Dritvik Elephant Foot

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.