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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.