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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yet another picture of the botanical gardens. I was photographing roses, when I noticed how the sun was shining right in front of the rose bed, illuminating these flowers very nicely.

Here is a closeup of one of the white flowers I photographed on the morning with "magical light". Sadly, it's probably the last photo I will post on my blog before the exams. I have a couple more that were ready for posting, but they're older photos (from before I left SK), and looking at them now, I really don't like them all that much.

A week from today, my stupid exams will be over. I don't work next weekend, and I intend to take the camera somewhere interesting and take a lot of photos. If I pass, it will be a great celebration. If I fail, it will be much-needed therapy. Either way, I hope to have something interesting to post.

Speaking of interesting posts, Moosh has some concerns with the picture I posted of him yawning. He worries about ending up as a LOLcat - a legitimate concern, I guess. LOLcat stardom would be the ultimate humiliation for a cat as dignified as Moosh.

This flower looks like an origami flower to me. I was never any good at origami... My paper swans and cranes end up looking like genetic mutants. I tried to fold a beetle once... The result looked very much like a beetle - one that had been squashed under someone's shoe!

Whenever I'm studying for an exam, my general knowledge is always broadened much more than my knowledge of the topic I am trying to study. I feel compelled to sit at my desk, tethered to the computer... so I find myself procrastinating by looking up all kinds of random things.

While studying for my internal medicine exams a couple of years ago, I played a lot of online chess. I can't do that now... I use Linux, which means my computer is basically incompatible with everything, unless I want to get a PhD in jargonese to figure out what people on Linux forums are actually trying to say. My laptop is also antiquated now... Most chess programs send it into an infinite, overheated spool. But I did waste a bit of time looking up chess programs for Linux the other day... I found myself reading two rather complicated articles on game theory... interesting, but over my head. Of course this meant I had to look up and read a few simpler articles. I ended up reading about the history of rock-scissors-paper.

I met someone from Lybia last week, and it occurred to me that I know nothing about Lybia. This prompted a visit to Wikipedia, and from there a lengthy jaunt around the 'net.

While procrastinating on Red Bubble, I discovered someone who does origami on a very tiny scale... I was quite impressed by these sub-centimeter ducks. After seeing this, I decided to google-search 'micro origami', hoping to find more of the same. Instead, I found things like this. You can imagine how that took me off on an entirely new tangent.

I've been feeling too stressed out and guilty to go out and take photos... but with the amount of time I spend procrastinating on the internet, some photography would be healthier and easier on the eyes!

This is a color photo of the flower in the last post. I actually meant to post the color photo first, but clicked on the wrong thumbnail.