Time (and friends) Fly When you are Having Fun

As promised ... I had to try the trick again a couple of times (see the last post). This time I tried it out with a friend! I'm still enjoying the magic of this kind of photography. Enjoy.

Lessons Learned

Bear with me, this is a little longer than you are used to seeing. I wanted to make today's post a little more that just pretty pictures and try to present a couple of lessons learned. The first lesson is photographic and the second one is for life in general (for those that know me well ... humour me and pretend that I am even remotely qualified to be giving a life lesson).
The photographic lesson derives itself from the idea of perspective. The two images below are technically of the same subject (the barn and field) yet are completely different images. When you get to a scene and start shooting, make sure that you move around a bit (or at least change the view by adjusting the direction/tilt/etc on the tripod as is seen here). I hate to tell you this but the chance that you nailed the perfect composition on your first try when getting to the scene is very unlikely (and if you did ... You probably won't be taking photographic advice from me!)To make a long story short, never underestimate the power of shifting your point of view when shooting a specific subject.
The life lesson (again ... humour me) is nothing revelutionary. In fact every one of your parents have probably given you this lesson more than once before. When I took the images below, I was not intending on making an hdr/sunrise/landscape image at all. In fact that morning I got up at 02:45 to try and get an image of the comet that is just becoming visible to the naked eye. Getting that Image turned out to be a big failure. I by far underestimated the difficulty of capturing an image of a faint comet, near a major city, with just a camera and a tripod. That being said, I didn't just go home and sulk in my failure. Having realised that I wasn't going to get the image I wanted, I took advantage of being out (with the intention of shooting) and find myself something else to shoot. Don't be so stuck on achieving(or your failure to achieve)a goal that you completely miss any other opportunities that come along.
That being said, I guess I have no excuse but to follow another piece of advice that every parent gives: if at first you don't succeed .... Essentially I may have to brave another 2:45am to attempt the comet again!

The Next Installment of the Waterfall Find

As promised, here are a couple more images of the waterfalls that I accidentally came across. Usually I like posting the images up here first and then putting them up on Flickr, but I accidentally left these two as publicly available during the day today, so you may have seen them. If not ... enjoy and let me know what you think.

Spring Cleaning

While updating things a bit (doing my spring cleaning? Poor excuse to put this image in?) I have now updated both my portfolios (the links on the right) as well as some of the flickr sets. One interesting update on the flickr side of things is my set of images that have 100+ views. There are now 44 images that have over 100 views on them (on flickr), and another 10 which are in the 90's. That may not be such a big thing for many of the major flickr contenders, but I think it is pretty neat. So ... if you are looking for some pretty pictures (or at least some that have been well promoted/placed :P) check them out!

Project 50

I've started another one of these daily photo 'dealies', hoping that I will actually stick with it last time (I didn't get so far on project 365). This one is called project 50. Basically the idea here is to take a picture a day, for 50 days, with a 50mm lens. So far I have gone two days (and technically the second day was cutting it close since it is already 22:19). The basis of the project is to motivate someone to get out there and shoot (and edit if possible) everyday not only with their camera, but specifically with the 50mm lens. Working with a prime, specifically the 50, makes you think more about composition that you would have to with a zoom lens. ANYWAYS, below you will find my 1/50 and 2/50 project 50 "entries". 1/50 is a Kodak Brownie six-16 which is an old camera I picked up at a garage sale (When I say old I mean it was on the market between ~1946-1951. This is also taken with my home made light box. I want to see if I can pick up some 120 film and try and get something out of this box camera. The 2/50 is your run of the mill flower picture taken on the way home from RMC. For more of my pictures check out my flickr photostream.


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Never sneak up on a goose ... several seems ok

On my walk home yesterday afternoon (to take pictures of course) I met up with a pair of geese and their goslings on the grass. When the caught sight of me, they took off into the water. Fortunately, as I kept walking back, they were going in the same direction as I was, but in the water. Essentially I sped up a little bit and hid where they were planning on ending up, trying to get a couple good pictures of them. All the time I was doing this I couldn't get the story my dad told me as a kid, where the unfortunate child who tried to sneak up on a goose, ended up not being able to sit down for awhile. Anyways, all turned out OK here, so I guess that you should "Never sneak up on a goose, but a pair of geese and their goslings is okay." To see the rest of my photography, click here.


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Lightbox/Kylin

This is one of the three trial images taken last night from my homemade lightbox. The light isn't yet as diffuse as I would like, nor does the poster board fit perfectly in the back. I also want to add a light source on the right side when I'm taking pictures with it as well. But all in all, it is a good start. The subject here is one of the trinkets that I picked up from my summer in China. Trottier and I made a point of getting a little statue that represented each of the places that we went to. This one represented the summer palace since there was a "full sized" statue of this guy that we marvelled over. It is a Kylin (Qilin). It is a mythical creature that has different animals' body parts mixed into one and often looks like he is on fire. Despite his menacing look, he only punishes the wicked. Apparently he can walk on grass without bending a blade. To see the other two trial light box images click here. To go to the rest of my photostream, click here.


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CF Badminton Nationals Teaser

Here is a quick shot of the CF Badminton Nationals I took pictures at this week. Three things I learned about shooting badminton. 1: The birdie and the racquet go really fast and will almost always be blurred, 2: Before smashing the birdie or putting it deep, most players will jump a little, this leads to a lot of 'floating' shots, and 3: A lot of the timing for shots is luck. I end up keeping the setting on AISERVO (Autofocus follows what I am following with the centre of the frame), keeping both eyes open (so I can see when the birdie is coming), and take a shot every time the birdie is about to (or just has been hit). I think I got a few good ones from the last couple of days, but we'll see. Here is the only one I have edited so far. To see more of my photography visit my flickr photostream here.

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Milky Way, Andromeda, and a Sunrise

Having stayed up all night taking pictures of fire, stars, the lake, etc. at an overnight 'observing/camping' night at one of our professors' cottage, I was rewarded with this shot. This seems to be one of the favourites among this batch. In this shot you can see the glow from the approaching sunrise, a little bit of the milky way, and on the middle right side of the image, Andromeda. Afterwards the water got ridiculously clear and produced the next shot. All in all, despite the lack of sleep, a good batch of images (I think). To see the rest of the images from this evening/morning click here. To see the rest of my photography click here.

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Fly on the Wall

Last week, I literally spend more than 20 minutes and approximately 4.5Gb of my 8Gb memory card taking pictures of a fly. I ended up with three I liked. Here is one of them. I was trying something new for the picture you see below. In order to make it a macro picture I needed a macro lens. My Sigma 17-70mm still didn't get close enough, SO ... this is an experiment that I read about on the internet. I actually held my Canon 50mm f/1.8 BACKWARDS against the body for a macro shot. Cool eh? See the two others on my flickr page here. See the rest of my pictures on my flickr photostream here.

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Navy Bay "Predators"

Yesterday I once again walked home from RMC (Well at least started to) and never got past the Navy Bay fields. Just like the Robins I saw last week, there were several different kinds of birds flying around. I spent a good hour just watching and trying to get a couple of good pictures of the two you see below. I'm pretty sure I was making one of them nervous since one of them had half a fish in his (her?) grip the whole time (I'm assuming it didn't want to take it back to the nest since I was around). To see the rest of the pictures from this set on flickr click here. For the rest of the pictures on my photostream in general, click here.

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Animals

Here some examples of my animal pictures, all of which can be viewed at different sizes here. You may see a slight bias to my dog GuynS who is always around and happy to have is picture taken.

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Landscape/HDR

Here some examples of my Landscape/HDR images, all of which can be viewed at different sizes here.

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Portraits/People

Here some examples of my portraits/action pictures, all of which can be viewed at different sizes here.

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