Today I took the macro lens out to photograph icicles. I got a few interesting shots. I was in a mood for simplifying things, and I was striving to make my shots as clean and uncluttered as possible. I intended to convert everything to monochrome, but when I finally sat down with the images, I decided I like my icicles better as nature made them - with a subtle tint of cold blue.

This photo was an exception. The icicle was bright white, the background baby blue, and for some reason the base of the icicle had a pinkish hue... The whole thing looked like a decoration one might find on a cake at a baby shower. Despite that, I really liked the photo. It's not the typical cliched icicle photo. I therefore decided to rescue it with monochrome conversion.

I'm not even sure if this can be called an 'icicle', as it was not hanging down, but rather jutting up from the railing on my porch. Are icicles analogous to stalactites and stalagmites? Is there a special term for ones that jut upwards?

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.

My ability to post photos over the summer was largely limited by the slowness of my laptop. I needed the laptop to study for my exams, and posting a single photo might cause it to spool helplessly for more than an hour. Now my laptop's performance is marginally better... but I'm the one who is spooling. I can't seem to summon the physical or mental energy to take new photos or edit the ones I already have on my computer. By the time I get up, it seems as though the light is already fading. It's a "balmy" -12 degrees out, and I feel like I'm going to die of hypothermia every time I open the door.

Today was my last real day off from work until December 29th. I was hoping to try out the new lens, but there was nothing really to take pictures of in my yard. The cats didn't want to be outside, and the thought of going for a walk did not appeal to me. Besides... it was about 3pm and already starting to get dark. I thought of swapping over to the macro lens to photograph icicles and got stuck spooling in the process. Hence, a Red Bubble Reject today.

This photo was taken almost exactly a year ago. My camera was brand new, and I couldn't wait to try it, despite the fact that it was -37 out and already dark! The only post-processing of this photo was to convert it to monochrome... though the color version doesn't look much different (sadly no red roof on the house). I've always been impressed by the 'retro' look of this photo... It looks like a picture you would find in a social studies textbook about the pioneers. I was clueless about my camera then, and probably wouldn't be able to replicate that mood/style now even if I tried!

Here is another photo from my experiments with the orchid and off-camera flash. I title this one "Maybe"... as in "Maybe it is good enough for posting. Maybe it isn't". The flash comes with a steep learning curve. I am still quite clueless, but I can honestly say I've improved by an order of magnitude since this shot was taken. This is the last of the older photos I have stored up for posting, though I'm hoping to take the new lens out for a spin this weekend. I've also been doing some more indoor work with the flash, the macro lens, and some very interesting subject matter... but I haven't had a chance to go through the photos and pick out the good ones. Hopefully I'll have something ready to post this weekend.

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.

My computer has been in Windows mode the past few days so that I could scan in some things from work. I can't view my photos in Windows, hence no posts. It's just as well. I haven't had the time, or frankly the inclination to take new photos.

Believe it or not, this ladybug photo was taken in mid November. I don't think I've ever seen a ladybug in November before. She was kind of a deep rust color rather than the usual bright red, and blended in nicely with the woodchips in my yard. I got a few shots of her taking off and flying, but none were in sharp enough focus to consider posting. There's one that came very close... I may post it later on if I get desperate for material. I always see crisp shots of insects in flight and wonder how on earth the photographer has managed to pull it off... A million monkeys banging away at a million typewriters, I guess.

Graem has done some fiddling with my computer in the past few days, and I now have access to the 1TB drive where all of my photos from before June 2009 are stored! This means I'll be revamping my Red Bubble profile in the next little while. It's something I've been waiting to do. I'll be removing a few photos (the ones I don't like, the ones I'm sick of, and the ones that no longer represent my best work). This will mean removing a few of my most popular photos from the site. I'll be adding some of my favorite photos from this blog to my Red Bubble profile, just to get them more exposure and see how they fare there. Some of my favorite photos have been buried in the archives of this blog where nobody ever sees them.

I've been looking at a lot of other photoblogs and other people's photography sites, and in my more ambitious moments, I envision a radical redesign for Sun Goes Boom. In reality, it probably won't happen... I have no computer skills and frankly no desire to learn. Blogger provides a conveniently easy (if not ideal) template.

Posts here might be sparse for the next while... I have only a couple of "oldies" stored up, and won't be taking many new shots until work starts being kinder and I get my head screwed on right again.

I've had this photo sitting on my hard drive for a while waiting to be posted. I have photographed these berries before, earlier this fall. Now they are all wrinkled... I personally consider this photo too blurry and poorly composed for posting, but Graem thought it was 'abstract'. He suggested I post it on Red Bubble and title it 'Raisin'. I haven't had time to take many new photos and I only have a couple of older ones saved up... so today I will post the Raisin.

This is another of my experimental photos using off-camera flash indoors. I love orchids, but haven't had much luck keeping them. A while ago I learned all about orchids and how to care for them. Unfortunately I have never really been able to provide them with the right conditions in terms of light, temperature and humidity. I haven't really had enough time to devote to it either. If I had my way, I would have a huge garden/greenhouse/pond and all of the necessary infrastructure to care for it properly. I wouldn't have to waste 98% of my life working at a job I don't enjoy while living in an environment that can only be described as spirit-crushing. But I don't have my way. So I will have to do my best for this little orchid that was given to me as a present. And the off-camera flash will be my substitute for sunlight.

I haven't been able to figure out how to reply to comments directly on Blogger... though I'm sure there is a way. Someone asked me whether I have had any luck with human portraits. I haven't had much time to work on it... I have taken many portraits of my husband, all of which are too awful to post here. There is virtually no natural light in my house, and the walls are all beige. If I attempt to bounce my flash off of the walls to diffuse it, the resulting photos are an ugly yellow-brown that isn't so noticible with flower petals, but it does wreak havoc with skin tones. Adjusting my white balance doesn't seem to help. I'm pretty sure the technical aspects of portrait photography will fall into place as I practice more with the flash and maybe get a reflecting umbrella or two.

The human aspects of portrait photography are a bit more difficult to handle. I feel bad telling my subjects how to pose. To be honest, I have always hated having portraits taken... The photographer always wants me to twist my head one way and my knees the other, while sitting at an unnatural angle. As a photographer, I can now understand the rationale for doing that... but it still seems contrived. My mom and I had portraits taken when I was 6. I look at those photos and I don't see myself at all. My hair is naturally straight, but my mom spent 3 hours burning my head with the curling iron in order to make it look curly. I was wearing a dress - something I never would have done at that age - and I remember how awful it was to go outside in stockings in December. Graduation photos were the same... An unnatural pose wearing unnatural clothing in front of a wall of fake books. Why not use real books? Come to think of it, why use books at all? I don't remember studying for anything in high school or even really doing much homework. High school is an important time in one's life, but really not for academics. Why can't photographers try to bring out some of the more important things in grad portraits? The growing up/transition from childhood to adulthood sort of ideas? Why not? Because it would take effort... and the kids couldn't be shuffled through en-masse like components on an assembly line.

I'm at an age where my peers are all reproducing, and consequently showing me the 'amazing' baby or family portraits they have had taken. While these photos are technically good, they seem for the most part artificial to me... everybody dressed up in their best clothes... kids dressed up in sailor suits playing with fake wooden boats... Baby sitting on a fake park bench with fake trees in the background looking shell-shocked and horrified. For me, portraits should create memories... The best photos of kids are of them playing in the backyard, grass stains, scraped knees and all. Why does everyone seem to want memories of things that never actually existed?

I did manage to get a few good portrait-style shots at my mom's wedding a year ago... but the best people photos I have taken are by and large candids.

I've been looking at portraits taken by some of the 'old masters' - Cartier-Bresson, Steichen, and a few others... and this is really something to aspire to. But I'm kind of stuck on the notion that most people in modern society have a vastly different idea than I do of what a 'portrait' ought to be.

This Red Bubble reject is actually one of my favorite photos. Spring was very late coming to Saskatoon this year, and I thought my tulips would never bloom. When they finally popped open, it was sudden and violent.

I actually had this photo made into a print. It looks much better to me on paper than on screen.