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.

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.

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.

In keeping with the theme of simplicity, this is a photo of a tree reflected in gently rippled water. The color version had a brownish hue. At Graem's suggestion, I converted it to black-and-white. In its current incarnation, this photo reminds me of a Rorschach ink blot.

Last weekend, we went on a photo journey to Val-des-Bois, Quebec. Up until last year, my only visit to Quebec had been a layover in the Montreal airport when I was en-route to somewhere else. Last year when I visited Ottawa, I ventured across the bridge to Gatineau. I got lost looking for the Museum of Civilization and became quite hungry wandering aimlessly around downtown Gatineau. I was afraid to stop for food anywhere because I don't speak French.

Val-des-Bois was beautiful... This scene absolutely blew my mind. Shimmering sand and rocks, fall colors, calm water and a bridge! The photo doesn't really do it justice. The light was failing by the time we got there and my landscape photography skill leaves much to be desired... but this is still one of my favorite photos.

This photo is another Red Bubble reject taken at about 5am on August 4, 2008 when I went for a walk with the camera before going to bed. I like the still water and the reflection of the clouds and blue sky. I like the quality of the light, and the fact that the train bridge can just barely be seen in the background. Morning light is kind of a novelty for me, since I am such a night person. If I'm seeing morning light, I'm usually racing to work, late, with my nose buried in my coffee and my brain preoccupied with other things. It's rare to have a morning off and be awake to enjoy it.

A couple of weeks ago, I took the wide angle lens down to the river and tried to capture a similar shot. The colors were maybe a bit better, but none of the photos really captured the same mood. I have thousands of dollars worth of photography equipment that I didn't have a year ago, but sometimes just getting the right moment is the most important thing.

This was taken at the same slough as my sunset photo. There was a still pond where you could see the reflection of the trees and the sky.