere as a collection.

2010-11-21T11:23:00.001-08:00

My mom recently moved to Sackville, New Brunswick, and I went to visit her there for the first time in mid October. The fall colours probably would have been more brilliant had I gone 2 weeks earlier, but there was still some bright foliage left for me to see. It rained most of the weekend I was there, but I did get some very good light. I like this particular shot because it was taken right after a heavy rain, and the leaves have that saturated, wet look. The desolation of the highway is also nice... Small town NB is very different from Ontario. This photo is a little underexposed, though, and the light is not stellar. It was still one of the 'keepers' from the trip, and one of my mom's favorites.

I often read about landscape photographers who don't even bother taking pictures if the light is not 'exactly' right. I always considered them to be kind of 'photography snobs'... There is a finite amount of time in life for photography... for most of us, not nearly enough! Why pass up an opportunity to take pictures just because the weather/light is not cooperating? Recently I've come to see their point of view, though... the New Brunswick trip is a case in point. I was half-heartedly clicking away at some trees beside the highway with the sky completely overcast and the sun obliterated. My subject matter was beautiful, but I knew that even if my shots were perfectly composed, I would end up with mediocre photos at best. Bad light makes for flat pictures, with little latitude for adjusting the contrast and colour saturation in post-processing. As I was standing there snapping, the sun came out, setting the foliage on fire and bringing out the colours in the ominous grey/blue clouds. I only fired off two pictures before my mom got worried about the time and we had to go home... but the difference between those two pictures and my 'cloudy' pictures is really night and day. I'll probably be posting those shots soon. Does this mean I'm becoming a photo snob?

2010-11-20T15:36:00.000-08:00

This is a photo taken in spring 2010 right before we left for Iceland. Ottawa has a tulip festival every spring. A friend was visiting at the time, and so was my brother-in-law. The three of us decided to check out the tulip festival. The timing of the festival is supposed to coincide with the tulips being in full glory... but everything was early this year - we had flowers in our yard the second week of March! By the time the festival rolled around, most of the tulips had seen better days. That's ok... I have lots of photos of tulips in full bloom, but some of the most interesting shots come from flowers that are starting to decay.

2010-11-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

This is my first post in a long time. Let's see if I remember how this works. This is a portrait of Tuk taken a couple of weeks ago. Tuk has matured into the most amazing cold weather cat. He's big and burly with a dense coat that would be the envy of any arctic explorer. As the weather gets colder, the other cats stay in and sleep more. Not Tuk. We think he's part Norwegian Forest Cat.

I have actually taken quite a few good cat portraits recently... some I might post later. I stayed up all night yesterday going through my photos from summer/fall 2010 and I have more than 60 ready for posting. I haven't had much time for photography lately, but I'm encouraged by the fact that some of my fall photos are the best I have ever taken. I will be posting them eventually... the only question is where.

Part of the reason I haven't posted is that I've become a bit disenchanted with my current options for displaying photos online. I made a Picasa album for my Iceland photos because I have lots of family and friends who wanted to view the photos without being bothered to sift through a blog. I realized a few things in doing this. First of all- storage on Picasa is limited. I had to severely scale down my Iceland photos in order to post them. Second, all of the photos I post on this blog are linked to a Picasa album... and therefore the same space limit applies. There is a finite number of photos I can post on this blog before running out of space. I calculated that ~2 years of daily posts would do it, assuming no other vacation albums were made. The Picasa album for my blog is also 'public' -- open for anyone to view. I didn't really want random people viewing the photos outside the context of the blog, so I tried to make the album private. That immediately made all of the photos on my blog unviewable... So the whole Picasa thing is messed up.

The blog is not the ideal vehicle for photography, either. The photos are small... enlarging them to fit the screen is sometimes problematic. They get lost in the text. There is no way to view a group of photos in isolation, view a slideshow, or view thumbnails.

Red Bubble is also problematic. I have good computer setup at home, but whenever I view the site at work, it takes an eon to load and sometimes freezes. The site layout looks horrible on the small screens at work. I imagine that this is probably how most people are viewing the site. The newest version of Red Bubble also removes control from the user over how photos are displayed... and again - no way to view a certain collection of photos or a slideshow. In some ways it's more like a self-congratulatory social networking site than a place to display art... and that can be grating.

There are other sites online that will display photos for a fee... Both Picasa and Flickr offer more storage space if you pay. My take on this is that if I am going to be paying for a site, I want to have complete control over it, with a site tailored to my specifications. None of the current photo-hosting sites I have seen can offer this.

I have been thinking that I still want to maintain a blog, but more for writing than for photos. The blog posts may occasionally contain photos, or focus on photography, but it won't necessarily be a photoblog. I think photoblogs are ideal for beginning photographers and people who are trying to encourage themselves to carry the camera more often or just to be more observant of the world around them. This worked for me at the beginning, but in some ways I think I've moved beyond that.

Graem asked me what I hope to 'achieve' with my photography. The short answer is that I don't know. I'm not very achievement-oriented (ie. I tend to waste a lot of time). Do I want to sell my photos? Not necessarily. It is always nice to sell a piece, but unless I become some kind of personal photographer for the stars, my photography earnings will never eclipse my day job - a sad fact I have come to terms with. When I started this blog, my intention was to share the beautiful and interesting things I discover with other people who might appreciate them... and I think this is still my goal.

The thing about dedicated photo sites with full-screen photos, slideshows, and limited text is that they tend to belong to 'pro' photographers or very talented amateurs. One of the things holding me back is that I'm not sure my photography is strong enough to stand on its own. I spent a long time last night going through my best photos from the past 3 years and asking myself that question... "Can this photo stand on its own and tell its own story?" The short answer: Some of them can... and I hope that in the future that percentage will be higher.

As I mentioned, I have more than 60 photos in the queue to be posted, so I'll try to keep posting here and on Red Bubble for now. In the next few months, I hope to come up with a completely different way of exhibiting my photos. Maybe it will be better.

2010-08-09T09:51:00.001-07:00

A second post today, just to make up for my recent negligence. The Iceland photos seem kind of stale, and it seems lazy on my part to be posting them. Nonetheless, there were some amazing things there that I haven't yet shared on this blog.

This is a photo from Jokulsarlon (Glacier Lagoon). Pieces of a larger glacier (known as 'calves') break off and float in the lake. The colors are amazing (I expect they would be even better in good light). One thing that you don't get in a photo is sound. The creaking and groaning of the ice was amazing... and frankly a little bit creepy when the tourists went away and everything else was silent.

Jokulsarlon is a major tourist attraction, and boats even run out onto the lagoon at regular intervals. We stayed away from the tourist lookout. In fact, we found another glacier lagoon nearby which was very similar to Jokulsarlon but less popular with tourists. This photo might have actually been taken there, although it's impossible for me to remember now.

2010-08-09T09:21:00.001-07:00

I haven't been keeping my promise to post more often. There are a few reasons for that, I guess. The Iceland trip really spoiled me for good photo subjects. For 2 weeks, I was surrounded with some of the most interesting photo fodder in the world. Since I've been back, everything else seems mundane. Whenever I go out into the yard with the camera, I find myself staring right into the neighbors' faces and beating a quick retreat back inside. Even when work gives me a chance to venture further afield, there don't seem to be many photo opportunities around here... There are lots of lakes and such showing on the map, but when you actually attempt to visit them, there isn't any access and everything is private property -- all built up with people's cottages. There have been a few frustrating photo journeys this summer where we drove for several hours only to return with a couple of half-hearted snapshots.

We bought a canoe, and this weekend we went camping at a nearby lake where we actually did find access (although we risked life, limb and new truck to get there). I thought I would get a lot of good photos, but I didn't find anything there very inspiring. I only saw water and trees without enough contrast to separate them, and a fairly boring sky. Graem took quite a few photos (which we haven't looked at yet), so maybe it's just me.

I have been reading this book by Ansel Adams, as well as his other books: The Camera, The Print and The Negative. In the first book, he mentions that when he visited Hawaii, he was not in the least bit inspired to take any photos, despite the fact that the scenery was beautiful. Ditto with the first time he visited New Mexico, although he would go on to take many of his most recognized photos there. Not that I can compare myself to Ansel Adams, but it's good to know that even famous photographers lack inspiration at times. Actually, I have been amazed to learn that Ansel had many of the same concerns with photography as I do: blown out skies, underexposed foreground, amazing subjects that simply cannot be framed effectively. 80 years later and with digital-everything, photography hasn't changed very much at its core. I'd strongly recommend this series of Adams' books to anyone with an interest in photography.

Here's a photo taken at the botanical gardens in the spring, before the Iceland trip when my enthusiasm was fresh. I may wander over there in the next couple of days to try and get some of that enthusiasm back... Yes, it's kind of boring to always visit the same place, but the flowers are always changing and I'm guaranteed to get a few good shots.

2010-07-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite photos from Iceland. The central hill looks like it's jutting into the sky like a crown. Like so many of my Iceland photos, I have no idea where it was taken. I imagine it was somewhere on the Snaefellsness Peninsula, as it is preceded by photos of the glacier and followed by photos of a beautiful beach called Dritvik. Google Maps does not know where Dritvik is, but I seem to recall it being somewhere on the Snaefellsness Peninsula as the glacier can be seen in the background of some of my shots.

2010-07-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

These photos were taken at the Krafla geothermal area in northern Iceland. We stayed at Myvatn for a couple of days. Vatn means lake... so to refer to "Lake Myvatn" is really a redundancy, as is the term "Snaefellsjokull glacier"... as jokull means glacier. Myvatn actually translates to "Midge Lake", which proved to be fairly accurate, as there were little black flies everywhere. The flies didn't bite, but many perfectly good photos were ruined by swarms of them in the foreground.

There was so much to do at Myvatn that we worried about packing it all into 2 days. We ended up visiting the Krafla geothermal area at night. The sun never set in northern Iceland while we were there, so photography was actually possible between midnight and 2am... and that's when these photos were taken!

I think it was a mixed blessing to go at that time. There were no other tourists at a place that would have ordinarily been quite busy. This is a huge bonus. The desolation and time of day made everything far more surreal. There were a few downsides, though... Just because light was present doesn't mean the light was good. My camera can take acceptable shots at ISO 6400, but the best shots will always be the ones taken in good light. These could have been spectacular photos, but as it is they are kind of flat and grainy. By the end of the trip I was so exhausted and cold that I was knowingly sloppy with my photography. I didn't bother to swap out my wide angle lens for faraway subjects, and I fired off snapshots without thinking much about the camera settings.

There is a geothermal power plant at Krafla which looks kind of like a space station. At the power station is a vent which releases pressure and steam from deep underground into the sky. This steam can be seen in both of these photos as a giant plume rising into the sky. Sound can't be reproduced in a photo, but this vent made quite a roar. It was almost deafening. We couldn't hear each other talking, and at one point I wished for earplugs. The roar was loudest right near the vent, but could be heard throughout the whole geothermal area. It added to the surreal quality of the experience... Imagine picking your way through a deserted alien landscape at 2am with the howl of the steam vent reverberating in your mind.

We visited the Viti crater (seen here), and then explored some nearby lava fields with yet more natural geothermal vents. We had to wade our way through a field of mud and soupy melting snow before reaching the lava fields. Once there, there was a nice boardwalk for tourists to walk on, with dire warnings not to step in the boiling mud. Graem thought it odd that there would be a boardwalk in Iceland given the relative lack of wood. Maybe they ran out of wood, given that the nice safe boardwalk ended abruptly right around the time there were gaping chasms in the lava to be traversed. All of my photos from this leg of the journey were rather flat and underexposed.

The second photo is of the power plant and was taken on the way back to the hotel in Myvatn. By that time (about 2am), the sky was starting to get noticeably lighter! The lagoon in the foreground was bright, bright blue in real life.

2010-07-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken at Hofn in southeastern Iceland. We were in Iceland from May 24-June 6. May is considered the "shoulder season" - there are a few tourists, but not too many. We didn't pre-book any of our hotels, and didn't have problems finding a place to stay. It was common for the highway to be empty in both directions as far as the eye could see. Come June 1st, the high season begins. We happened to see the ferry come in from Denmark on June 1st, and caravan after caravan came spilling out onto the road with license plates as diverse as UK, Romania, Germany and Spain. This also meant a huge increase in hotel prices. When the Hotel Hofn wanted to charge us 30% more than we had been paying elsewhere, we thought it was just a part of the seasonal increase. The room was ok, but nothing special.

We went out in the evening to look at the ocean. The water was perfectly still, and the sky (at times) was almost the same color as the water. I fooled around trying to take some long exposures by resting the camera on a park bench as I was too lazy to walk back to the hotel and get the tripod. None of them turned out. The best shot ended up being this rather simple composition with a normal-length exposure and interesting clouds.

The Hotel Hofn advertised breakfast from 7am-10am. By my way of thinking, this should mean that a person could show up in the dining room at 10am and eat. By Graem's way of thinking, it means that everyone should be finished eating and ready to clear the dining room by 10am. In either case, we went for breakfast at 9:40 (plenty of time to grab a piece of toast from the buffet and a cup of coffee), only to find that the dining room was locked and breakfast had been put away. I was fuming about the scathing review I was going to write for the Hotel Hofn online, and Graem was insisting that it was actually our fault for being 'late'. When we checked out, they apologized for putting the breakfast away early and deducted 6500 kronur from our bill, making the hotel only slightly more expensive than what we were used to paying (for hotels that included breakfast). I made a mental note to increase the hotel's rating from 1 star to 2 in my review.

I intend to review all of our Iceland hotels, though haven't gotten around to it yet... the pain of being home from Iceland is still too strong for me to think about the trip objectively in the past tense. All of my reviews will be glowingly positive or neutral, except for the Hotel Hofn. If I return to Hofn, I'll probably stay in one of the two guesthouses there rather than the hotel. I know nothing about the guesthouses, but I figure it would be worth the gamble.

2010-07-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

I've been really bad at posting here lately. Hopefully I can change that. This is one of my favorite Iceland photos... though I spent most of the trip trying to capture it. Farms and houses in rural Iceland are distributed seemingly at random. The explanation I read for this was that when the Vikings settled Iceland, there were no natives there, and therefore no need to guard against enemies. People simply settled wherever they wanted to - usually in the most beautiful places and places that afforded some natural protection from the elements.

I wanted to capture a particular sort of bucolic scene with sheep grazing in the foreground, red-roofed white farmhouses, and something quintessentially Icelandic in the background. It was more difficult to take this picture than I imagined it would be. Many of my attempts are marred by power lines, fences and boring or blown-out skies. Most of these shots were taken from the car window as we were driving by. The sheep and houses were sometimes so far away they looked like specks. Motion blur was also a problem.

This is my best Icelandic farm scene photo. I have my sheep and my farmhouses. The mountain in the background is unmistakably Icelandic, and I have some beautiful ominous clouds! I didn't touch the colors in post-processing. Much of southern Iceland is green in the spring, and when the sun shines, this green is very, very bright.

2010-06-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

These photos were taken in Reykjavik on our first day in Iceland. There is a lake called Tjornin in the middle of Reykjavik where people gather to feed the birds. Consequently, the lake is filled with ducks and gulls. When I took these photos, I was basically just playing around with my relatively new telephoto lens. It was early afternoon and we still had a bit of time to kill before checking into our hotel at 2pm. We had flown all night, wandered around Reykjavik all morning like vagabonds, and I was fairly exhausted by the time we reached Tjornin.

This was the ideal place for taking bird photos - the people were occupied with throwing bread to the birds, and the birds were occupied with eating this bread... I could basically just snap away, unobserved. Later in the trip, we visited a conservation area that was supposed to have 13 species of duck. I was excited, but I saw only 1 or 2 species... from a VERY great distance. I took a few photos, but none worth posting (or really even looking at twice). Little did I know that my best duck photos had already been taken in Reykjavik.

I love the colors in the photo of the buildings around the lake. I didn't touch the colors in post-processing. What you see here is what I saw through the viewfinder (with the exception that the horizon is straight). This was one of my first times using a polarizing filter, and I like the effect on the colors and the sky.

One of my colleagues was mocking my duck photos... He said that he can't believe someone would go to Iceland to photograph mallards, and that the duck photos probably cause me to lose most of the audience for my web album early on. Be that as it may, this photo of a duck splashing is the most viewed photo in my Iceland web album thus far... Somebody must find it at least worth clicking on.

2010-06-20T12:04:00.001-07:00

The Iceland photos are finally posted! Sorting them and getting them ready has required nearly 2 weeks of nonstop work... hence no regular posts here. I still plan to post some of the better ones here in the coming days. In the meantime, here is a link to the Picassa web album.

The photo posted today is of Gulfoss. There are many waterfalls in Iceland. Some are heavily visited tourist attractions, and some are just found in the hills or at the side of the road. Gulfoss is one of the better known tourist attractions in Iceland. I honestly thought none of my photos there would turn out. It was hard to compose a shot without getting a bunch of people in the frame. It was a windy day, and I was pretty much soaked with the spray from the waterfall. I thought I would have water drops all over the camera lens. Nonetheless, I was blessed with a rainbow and amazing light. The lens stayed dry long enough to fire off (literally) a couple of good shots.

2010-06-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

I worked on the Iceland photos this weekend pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. I have about 90 ready for posting (of an estimated 400-500). I have pretty much decided to put them in a web album. I'll send out a link after I have all of the photos in the album. Quite a few people have been asking about the Iceland photos who would just want to view them all at once, without being bothered by text or scrolling through a blog. Also... 500 photos represents about a year's worth of blog-fodder. Much as I loved Iceland, I'm sure I'll want to post photos of something else this year! What I will be doing is posting the best photos to the blog, as well as those that have interesting stories behind them.

Here's the first.

This is a photo of Snaefellsjokull glacier (jokull means glacier in Icelandic). It was taken on the fourth day of our vacation. At this point in the trip, I was very stressed out about our slow progress. I had been reading about Iceland on the internet and in our travel handbook. I had seen a few 2-week itineraries created by other people which basically involved touring the Golden Circle (Thingvillir, Geysir and Gulfoss) on the first afternoon, then taking in the Snaefellsjokull glacier/peninsula on the second day. Well... We received our rental jeep very late on the second day, then got cranky, hungry and lost wandering around Thingvillir... never mind Geysir and Gulfoss! On the second day, we got sidetracked hiking up a mountain barely 30 minutes outside of Reykjavik... we never even saw the Snaefellsjokull glacier, let alone the whole peninsula! I had identified things that I wanted to see throughout the island, and already we were so far behind in our itinerary. It was at this point we decided we were going to have to skip the Westfjords!

Iceland is pretty much taken over by tourists during the high season. If you're researching a trip there, you'll read about all of these things that you must see (Blue Lagoon, Golden Circle, etc). To be honest, my favorite parts of the trip (as a photographer and as a curious traveller) were those that fell off the beaten path a bit... those that we stumbled on accidentally. Yes... the highly publicized and well-toured waterfalls are amazing... but some of the waterfalls we found beside remote gravel roads were equally spectacular... and I could play around with my camera as much as I wanted to without worrying about other tourists. Yes... the geysir is worth seeing... but photographing the geysir surrounded by 50 tourists and a rope fence reminded me of photographing a lion in a zoo cage - not very exciting and frankly kind of sad.

Iceland has some beautiful paved highways. They have secondary highways which are well-maintained gravel roads, as well as rougher roads into the interior, designated "F-roads". The F-roads only open in mid-summer, once all of the melting is finished. In order to travel on F-roads, a 4X4 is required. We tried to rent one and were given a Toyota RAV 4 - as one of my coworkers put it, the soccer mom's 4X4. We took a little dirt and gravel road to Snaefellsjokull. At the road's origin from the highway, there was a sign saying, "Impassable". Being used to wimpy Canadian road signage, we scoffed at this and proceeded to take the impassable road. We hadn't yet learned that Icelanders don't mess around with road signs. If they say a bend in the road should be taken at 30km/h, that is probably a good suggestion. If they say a road is impassable, you might, for example, find yourself driving right up to a glacier - sheer snow and ice with no traversable path. This is what happened to us.

Looking through my photos, I must have been having some sort of brain malfunction when I chose my camera settings to photograph the glacier. Nonetheless, the light was good enough that day to make up for my ineptness. The Snaefellsjokull photos are among the best I've taken so far. Look forward to seeing more when I get the web album up.

2010-06-12T22:07:00.001-07:00

Drumroll, please! The first of the Iceland pictures is here! Actually, you might find it rather anticlimactic. This is a photo taken from our first day in Reykjavik. We landed at Keflavik International Airport at 6:25am, which was 2:25am Ontario time. We took the Flybus into Reykjavik. We couldn't check into our hotel until 2pm, but thought we might at least drop the luggage off. The Flybus took us to a central bus station where a helpful employee told us that the public transit would take us to within a block of our hotel. The bus schedule told us to expect a bus every half hour, except for Sundays and holidays. We started to suspect that it might be a holiday when no buses came after nearly an hour of waiting. Google later confirmed this suspicion - May 24 is indeed an Icelandic public holiday. Armed with a map, we endeavoured to walk to the hotel. This photo was taken whilst we wandered the streets of Reykjavik in the early morning hours. It was sunny and a balmy 20 degrees. My sleep-deprived grogginess and annoyance at having to walk so far while carrying luggage was wiped away by avid curiosity about the city. We pretty much had the streets to ourselves at that hour on a holiday!

I took this photo because I loved the bright colors and the way the street signs lined up with the houses. The green car makes things perfect. I thought this would be an easy photo to post first since it required very little post-processing. It actually took me quite a while to get my horizon straight. I don't have Graem here to be my horizon police, and I'm not good at judging these things for myself. In this shot, a crooked horizon would be especially bothersome given all of the right angles and straight lines!

Reykjavik is a very interesting city. I found myself comparing it to Halifax, Vancouver and San Francisco, but it really is an entity of its own. It is definitely a 'big city', despite the fact that the permanent population is only about 120,000. There are lots of trendy and expensive restaurants and shops. At the same time, I never felt a sense of big city caginess or isolation. I was comfortable (and perhaps foolish) enough to leave my camera equipment in plain view unattended in our rental jeep.

I loved the Icelandic street signs. I wish I had taken more photos of them. The signs were always colorful, and for the most part very precise. One sign, for example, warned us that there was a 10% grade in the road coming up over the next 0.2 to 0.8km! Precision was mixed with total ambiguity. You can see 2 signs in this picture of a blue circle crossed out with a red line... What could that mean? We spent our whole vacation guessing what "No Blue" might mean. Graem even had a dream about it. It wasn't until we pulled into the airport on the last day that I figured out it must mean "No Parking". There were a couple of other colorful but ambiguous signs whose meanings still elude us.

I'm not really sure what to do with the Iceland photos. I'm going through them and still haven't seen them all. I'm tagging the best ones to go back to and consider for posting. I'm running into the problem of deciding which photos to post and where. So far, I have only identified about 20 really great photos. The problem is that they tend to be from the same day and/or the same location. If I only post the cream of the crop, I'll leave the misguided impression that Iceland = 2 waterfalls and 1 glacier. I certainly don't want to do that. The second tier of photos ranges from 'nice but not stellar' to 'mediocre, might have been taken with an iPhone'. Sometimes the light is terrible, I'm not on the ball as a photographer, or I can't get a clear shot at something without fences, powerlines or billions of other tourists in the way. I still want photos to help me remember these things. People who haven't been to Iceland might still find these photos interesting even if they aren't spectacular.

Red Bubble is for "art" photos - that is a no brainer. I'll post my technically best shots there, as well as some abstract ones. I'll cross-post the very best photos to this blog. The tier 2 photos are problematic in that there are so many of them. I think I'll have upwards of 500 photos to post when all is said and done. A good number will be posted on this blog, I think... but I may set up a Picassa album or Flickr account or somesuch for the rest.

A few of my coworkers have been bothering me to make a travel blog. These are the same people who told me I was crazy to want to go to Iceland in the first place. I don't know about that.. Making a blog is a lot of work. It would give me a venue to talk about things that aren't necessarily documented in my photos - Icelandic people and culture, the food, our hotels, the time that we stumbled on an '80s glam rock party while looking for a place to eat lunch...

I'll ruminate on it a bit, and I'd appreciate any suggestions. Right now I'm too tired to think.

2010-06-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

I photographed these lilacs at the botanical garden shortly before leaving for Iceland. I have always associated the lilacs blooming with my birthday, because that's exactly when they would bloom when I was a kid growing up in Calgary. In reality, I haven't seen the lilacs bloom on my birthday in more than a decade now. In Edmonton and Saskatoon, they bloom later. In Ottawa this year, they were pretty much done blooming by the time my birthday rolled around. There were lilacs in full bloom when I visited the botanical garden, but I preferred these buds... to me they looked like little fists just ready to burst open and convert their potential energy into scent.

I just got back from a fabulous photography trip to Iceland, so you probably wonder why I'm posting a photo of some (very Canadian) lilacs. The answer is quite simple... I'm finding my Iceland photos overwhelming.

I took more than 3000 photos in Iceland. Tonight I sat down to look at them for the first time. It took forever for my photo management program to load them, and I would say I have probably viewed ~75% of them now... but nothing more than a cursory flip.

I'm in the sort of mood today where I hate all of my photos and I'm quite disappointed in how they turned out. I have a lot of dust on my sensor that will have to be edited out of most pictures. Iceland is a dusty place, and I wasn't as careful as I should have been with swapping lenses. Many of my wide-angle shots are marred by lens flare. I was a lazy photographer too... I left filters on when I should have removed them, left the tripod in the car when I should have used it, and I didn't start bracketing my shots routinely until fairly late in the trip... so blown-out skies, underexposed rocks and blurry waterfalls are common. All of my Reykjavik pictures are lousy, save for some remarkably sharp duck and seagull photos that I might have taken anywhere, and a photo of a residential street I took merely because I loved the symmetry between the houses and the street signs.

Part of this was due to laziness and my general apathy towards life these days (as well as relative inexperience as a landscape photographer). Part was due to the hectic nature of the trip, and the mobs of other tourists. In order to do this right, I needed much more time to wait for the right light conditions, concentrate on my composition, exposure, etc. We spent the whole 2 weeks frantically rushing around the island, and still didn't begin to scratch the surface of all there is to see. I needed to be more like Ansel Adams hiking around Yosemite surrounded by beautiful vistas with only 8 plates to expose. Only 8 plates... better choose your exposures wisely. I think that's what I need to work on in my photography now... take some trips and concentrate on quality over quantity. It's tempting to click the shutter a thousand times when I have so little time for photography, but I think that the only way for me to improve from here is to slow down a bit.

If all of this sounds depressing, it isn't necessarily. I'm often in a mood to hate all of my photos. I look at them later and feel differently. I go through similar phases where I think they are all amazing, and post a bunch. I come back a bit later and wonder what the hell I was thinking, embarrassed to have posted such shite. Chances are that I'll be more optimistic when I view these photos later on.

I have 3 days off this weekend with nothing much to do, so look forward to the first Iceland photos starting to trickle through. Graem uses every lame excuse he can think of to leave here and stay away as long as possible. Lo and behold, he has thought of another one already! I'm exactly where I was before the Iceland trip: lonely and slogging through my non-life, willing it to be over one day at a time.

I had previously eluded to my analogy between drycleaning and vacations. Drycleaning was magical to me when I was a kid... an item of clothing too fancy or too dirty to be cleaned by any conventional means was sent away and presto! It came back clean without even getting wet! Later I began to notice that the stains were never actually removed from the clothing... they weren't even really diminished. You might think that we used a lousy drycleaner, but I have noticed the same thing with every drycleaner I have patronized since. I developed a theory that drycleaners don't actually do anything to the clothes besides press them, repackage them, and give you the expectation that they are cleaner. Clothes that have sat in the closet for 2 years are rediscovered. You can go out for dinner somewhere fancy, look professional for a job interview, and just generally tackle life with a new perspective and renewed sense of confidence! And to think... it's all a nifty placebo effect!

Vacations are the same, if a bit more expensive than drycleaning. Going on vacation doesn't change your life in any way... it's still as lousy or as wonderful, as boring or as stressful as it ever was when you get back. Vacations take you out of the loop for a bit, though... and while you're gone, life is repackaged like a pair of wool dress pants so that you can see things from a bit of an outsider's perspective when you return.

We tried a new drycleaner shortly before we went to Iceland. They affixed yellow tags to the clothing, drawing attention to the stains: "ink stain on front pocket", "sleeves", "hair stain on collar" (what is a hair stain?). The stains were (of course) all still there when we got the clothing back... but this time, we had nice bright yellow tags to point out stains that we hadn't even noticed before! I can't help but feel that I'm being cruelly mocked by my own analogy.

2010-05-18T21:01:00.001-07:00

Here's another tulip shot from the botanical gardens. Not much to say today... just getting through the few remaining days until vacation. Who knew time could move so slowly?

2010-05-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

I took a quite a few shots of these little blue flowers. Most of them were marred by the two Bs: blurriness and boringness. Here I was lucky enough to get one flower in crisp focus against a foliage background that was somewhat complementary.

I call this photo "Feeling Blue". It's an aptly named photo to be posting today. I find myself slogging through all of the mundaneness and garbage that remains to be done before the trip to Iceland... and I know that when I return, all of the mundaneness and garbage will still be here waiting for me. Ho hum. I developed a theory a while ago that drycleaners don't actually do anything with clothes besides press them and wrap them in a sheath of flimsy, rustling, child-suffocating cellophane. When you pick your clothes up, they aren't any cleaner, but you feel better about them somehow... Vacations are probably similar in a lot of ways.

2010-05-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

I took many photos of these yellow flowers last weekend. Partly it was because these were the first flowers I saw upon arriving at the botanical gardens... and hence the first flowers I have photographed in spring 2010. Partly it was because I liked the way the sun was shining through the petals... but I'm afraid I mostly took these shots out of stubbornness, pure and plain... the wind was whipping the flowers around, and I was determined to get a non-blurry shot. I ended up with a couple of keepers.

2010-05-09T18:21:00.001-07:00

This is one of my favorite photos taken at the botanical gardens last weekend. I had beautiful light while I was photographing these daffodils, and I thought I would have some interesting shots. Strangely, most of them turned out looking very 'blah'. Some were blurry (likely due to wind), and some just looked very flat, despite the good light. This is one of the only daffodil shots to turn out. It looks as though the flower in the front is posing for a portrait!

2010-05-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

This is my first post in a long time. Jackie died on March 8, and I pretty much lost interest in everything, including photography and living. I also got a new computer and had to switch my photos over to the new hard drive. I have to say I'm enjoying the new system. Editing my photos is amazingly fast. I had been using a laptop with a small screen that was starting to burn out and gave everything a pink hue. I now have 2 gigantic flatscreen monitors (soon to be 3). It's great to see my photos so big, in such detail... and the color is amazing. On the downside, the bigger better screens allow me to see the flaws better. My sensor needs a good cleaning... and some of the photos that had been my favorites are embarrassingly blurry. Graem has pointed out some crooked horizons, but I'm still not able to see them as crooked. That's always been one of my biggest challenges as a photographer - getting my horizons straight.

I'm trying to get my life back in order, and I hoped to spend the last 2 weekends taking pictures. It didn't happen... Work is conspiring to wreck what remains of my life, and then last Saturday I got my compact flash card stuck in the card reader, and spent the day journeying across the city to buy a new one. I lost about 400 photos from the past 3 months, including photos from the final days of Jackie's life. This weekend has been a write-off... cold and rainy. In fact, the weather forecast tells me it's snowing now, though I don't dare to look out the window.

I did make it to the botanical gardens last Sunday, though. I got some decent tulip shots, despite the wind. I don't even think the tulips were blooming yet in Saskatoon last year at this time. Here in Ottawa, there were crocuses and daffodils blooming as early as March 18. Prairie homesickness be damned, I say! I'll try to be better about updating regularly. I don't have much time to take new photos, but I have a bunch saved from the botanical garden. May 23-June 6 we'll be vacationing in Iceland... and that should bring an entirely new breed of photography!

2010-02-28T12:10:00.001-08:00

This shot was taken near the Rideau River. It's yet another photo that illustrates my recent love affair with the wide-angle lens. If you asked me last spring what my favorite lens was, it would be hands-down the macro. Now it would be my precious 14-24mm zoom. Each lens has a particular situation and subject matter where it shines (even the Lensbaby). I can't wait to track down some birds and wildlife to give my telephoto a real workout!

2010-02-27T10:58:00.001-08:00

This is another photo from Hog's Back. Lately I've been letting the random number generator decide what I post. Today is an exception. For some reason, I wasn't happy with anything it chose, even after 5 or 6 clicks. I decided to just go ahead and post this shot. For some reason, I was infatuated with the purple shimmer of the water behind these trees and took about a million shots trying to get it right. This one was taken with my 50mm lens. I have another one taken with my telephoto, which I thought better at the time. I can't remember why I deemed that one 'unpostable'.

The random number generator doesn't have much to choose from these days... No new shots in a while. I have a few ideas for indoor photo sessions with my flash and/or candlelight. I feel like I'm in limbo right now; waiting for Jackie to get better (or not), waiting for spring to come... It feels like both are just around the corner and that I should just hunker down, hold my breath and wait. Not the best approach, I know.

2010-02-25T18:48:00.000-08:00

When Graem and I visited the Rideau River, we walked right across the frozen water at one point. That sort of thing always makes me nervous, even if there are tire tracks on the ice indicating that someone drove a vehicle that was (presumably) much heavier than me across safely... Maybe they just weakened the structural integrity of the ice!

We made it across safely and alive, and I even took time to gingerly crouch and examine this swirled bit of ice. When we lived in Edmonton, there was a glass shop nearby where we would always stop to admire (and occasionally buy) expensive glass bowls and sculptures that we couldn't really afford. This ice reminds me of one of those sculptures.

2010-02-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

This is another ice-and-water abstract taken at the Rideau River. I like the contrast between the still ice and the moving water. The chunks of ice had been formed into interesting shapes by the splashing water.

An inhumane work schedule and a sick cat have eaten up my time, and even most of my interest in taking new photos this week. We can always hope for better in the days to come.

2010-02-23T19:18:00.001-08:00

This macro shot was taken near the Rideau River. As with my last ice/snow abstract, I found that monochrome conversion helped to accentuate the texture of the ice. Ice and snow make nice macro subjects, but I can't wait for spring to have something a wee bit greener in front of my lens.

2010-02-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

Here's another shot taken at Hog's Back Park near sunset. It would have been a rather mundane shot, if not for the shaft of sunlight shining through the trees and reflected on the snow. I adjusted the levels a bit to try to accentuate the light on the snow.

2010-02-19T17:04:00.000-08:00

Here is one of many ice abstracts taken at Hog's Back Park. I think (hope?) that my composition is improving for landscape shots and for things like flowers that I photograph all the time. Where I've noticed my composition lacking lately is in this type of abstract shot. I always get excited about things that look cool through the macro lens (lichens, rocks, icicles), and I happily snap away expecting masterpieces. When I review my photos later, I'm always disappointed. Yes, the subjects are interesting, but the photos are a visual cacophony with no real focal point. These ice abstracts are decent shots, but I know of some photographers who could have made them far more interesting. In this particular shot, the monochrome conversion really helped bring out the texture in the snow, even though it was essentially a black and white photo to begin with.

2010-02-14T19:30:00.001-08:00

This is one of many shots I took by the Rideau river last weekend. Most of my photos from that trip are macros of water, rocks and ice. This is one of my favorites. I'm in love with my wide-angle lens these days. I'm also rereading a book about Ansel Adams which has me infatuated with epic landscapes and sweeping skies. I wish I had more opportunity for landscape photography myself. What I like best about this photo, however, is that it has a distinct "spring on the prairies" feel, rather than a "winter in Ontario" feel.

2010-02-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

I have taken a few photos over the last couple of weeks, but didn't have time to look through them and edit them until today. This is turning into a monthly photo blog, rather than a daily one!

These photos were taken at Hog's Back Park in Ottawa. The park features a small waterfall and some rocky cliffs which are turned into dramatic ice-scapes at this time of year. I thought that "Hog's Back" was an odd name for a park. I guess the name refers to the big rocks jutting out of the Earth. To quote a sign found at the park:

These rocks, sandstones and limestones were formed at the bottom of a shallow sea which covered this region in Ordovician time some 400 million years ago. Note the ripple marks formed by the ancient waves. Later the region was uplifted and the strata here were folded and broken. A major break or fault can be seen here at low water just below the East end of the bridge. The present course of the river over these rocks was established at a still much later date.

That explains the geological features of the Hog's Back. Whoever was responsible for the man-made features did not have photographers in mind. The whole park is surrounded by an ugly black fence. I spent a lot of time trying to keep the fence out of my shots. Most of my wide-angle photos of the waterfall were marred either by the fence itself, or the shadow of the fence creeping into the frame. As a result, the best shots were taken with longer lenses, and I have quite a few closeup abstracts.

With the first photo here, I thought it would be cool to photograph the snow mounds (complete with shadows), crisp in the foreground with the waterfall blurred out in the background. It didn't turn out exactly as I wanted it to, but I still like it.

The little bush in the second shot looks like its branches are dripping with icing. It looks like something that belongs in the front yard of a gingerbread house. If only there were jujubes...

2010-02-02T20:52:00.000-08:00

Here is another shot taken on the Calabogie trip. It's not immediately apparent (to me at least) what this is a picture of. It's actually dark water with ice chunks moving rather quickly under a bridge. I was using a longer lens, so the shot loses its wider context. When I was viewing my photos, I got a bit confused and thought this was actually a closeup of a faceted rock... and I couldn't remember taking any photos of rock. It could also be that I'm just losing my mind.

This is the last photo I have saved up to post for a while. Hopefully I'll find some time and some subject matter for evening photography... Otherwise nothing new until the weekend.

2010-01-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

This photo was taken on a recent trip to Calabogie, Ontario... although I suppose it could have been taken anywhere. Unfortunately none of my wide-angle landscapes turned out. These little rusty bumps on a rail on the side of a bridge reminded me of warts. At first I tried taking macro shots of the 'warts', but they didn't turn out looking like much. On the way back I decided to focus on the chain link fence and let the bumps blur into the background. These ones turned out much better.

2010-01-29T10:45:00.000-08:00

This is one of my wide-angle tree shots from the Experimental Farm. The shape of the tree reminded me of the palm trees in Costa Rica. I was lying on my back taking photos of them (albeit not with a wide-angle) and they had the same long and lazy shape. Maybe I'm just sick of winter and everything I see is starting to remind me of the tropics.

A combination of cold weather and illness is keeping me tethered to home, despite having a rare 4.5 days off from work. I don't have many new photos to upload, although I took a bit of a trip earlier on in the week. The photos are not uploaded yet, but maybe some of the wide-angle ones turned out alright *crosses fingers*.

2010-01-24T18:40:00.000-08:00

It has been my recent habit to post the best pictures from this blog on Red Bubble. Today I decided to do the opposite. This is one of my favorite photos, but it hasn't received many views on RB. I think the thumbnail is just too small to bring out the detail. This photo was taken on my recent journey to Fitzroy, Ontario when I had a few days off over the New Year. We had freezing rain all through Christmas, and the tree branches were covered with a coating of ice which made them look like they were made of glass. In this shot, the moonlight makes the frozen branches glisten. This was actually an accidental shot... My fingers were frozen and I was trying to adjust my settings when I accidentally tripped the shutter. I had been meaning to take a longer exposure as well as close off the eyepiece to prevent any light from entering through it. In the end, this 'mistake' turned out looking better than any of my planned shots. When I lengthened the exposure, the branches were so blown out with moonlight that the subtle gleam wasn't visible.

There is more freezing rain in the forecast for tomorrow, and I have Tuesday off from work... Maybe I'll get some more icy tree shots.

2010-01-23T17:00:00.001-08:00

Here is another of my winter tree photos... This one taken with the wide angle. I was about as miserable and depressed as it's possible for a person to be when I went on my photo journey last week. As soon as I put on the wide angle, it was like snapping a light switch: instant happiness. I guess all of those sayings about viewing the world thorough a different lens or though rose-colored glasses have some basis in truth. Believe it or not, this was actually a short, squat tree in real life. The wide-angle stretches it out and distorts it like one of those funhouse mirrors.

2010-01-22T20:34:00.001-08:00

This is another of my favorite photos from last weekend. I like the composition with the trees and the buildings, and the stark white of the undisturbed snow. A wide angle lens makes even the most mundane things look interesting.

2010-01-21T19:51:00.001-08:00

This is probably the most interesting photo I took on my trip to the Experimental Farm last weekend. The wide angle lens gives things a different perspective... I was actually standing mere steps from the yellow house, although through a 14mm lens, it looks far away. This photo also contains something that has been rare since I moved to Ontario - an interesting sky! I really miss the vibrant prairie skies. My brother-in-law recently visited and made the comment that the sky always looks the same in Ottawa. He's right. It's always bright white, or a uniform grey... very drab and dull for a photographer. Last weekend I was rewarded (however briefly) with some amazing color and light.

2010-01-18T19:47:00.000-08:00

This weekend I took a walk to the Experimental Farm. I wanted to go somewhere further afield... but the days are still too short to allow for that. It's true that there is always fodder for the one lens you leave behind. On my last trip to photograph winter trees, I missed the wide angle. I brought it this time and left my telephoto at home. Wouldn't you know it... The trees and fields were swarming with crows. Through my 50mm lens, they just looked like black specks... black specks that cackled and cawed, mocking me.

In spring, summer and fall, trees are all about the leaves. In winter, I like the shapes formed by the bare branches against the sky. A wide angle lens brings a whole new perspective to these shapes.

Here is the only "postable" photo I took with the 50mm lens before swapping over to the wide angle. To be honest, I think it's the least exciting. I'll post the wide angle shots in the coming days, since it will be a few eons before I have another day off.

2010-01-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

Today's photo has an amusing story behind it. I was out taking photos of the cats in the yard yesterday when my eyes were drawn to this little windswept bush in the corner. It was begging me to take its photo. The fact that the wind was actively blowing it just accentuated its 'windswept' character and made it an even more appealing photo subject. The problem was the background... The siding on the neighbors' garage is...well... frankly quite ugly. I was hoping that converting it to monochrome would make it more interesting. Maybe the lines on the side of the garage could represent blowing wind in some abstract, artsy-fartsy sort of way.

I like taking photos, but I really don't care for fiddling with them on the computer... I have no idea how my post-processing software works, aside from the most basic operations. I was wondering if maybe I could summon the motivation to try blurring out the background on the computer, when Graem peered over my shoulder and said (as though he had read my mind), "Nothing you can do with that one. It's always gonna look like siding". And there you have it.

2010-01-16T23:28:00.001-08:00

More cute feline pictures today. Jackie was quite aptly named after Jackie Chan. He is the ultimate stunt cat, and when he was a kitten, he'd do flips in the backyard catching snowballs that we'd throw for him. Sometimes he got about 5 feet off the ground!

The weather has been a bit nicer lately, and Jackie has felt up to coming outside and catching a few snowballs. These maybe aren't the most technically brilliant photos, but I was experimenting with a new technique: Throwing a snowball with my left hand and holding/operating the camera with my right. Exposing a dark grey cat against white snow is also difficult. I'll have to practice more.

I took some snowy tree and landscape shots today as well... I'll post them in the coming days.

2010-01-13T20:40:00.001-08:00

It has been a while since I posted a photo. Sixteen-hour work days and bad weather have meant virtually no shutter clicks the past couple of weeks. Retiring to a tropical climate could fix both of those problems; too bad I can't do that tomorrow.

I have had a chance to fire off a few snapshots of the newest member of our family. His name is Tuk. He came to us under bizarre circumstances on New Year's Day. He's an interesting cat, and one with impeccable taste (he likes tomatoes and avocado).

The other cats have adjusted to Tuk surprisingly well... Moosh seems happy to have another fuzzy cat around and Jackie is more playful than I have seen him since he got sick. After a few nights of constant yeowling, Synder has stopped trying to evict Tuk from his territory.

I'm not sure why he was given the name 'Tuk'. I call him Tuktoyaktuk, which seems fitting as he has a long, thick coat and big fuzzy paws, suitable for an arctic cat. Maybe he's named after the "Tuk-Tuk", a kind of motorized rickshaw in Thailand... Maybe he is named after Friar Tuck. Whatever the origin of his name, I hope he's a good luck omen for 2010.

I have my fingers crossed for some new photos this weekend.

2010-01-05T20:42:00.000-08:00

This is my last icy tree photo from the Experimental Farm. It's also my favorite. I call it "Cold Comfort". I like the shapes made by the frosty branches and tree trunk against the sky.

I'm stuck in a deep and seemingly endless rut where my work schedule won't allow me to see sunlight or eat, much less spend time with my husband, cats or camera. I'm afraid there won't be any new photos until the weekend unless something unexpected happens... It's not unheard of, but I won't hold my breath.

2010-01-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

Here's another icy tree photo from our cold and wet excursion to the Experimental Farm. There was moss growing on this tree. I was hoping that the greens and yellows would be more vivid, but as it stands the moss was barely visible in the photo. This one actually ended up looking better in monochrome.

2010-01-01T15:03:00.001-08:00

No time for a photo journey today, though I may take a few more shots of the orchid later while it still has flowers! I have a few more winter tree photos from the Experimental Farm to post... but today I thought I'd post the last of my icicle photos. I was amazed by how crystal clear this icicle was. In real life, I could see right through it. I was almost expecting to view my photos on the computer and find the icicle invisible!

2009-12-31T23:42:00.000-08:00

Today is a special day. Not only is it New Year's Eve, it is also the 1 year anniversary of the day I bought my DSLR. One year and ~13700 shutter clicks later, I hope I'm a better photographer. If nothing else, it has been fun.

It snowed all day today... not really a blizzard, just fat flakes falling relentlessly. I had to wrap the camera in my toque to avoid getting it wet between shots. We walked to the Experimental Farm, where I took quite a few photos this fall. Different seasons bring different subject matter. In the fall, about 90% of my Experimental Farm photos were taken with the 50mm lens, and the other 10% split between the macro and the Lensbaby. Today I put the 50mm on the camera and brought the new 70-200mm zoom in case there were any birds to be photographed. As it turns out, I spent much of the day wishing for the wide angle and the macro. There was too much distracting background material in the fall to take wide angle shots... now the trees have lost their leaves and the corn fields have been replaced by a clean blanket of white snow. Everything is much more open. The trees are encrusted in ice and snow - perfect fodder for the macro lens. Nonetheless, the best lens is the one that you have with you and know how to use... and the 50 is a versatile little gem. Here is one of the icy trees I managed to photograph. I might return later on this week with a different selection of lenses, weather and life permitting.

2009-12-30T21:33:00.000-08:00

Another day off, another photo journey. This time, we set out for Fitzroy, Ontario. We somehow managed to leave home even later than yesterday. We got lost on the way to Fitzroy, and got the car stuck soon after arriving at the Provincial Park. By the time we got the car unstuck, we had pretty much missed the sunset. There was a long trek down to the water, where we stood around and froze for a while before deciding there was really nothing interesting to photograph.

Cold and dejected, we started to trudge back to the car. The path was illuminated by the almost-full moon in a clear sky. My fingers felt like they were about to fall off, but I couldn't resist stopping for some long-exposure shots. This one was taken with my new lens.

This is an apt photo to be posting today, as there will be a blue moon tomorrow. Apparently, a blue moon occurs on New Year's Eve only every 19 years.

2009-12-30T01:29:00.001-08:00

I finally have a few days off from work and was desperate to take a photo journey. I have seen quite a few patients from Cornwall, Ontario, and was curious about the place. Since it's situated right on the St. Lawrence River, I figured there would be something interesting to photograph there. Unfortunately, in typical Graem and Andrea style, we did not leave the house until after 1pm. Then, we had a bunch of drawn-out and mundane errands to run before hitting the road. The days are getting longer now, but not by that much. We raced toward Cornwall as the sun raced toward he horizon. We realized that we were destined to lose the race, so made a detour to Morrisburg. I tried looking up Morrisburg, Ontario on Google Maps, but alas it does not exist there. I was redirected to South Dundas, which is somewhat north of Morrisburg, and not on the St. Lawrence.

The temperature today was -20 degrees Celsius. It is probably the coldest day we have had so far this winter. For someone who grew up on the prairies, -20 is really not that cold. It sure seemed cold, though, with the wind coming right off of the water. It was not a good photography day for me. I was hoping to try out the new lens (a 70-200mm f2.8 zoom). I had it set on manual focus from the last time I had used it, and forgot to switch it back to auto. Most of my shots with it were blurry... which actually didn't matter since I couldn't compose a decent shot to save my life today. Partly it can be blamed on the cold, but partly my concentration was just all over the place.

Luckily the wide-angle rescued the day (yet again). As sunset turned into night, I brought out the tripod and took some long exposures. A couple were actually decent. One is posted here, and one is on Red Bubble.

It is supposed to be warmer for the rest of the week. I'm posting this at 5am and I haven't been to bed yet... but I hope to haul my carcass out early tomorrow and find somewhere interesting to go.

2009-12-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

Today I'm about to break two of the rules I've established so far for this blog: Number 1: No posting photos taken by other people. This just seems like cheating to me. I've been tempted to post photos taken by Graem before (kind of a guest-blogger thing, just like some webcomics occasionally have guest artists). I've always managed to avoid the temptation. I was going to post one of his frog photos, but found them underexposed when I went to convert them to JPEG. I was going to post a macro shot he took of the spindles on our back door... but I just never got around to it. That one still might turn up one day. Rule Number 2 (the hardest for me not to break): Thou shalt not blog like a kitten parent. Let's face it... I am a kitten parent. And a proud one at that.

Moosh has always loved Christmas. Maybe it's something about the catnip toys, the special treats in his food dish, or all of the boxes, bows and wrapping paper he gets to investigate. This year we had very little of that, but it didn't seem to matter. The excitement of Christmas was enough to make Moosh (a cat who sleeps 90% of the rest of the year) tear around the house meowing, fuzzy tail raised sky-high. This is Moosh's tenth Christmas, and it seems like every year we have a "Christmas Moosh" photo... one that manages to capture all of his exuberance and life. This year Graem got that photo (those are my legs in the background). Without further ado, I give you Christmas Moosh 2009. Here's to many more.

2009-12-26T10:44:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another icicle photo... At first I thought the roof in the background was distracting, but the more I look at it, the more I think it actually adds something to the picture. The icicles are getting more interesting every day. It has been melting the past few days, and today there is freezing rain. I took some interesting shots a couple of days ago which are still sitting on the camera. Hopefully a few turned out!

2009-12-23T19:11:00.000-08:00

Here's another icicle photo. I was pretty enthralled by the detail on the tip of this 'ice talon' (probably best viewed big). This is one of the few photos of it that didn't come out blurry. I hope my icicle photos don't get tiresome. Truth be told, I only have a couple more to post. My work schedule won't let me take any new photos until Dec. 28 at the earliest. I've taken another look at my snowboard binding macros and deemed the rest unpostable. Maybe I'm just in a picky mood. Assuming I don't change my mind, I'll post my remaining icicle photos in the coming days, and maybe a Red Bubble reject if I find one I deem worthy. Other than that, there might be a brief hiatus until I have a chance to take more photos.

I hope that some of you people out there in Internet Land have a few days off from work/school and manage to enjoy the holidays!

2009-12-21T18:48:00.001-08:00

Time stands still for no one. But at this time of year, it certainly seems to. This is another of my icicle macro photos. I thought it quite suitable for posting on the longest night of the year.

2009-12-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

Today I took the macro lens out to photograph icicles. I got a few interesting shots. I was in a mood for simplifying things, and I was striving to make my shots as clean and uncluttered as possible. I intended to convert everything to monochrome, but when I finally sat down with the images, I decided I like my icicles better as nature made them - with a subtle tint of cold blue.

This photo was an exception. The icicle was bright white, the background baby blue, and for some reason the base of the icicle had a pinkish hue... The whole thing looked like a decoration one might find on a cake at a baby shower. Despite that, I really liked the photo. It's not the typical cliched icicle photo. I therefore decided to rescue it with monochrome conversion.

I'm not even sure if this can be called an 'icicle', as it was not hanging down, but rather jutting up from the railing on my porch. Are icicles analogous to stalactites and stalagmites? Is there a special term for ones that jut upwards?

2009-12-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Graem bought a new snowboard, with boots and bindings to go with it. I thought the bindings would make a good subject for indoor macro photography and learning to use my off-camera flash. I like the shiny metal and the fact that there are so many intricate parts. The colors are also a bonus - shiny red and silver are quite appropriate at this time of year. I was using a piece of green felt as background, which gives a Christmas feel to some of the photos. Unfortunately none of the ones I deemed postable include the felt. 2009 has been a terrible year all around, and this is the closest I'll come to feeling festive, I'm afraid.

This photo shoot was a real learning experience for me. I thought I'd have a bunch of great shots... but in the beginning my lighting was all wrong. In the later pictures, I had the lighting under better control, but you can see every bit of dust and cat hair on the bindings... not to mention my own fingerprints. I had taken great pains to clean them off, but nothing can hide from the macro lens! If I get a chance to try again before Graem goes snowboarding, I'll have to implement special sterile technique. I'll have to wipe the bindings off with a lint-free cloth, and blow the dust off with the air-puffer I use to clean my lenses. I'll have to steal some gloves from work to make sure I don't leave fingerprints!

This was probably the best photo I took in terms of lighting. I have some others where the lighting isn't as good, but the composition is maybe more interesting. Look for them to appear soon either here or on Red Bubble.

2009-12-19T16:15:00.000-08:00

My ability to post photos over the summer was largely limited by the slowness of my laptop. I needed the laptop to study for my exams, and posting a single photo might cause it to spool helplessly for more than an hour. Now my laptop's performance is marginally better... but I'm the one who is spooling. I can't seem to summon the physical or mental energy to take new photos or edit the ones I already have on my computer. By the time I get up, it seems as though the light is already fading. It's a "balmy" -12 degrees out, and I feel like I'm going to die of hypothermia every time I open the door.

Today was my last real day off from work until December 29th. I was hoping to try out the new lens, but there was nothing really to take pictures of in my yard. The cats didn't want to be outside, and the thought of going for a walk did not appeal to me. Besides... it was about 3pm and already starting to get dark. I thought of swapping over to the macro lens to photograph icicles and got stuck spooling in the process. Hence, a Red Bubble Reject today.

This photo was taken almost exactly a year ago. My camera was brand new, and I couldn't wait to try it, despite the fact that it was -37 out and already dark! The only post-processing of this photo was to convert it to monochrome... though the color version doesn't look much different (sadly no red roof on the house). I've always been impressed by the 'retro' look of this photo... It looks like a picture you would find in a social studies textbook about the pioneers. I was clueless about my camera then, and probably wouldn't be able to replicate that mood/style now even if I tried!

2009-12-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

Here is another photo from my experiments with the orchid and off-camera flash. I title this one "Maybe"... as in "Maybe it is good enough for posting. Maybe it isn't". The flash comes with a steep learning curve. I am still quite clueless, but I can honestly say I've improved by an order of magnitude since this shot was taken. This is the last of the older photos I have stored up for posting, though I'm hoping to take the new lens out for a spin this weekend. I've also been doing some more indoor work with the flash, the macro lens, and some very interesting subject matter... but I haven't had a chance to go through the photos and pick out the good ones. Hopefully I'll have something ready to post this weekend.

2009-12-16T20:06:00.000-08:00

This is another photo taken in Hawkesbury, Ontario. It is similar to the one I have already posted, however in this case the sky was more dramatic. The clouds prevented the sun from being overpowering, so no HDR was required.

2009-12-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

This photo was taken at a park near Dow's Lake in Ottawa in the first week of December. If you peer into the far right hand corner of the photo, you can see that the grass was not only visible, but still green! Unfortunately that has changed now... Everything is covered by a couple feet of snow which will probably stick around until at least April. At least we were lucky enough to stave it off for this long.

This was my best shot of that day (and really the only shot worth posting). I'm not happy with the exposure. For some reason my RAW shots always look properly exposed, but when I convert them to JPG, they are underexposed... and I can't fix it without blowing out the sky. I guess I'll have to get more adept at HDR technique.

Speaking of exposure, when my computer was out of commission, I used Graem's computer, and noticed that a lot of my photos look very oversaturated on his monitor (especially reds). I wonder if my monitor needs to be calibrated. I hope I'm not making a fool of myself by posting garishly oversaturated photos all over the internet. If anyone else finds my reds blown out and the photos oversaturated, please leave a comment!

In other news, I bought a new lens today! By the time I got home it was too dark to do much experimenting, but I hope to give it a thorough workout soon. I also have more indoor macro work planned with off-camera lighting. So maybe the dearth of new material won't last as long as I had originally anticipated.

2009-12-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

My computer has been in Windows mode the past few days so that I could scan in some things from work. I can't view my photos in Windows, hence no posts. It's just as well. I haven't had the time, or frankly the inclination to take new photos.

Believe it or not, this ladybug photo was taken in mid November. I don't think I've ever seen a ladybug in November before. She was kind of a deep rust color rather than the usual bright red, and blended in nicely with the woodchips in my yard. I got a few shots of her taking off and flying, but none were in sharp enough focus to consider posting. There's one that came very close... I may post it later on if I get desperate for material. I always see crisp shots of insects in flight and wonder how on earth the photographer has managed to pull it off... A million monkeys banging away at a million typewriters, I guess.

Graem has done some fiddling with my computer in the past few days, and I now have access to the 1TB drive where all of my photos from before June 2009 are stored! This means I'll be revamping my Red Bubble profile in the next little while. It's something I've been waiting to do. I'll be removing a few photos (the ones I don't like, the ones I'm sick of, and the ones that no longer represent my best work). This will mean removing a few of my most popular photos from the site. I'll be adding some of my favorite photos from this blog to my Red Bubble profile, just to get them more exposure and see how they fare there. Some of my favorite photos have been buried in the archives of this blog where nobody ever sees them.

I've been looking at a lot of other photoblogs and other people's photography sites, and in my more ambitious moments, I envision a radical redesign for Sun Goes Boom. In reality, it probably won't happen... I have no computer skills and frankly no desire to learn. Blogger provides a conveniently easy (if not ideal) template.

Posts here might be sparse for the next while... I have only a couple of "oldies" stored up, and won't be taking many new shots until work starts being kinder and I get my head screwed on right again.

2009-12-06T14:11:00.001-08:00

I've had this photo sitting on my hard drive for a while waiting to be posted. I have photographed these berries before, earlier this fall. Now they are all wrinkled... I personally consider this photo too blurry and poorly composed for posting, but Graem thought it was 'abstract'. He suggested I post it on Red Bubble and title it 'Raisin'. I haven't had time to take many new photos and I only have a couple of older ones saved up... so today I will post the Raisin.

2009-12-05T13:39:00.001-08:00

This is another of my experimental photos using off-camera flash indoors. I love orchids, but haven't had much luck keeping them. A while ago I learned all about orchids and how to care for them. Unfortunately I have never really been able to provide them with the right conditions in terms of light, temperature and humidity. I haven't really had enough time to devote to it either. If I had my way, I would have a huge garden/greenhouse/pond and all of the necessary infrastructure to care for it properly. I wouldn't have to waste 98% of my life working at a job I don't enjoy while living in an environment that can only be described as spirit-crushing. But I don't have my way. So I will have to do my best for this little orchid that was given to me as a present. And the off-camera flash will be my substitute for sunlight.

I haven't been able to figure out how to reply to comments directly on Blogger... though I'm sure there is a way. Someone asked me whether I have had any luck with human portraits. I haven't had much time to work on it... I have taken many portraits of my husband, all of which are too awful to post here. There is virtually no natural light in my house, and the walls are all beige. If I attempt to bounce my flash off of the walls to diffuse it, the resulting photos are an ugly yellow-brown that isn't so noticible with flower petals, but it does wreak havoc with skin tones. Adjusting my white balance doesn't seem to help. I'm pretty sure the technical aspects of portrait photography will fall into place as I practice more with the flash and maybe get a reflecting umbrella or two.

The human aspects of portrait photography are a bit more difficult to handle. I feel bad telling my subjects how to pose. To be honest, I have always hated having portraits taken... The photographer always wants me to twist my head one way and my knees the other, while sitting at an unnatural angle. As a photographer, I can now understand the rationale for doing that... but it still seems contrived. My mom and I had portraits taken when I was 6. I look at those photos and I don't see myself at all. My hair is naturally straight, but my mom spent 3 hours burning my head with the curling iron in order to make it look curly. I was wearing a dress - something I never would have done at that age - and I remember how awful it was to go outside in stockings in December. Graduation photos were the same... An unnatural pose wearing unnatural clothing in front of a wall of fake books. Why not use real books? Come to think of it, why use books at all? I don't remember studying for anything in high school or even really doing much homework. High school is an important time in one's life, but really not for academics. Why can't photographers try to bring out some of the more important things in grad portraits? The growing up/transition from childhood to adulthood sort of ideas? Why not? Because it would take effort... and the kids couldn't be shuffled through en-masse like components on an assembly line.

I'm at an age where my peers are all reproducing, and consequently showing me the 'amazing' baby or family portraits they have had taken. While these photos are technically good, they seem for the most part artificial to me... everybody dressed up in their best clothes... kids dressed up in sailor suits playing with fake wooden boats... Baby sitting on a fake park bench with fake trees in the background looking shell-shocked and horrified. For me, portraits should create memories... The best photos of kids are of them playing in the backyard, grass stains, scraped knees and all. Why does everyone seem to want memories of things that never actually existed?

I did manage to get a few good portrait-style shots at my mom's wedding a year ago... but the best people photos I have taken are by and large candids.

I've been looking at portraits taken by some of the 'old masters' - Cartier-Bresson, Steichen, and a few others... and this is really something to aspire to. But I'm kind of stuck on the notion that most people in modern society have a vastly different idea than I do of what a 'portrait' ought to be.

2009-12-05T13:35:00.001-08:00

This Red Bubble reject is actually one of my favorite photos. Spring was very late coming to Saskatoon this year, and I thought my tulips would never bloom. When they finally popped open, it was sudden and violent.

I actually had this photo made into a print. It looks much better to me on paper than on screen.

2009-11-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

This will be my last post before I head off to Saskatoon for 10 days. It's also the last photo I have saved up from my fall forays to the botanical garden. These flowers were beautiful, even in decay.

2009-11-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of Moosh with the sun shining on his nose and his whiskers heading out to infinity. I love taking extreme close-ups of the cats, but it's hard. It's uncommon for them to stay still for the fraction of a second it takes to click the shutter.

2009-11-16T16:57:00.001-08:00

I took a bunch of photos very similar to this one right after a hard rain this summer. I was excited to view them, but every last one turned out blurry. Fast-forward a few months and I've managed to do a better job... if only because I made sure to take double the number of exposures this time!

2009-11-15T20:44:00.001-08:00

A double post today! Partly it's to mitigate the fact that I'll be in Saskatoon for 10 days and won't be bringing my camera. I haven't decided whether to bring the portable hard drive or not... Probably not as I'm already drowning in worries about all of the things I need to take and will probably forget, and the fact that I am only one person and can only carry so much luggage. Partly I'm taking advantage of the fact that Blogger's upload mechanism seems faster than usual tonight, and partly I'm just bored and depressed and posting a pretty picture on the internet makes time stand still for a moment.

This shot was taken in my backyard a few days ago... Maybe even this weekend - I've lost track. I was experimenting with very shallow depth of field, and my ratio of misses to hits was quite high. Even the shots that were in focus often had blurry thick stems right in front of the subject that I somehow missed through the viewfinder.

I was going to post this to Red Bubble. Graem thought the Red Bubble crowd wouldn't care for it. I guess we'll never know, as the random number generator told me to post it here. He suggested that if I did post it to Red Bubble, its title should be "Ganglion".

2009-11-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

If I find a subject that I really like to photograph, I'll usually take a few shots. Often none of them turn out, and sometimes I get one good one. Sometimes it happens that I get two or more shots of the same subject that I consider 'good' or 'postable'. If I have a few good shots of the same subject, it can be incredibly hard to decide which one gets posted... especially since this means the other shot(s), even if they are equally good, tend to get lost and buried on my hard drive where I can't always find them back later on.

A solution I've employed a few times is to post one of the shots to my blog, and one to Red Bubble. Even if the shots are both 'good', there's usually one that I secretly prefer. These shots are both recent Red Bubble Rejects. I wasn't going to post them here, as I already have a picture of the cornfield, and a picture of the caterpillar on the red and white tulip. Be that as it may, I truly think these ones are better.

2009-11-14T15:36:00.001-08:00

This is one of the pictures that resulted from my first experiment with off-camera flash. The room was completely dark except for the flash. It was even too dark for me to tell if my focus was correct. I had no idea that little flash unit could give off so much light. Here it is at 1/64 of maximum power, and I'm using a diffuser to soften the light. The background has a bluish tint that I don't really care for, and it only gets worse when I try to adjust the white balance. Nonetheless, I'm impressed with the flash and I'll have to experiment with it more.

2009-11-13T17:57:00.000-08:00

For those who haven't guessed by now, my favorite things to photograph are flowers and insects. I also like to take pictures of dilapidated buildings, rusty machines and beautiful landscapes... but those are not as plentiful in my life.

In winter, everything is grey and dull. Yes, the snow is beautiful... but it's hard to spend too much time outside taking photos when exposed skin freezes in less than 10 seconds. There is a decided lack of sunlight in winter, and no flowers or insects to be seen for 6 months of the year.

In order to combat winter depression, I thought of setting up a little indoor studio to take still life shots over the winter... and maybe to learn to take portraits. I bought a single off-camera flash and I'm considering a more elaborate light set up. The flash has a very steep learning curve... I took a few photos that are interesting, but I'm not sure they're any good. I have one I will probably post another day. I'll have to experiment with the flash quite a bit more before I can truly say I'm in control of it.

I also got some candles and thought it would be interesting to take candlelit flower portraits. These are two of the best ones... Unfortunately my session was cut short because I brought the candles too close to the petals and literally fried my subjects! It's a good thing I was using cut flowers. The flowers were bright pink in real life. I didn't custom adjust my white balance and tried to do it afterward on the computer. I decided I preferred the orangey glow of the candlelight to the 'corrected' white balance.

2009-11-11T08:52:00.000-08:00

We went for a walk around Ottawa last weekend and took the camera along. We walked through Little Italy where all of the roads are being rebuilt. The scene was littered by dirt, gravel, pylons, rubble and little yellow backhoe machines which sat still, abandoned for the weekend. As the sun set, people scurried around the debris, heading off for dinner at one of the many restaurants (still open), or an evening at the pub. Everything was very surreal; it's too bad none of my Little Italy photos turned out.

We walked through another neighborhood... I'm not sure where it was. I can and do get lost within 2 blocks of my house. I'm always a bit leery of walking around with thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment in a neighborhood full of pawn shops, moneylenders, and XXX video stores... but it was interesting and everything turned out ok.

This photo was taken as we were walking on an overpass, overlooking the city at sunset. The view of the city was amazing, but marred by an ugly, tall white building. I looked behind me and saw this. In real life, the sun was shining on the rail on the right of the picture, making it look like a trail of fire. I liked the fact that the road was empty, and that the white lines on the road (from the left) balanced the lines of the rail on the right.

Urban photography is hard. There are so many things to take pictures of, it's hard to isolate a subject without too much background distraction. You have to get used to being out in public with a big camera and big lens. You have to overcome fears of invading people's privacy or of being thought insane... Overall it's a challenge... but I hope to try it some more.

2009-11-10T16:57:00.001-08:00

A long time ago, Graem warned me that I must not blog like a kitten parent... And I do admit being irritated and bored by people who tirelessly post photos and blog about their (human) children as though the rest of the world is supposed to care. Despite all of that, I sure am feeling like a proud kitten parent these days. We have had some nice fall weather, and I have discovered that I like taking portraits and action shots of the cats almost as much as I like flower and insect macros!

Here is Synder... This is a rare photo that shows off how his coat is actually reddish when the sun shines on it. Synder, as usual, cares nothing about posing. He is giving the camera his look of studied nonchalance.

I will (probably) post a non-feline photo tomorrow.

2009-11-09T19:50:00.000-08:00

Here is Jackie, cute as ever and doing much better. We're giving him subcutaneous fluids every day and he is on antibiotics for a kidney infection. He has been put on a low-protein renal diet with a potassium supplement as well as an appetite stimulant (though I can't blame him for not wanting to eat that foul-smelling goop).

Despite all of that, he's slowly getting his energy and personality back and gaining a bit of weight. We've had a few warm days, and Jackie has remembered how much he likes to pose for the camera! To honour the special occasion, I'm mass-posting the latest cute Jackie photo to this blog, Red Bubble and my Facbook profile. I'm hoping for many more cute Jackie photos to come.

2009-11-08T20:02:00.000-08:00

Here's another photo taken at Gatineau Park. I waited for a long time to photograph this waterfall as there were quite a few people around, many with cameras. Most of my photos didn't turn out, but I like the way the light was shining on the water in this one.

2009-11-06T23:04:00.000-08:00

This photo was taken last weekend in Hawkesbury, Ontario. Hawkesbury is about halfway between Montreal and Ottawa. We stopped there on the way home from Montreal to take some photos and eat dinner. Everyone at the restaurant spoke French. It felt weird for me to be in Canada but unable to understand what anyone was saying. I actually felt more at ease in Costa Rica and the Philippines. At least there, it was blatantly obvious that I was a tourist and nobody made the automatic assumption that I would understand them.

The dramatic sky and relative lack of garish man-made objects afforded me the rare opportunity to use my wide-angle lens. This is actually my first attempt at HDR photography... or rather Graem's first attempt to teach me to create an HDR image from one of my photos. I have to admit that I was exhausted, bored and dozing off. I like taking photos much more than I like post-processing them. I was captivated by the first few HDR photos I saw. They were scenes shot in a countryside village in the UK complete with cobblestone roads and houses with thatched roofs. I couldn't believe that these images came from a camera... they looked more like the medieval houses rendered in a computer game I played in junior high... or maybe illustrations from a storybook. Frequenting a few online photo-sharing sites, I started to become frankly bored with HDR. The element of photography I like most is capturing things I find interesting or beautiful and sharing them with other people. The world is not a storybook or video game, and HDR photos always seem a bit fake and insincere to me... In an effort to improve on reality, we end up with a poor and cheap imitation.

In the midst of all the HDR photos, I have seen a few very tastefully done landscapes and macros with subtle HDR technique. I hope to experiment more with HDR, and these are the ones I want to emulate. Basically, I just want to bring out the details in the shadow areas of my landscape shots without blowing out the sky.

2009-11-02T07:47:00.000-08:00

Here are some colorful rosehips, taken at the botanical garden a few weeks ago before the skies opened on me.

I've been experimenting a bit lately and have a few different pictures ready to post, but the random number generator tells me I must be patient and post this 'older' photo first.

2009-10-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite flower macros, and maybe one of my favorite photos I have taken so far. It was taken at the botanical garden just recently. For some reason, the flower reminds me of a pineapple.

2009-10-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

This is a Red Bubble reject taken in early 2009. Believe it or not, the temperature was about -35 degrees Celsuis the evening this shot was taken. The sky was just spectacular.

The other photo I posted from that day is very popular on Red Bubble. It was my most viewed and commented photo for a long time. This particular shot never received much Red Bubble love. In fact, it was rejected from several Red Bubble groups as being 'technically inadequate'.

Whenever we visit my in-laws and I have my portable hard drive with me, they insist on seeing all of my photos. The problem with that is that I take a lot of photos... the majority uninteresting, even to me. When I visit a new place, I have no interest in photographing people or the usual iconic landmarks that other tourists photograph. At the same time, it's common for me to take 100 or more shots of the same flower trying to get everything right, or to photograph the same landscape from a million different vantage points using different camera settings. It must be incredibly painful for anyone to view all of my photos if I haven't sorted through them first to pick out the best ones. To be honest, it is even kind of painful for me.

My in-laws sat patiently through my collection of winter 2009 landscapes (>5000 photos in all), too polite to flee the scene. This photo of the silos is the only one my father-in-law commented on. He liked the composition. That simple compliment meant more to me than any amount of gratuitous Red Bubble feedback.

2009-10-29T18:58:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we went to Gatineau Park. I had been wanting to visit Gatineau Park ever since we moved to Ottawa, especially in the fall, as I had heard the leaves were spectacular.

To be honest, the trip was a bit of a disappointment. It was late by the time we got there and the light was already fading. Even at dusk, Gatineau Park is a busy place... I read on the internet that the park has 2500 visitors/day. I find it hard to take photos in a crowded place... Not only am I struggling to keep random people out of the frame, I find myself feeling a bit nervous and self-conscious. As a result, I have only 2 postable photos to show for the trip to Gatineau Park.

This is one of them - perhaps the best. I have been trying all summer to take a good leaf abstract photo - one that shows the shape and texture of the leaves, as well as the juxtaposition of the shadows of adjacent leaves and the dark jagged lines of the branches. It's a very specific photo I have been trying to take, and (though not perfect), this is probably my best attempt so far.

2009-10-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

The experimental farm is surrounded by barbed wire. When I took this photo, I liked the green and gold colors in the background with the barbed wire crisp in the foreground. The photo reminds me of a flag... albeit the flag of a country with an oppressive government!

2009-10-25T00:06:00.001-07:00

This is foxglove, the plant from which digitalis (a common cardiac medication) is derived. I have always loved the spotted flowers on this plant. This photo was taken at the public botanical gardens, though I did attempt to grow foxglove in my garden back in Saskatoon. It claimed to grow in shade, and since my yard was predominantly shade, I decided to get a bunch. Unfortunately, just because something can grow in shade doesn't necessarily mean it will thrive there. The plants survived and even bloomed, but in the absence of sunlight, the flowers were an anemic yellow/green color instead of the usual vibrant pink. The spots were pale yellow and barely visible.

2009-10-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

I'm away at a conference now and can't post anything new... But I suppose I could post a Red Bubble reject. This is one of the photos taken in Jan 2009 when my camera was brand new. We went out into the -40 degree weather and waist-deep snow to photograph old farmhouses. I remember the day this was taken quite clearly. The sun was bright, the sky a brilliant blue, and the little bits of grass sticking up were like yellow strings of gold against the snow. I liked these photos better in monochrome, though. The color versions seemed too busy.

All of these early farmhouse photos were slightly underexposed... I think because my camera was metering from the snow, and I knew nothing about post-processing then. Even the monochrome conversion was done in-camera. The vignetting occurred because I was using a cheap lens. In my opinion it adds to the vintage feeling of the shot. If I was trying to recreate this shot intentionally now, I probably wouldn't even be able to.

I'll probably do a complete overhaul of my Red Bubble profile soon. My three most viewed photos have 200 more views than their nearest competitors. To be honest, the most viewed photos are not my best photos, and if I am getting sick of looking at them, I'm sure others are too. I want to put up some better shots that have been buried on this blog, as well as some fresh new shots. All of that will have to wait for my laptop to start speaking to the hard-drive where my photos are stored, though. In other words, expect the overhaul some time in the next 10 years.

2009-10-21T17:24:00.000-07:00

I ordinarily don't like photos taken from directly above a flower. Photos like this will always look 'nice', simply because flowers are beautiful, amazing things... But there isn't much interesting or creative about pointing your camera directly down at a flower and clicking the shutter. I've noticed some photographers whose portfolios consist only of head-on flower shots... Booooring. Sometimes I do succumb to the temptation to take these shots, though... and sometimes they do turn out alright, especially if I'm able to get in very close, with the light shining through the petals.

2009-10-20T17:37:00.000-07:00

When I walked through the Experimental Farm on my way to the botanical garden, I saw a couple of ears of corn poking out just waiting to be harvested. To be honest, I was strongly tempted to steal an ear of corn. I have no idea why... in fact, I had corn on the cob sitting in my fridge at home waiting to be eaten. The sun was shining on the corn making it glow temptingly, and I debated for a long time before deciding not to take a cob. A guy in a Government of Canada jeep had, after all, driven up just as I had decided to go take photos in the middle of the corn field on my previous trip... Who knows... maybe stealing government corn is a federal offense. Being an "experimental" farm, who knows what they are doing to the corn? Besides... my camera bag is jam-packed with gear. There is no room for corn cobs! I decided to capture the corn with my camera rather than stealing it. On the way home, I didn't have to worry about temptation. The birds had beaten me to the corn cobs, which were lying on the ground, half-eaten.

2009-10-19T19:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some mushrooms, discovered as I was wandering around the Exprimental Farm a few weeks ago. It rained nearly every day this summer, and we've had quite a bit of rain so far this fall. The result: mushrooms popping up everywhere!

2009-10-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Here's another photo of the purple flowers that just started blooming in October, and are still flourishing despite the fact we've had frost a couple of nights now. Their petals shine when the sun strikes them, especially after a rain. This photo was taken the last time Jackie came outside to photograph flowers with me before going into the hospital. I knew he was a sick cat that day. He came out, curled up in my lap and wouldn't move - so small and so fragile.

2009-10-17T18:23:00.000-07:00

I photographed these berries in my yard about a month ago. I had been meaning to photograph them for a while, and I still think I should take a better picture of them. The problem is that they grow between my house and my neighbor's where the light is always bad. I always catch the sun shining on the berries at inopportune moments, like when I'm rushing off to work.

Graem advised me that this photo is not in sharp enough focus to post. I scrutinized it closely, zooming in and out... To be honest, it seems to be in sharp focus to me. Maybe I'm just blind. The monochrome version of this photo is very interesting. It is posted on Red Bubble. The color version reminds me of the chemistry sets we had in first year university for building molecules. The berries are carbon atoms, and the branches are bonds.

2009-10-16T07:35:00.001-07:00

This photo was taken a couple of weekends ago when I visited the Experimental Farm. It's a Red Bubble reject... 2 weeks on Red Bubble and it couldn't generate half the views of my second least-popular photo. It doesn't surprise me... It doesn't look like much in a thumbnail... and the photo itself probably isn't that technically great.

The only person to comment on the photo was perhaps the only person to 'get' it. They commented that it really looks more like a winter tree than a fall tree. That's exactly what I thought when I saw the tree in real life. It was a warm day when I took the photo... The temperature was above 20 degrees Celsius, and it was really more like summer... but the dark sky looks like it could be threatening snow, and the bare branch tips warn of colder, bleaker times to come... For me this tree epitomized fall... a season whose only significance is the transition between summer and winter. But as a photo... it's probably not much.

You have probably noticed that I haven't been writing as much about my photos lately. Part of the reason is that work is trying to kill me these days. I'm no stranger to that, though. The real reason is that my cat Jackie is in the hospital, very sick with renal failure. He's getting better, but the long term prognosis isn't good. The vet says 4-6 months. Every molecule in my body hopes for Jackie to do much better than that... to beat all the odds and recover completely... but it is what it is.

I hate myself quite a bit right now. I've known for a long time that something wasn't right with Jackie, but I didn't do anything about it. I was completely self-centred and obsessed with frivolous things like taking pictures and my exams while my little guy suffered alone.

I've always had an interest in photography, but it only became a serious obsession for me about a year and a half ago. It happened accidentally. I got a new point-and-shoot camera for my birthday. We were vacationing on Vancouver Island and Graem was angry with me one morning. He went off and did his own thing, and I was locked out of the place we were staying with not much to do. I had my little camera in my pocket and I went down to the beach... I took a couple of snapshots of the beach and the ocean... the usual kind of beach snapshot with the crooked horizon smack in the middle of the picture. Mostly I was just angry and bored. As I wandered down the beach taking photos, I started to see beauty everywhere around me... It was a sunny day and the clouds were reflected in the smooth wet sand. The light gleamed off the smooth, wet, black surfaces of rocks and bright yellow flowers poked out between the crevasses, surviving where no flower really should. The shallow tide pools were filled with uncountable treasures, and on the beach, crows swooped down to claim dropped potato chips... kids splashed in the shallows in their bathing suits, adults walked dogs along the beach. There were beautiful and amazing things everywhere around me,and I captured them all with my little camera. By the time Graem came down to find me on the beach that afternoon, I had been transformed into a photographer.

Since Jackie has been sick, I have completely lost interest in photography. Beauty brings with it a wistful sort of hurt. The beauty is gone for me now, and only the hurt is left. I hate a world that could do something like this to such an innocent, generous soul. Fall does nothing but remind me of inevitable decay. When I see the fall leaves, all I can think is that Jackie might never accompany me outside to photograph flowers again. I might never see his coat lightened by the summer sun.

I have a lot of photos stored up from the past few weeks. With work the way it is, I wouldn't have time to take new photos right now anyway... I post photos here and on Red Bubble in the same way I try to carry on with the other routines in life... I eat, drink, sleep and go to work with varying degrees of success. Whether I take any more new photos once these ones run out is something that remains to be seen.

2009-10-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

I took this picture while I was photographing the yellow flowers I posted yesterday. I looked up and saw that the sun was illuminating the trees overhead... and the brightly colored leaves contrasted with the dark and ominous sky. It looks like there's a staircase made of leaves in the sky.

2009-10-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

Here's another shot from one of my many recent visits to the botanical garden. It's a celebration of the color yellow!

2009-10-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'll let today's photo do the talking for itself.

2009-10-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Viewing the archives of this blog, I just realized I have already posted as much in October as I did in all of September. It's nice to be done with exams! The light and weather were fairly good today, but a sick cat prevented me from taking any new photos (or doing much of anything else, really). My work schedule is such that there probably won't be any new shutter clicks for the next 2 weeks, but I think I have enough photos stored up to sustain the blog through the drought.

Here's my favorite photo from yesterday. It's amazing what a bit of light can do. This scene looked fairly drab through the viewfinder until the sun came out from behind the clouds. Then... instant magic! I clicked away, hoping I could manage not to screw up the focus and/or the exposure. One or two of my shots turned out alright.