This is one of my favorite flower macros, and maybe one of my favorite photos I have taken so far. It was taken at the botanical garden just recently. For some reason, the flower reminds me of a pineapple.

This is a Red Bubble reject taken in early 2009. Believe it or not, the temperature was about -35 degrees Celsuis the evening this shot was taken. The sky was just spectacular.

The other photo I posted from that day is very popular on Red Bubble. It was my most viewed and commented photo for a long time. This particular shot never received much Red Bubble love. In fact, it was rejected from several Red Bubble groups as being 'technically inadequate'.

Whenever we visit my in-laws and I have my portable hard drive with me, they insist on seeing all of my photos. The problem with that is that I take a lot of photos... the majority uninteresting, even to me. When I visit a new place, I have no interest in photographing people or the usual iconic landmarks that other tourists photograph. At the same time, it's common for me to take 100 or more shots of the same flower trying to get everything right, or to photograph the same landscape from a million different vantage points using different camera settings. It must be incredibly painful for anyone to view all of my photos if I haven't sorted through them first to pick out the best ones. To be honest, it is even kind of painful for me.

My in-laws sat patiently through my collection of winter 2009 landscapes (>5000 photos in all), too polite to flee the scene. This photo of the silos is the only one my father-in-law commented on. He liked the composition. That simple compliment meant more to me than any amount of gratuitous Red Bubble feedback.

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.

The experimental farm is surrounded by barbed wire. When I took this photo, I liked the green and gold colors in the background with the barbed wire crisp in the foreground. The photo reminds me of a flag... albeit the flag of a country with an oppressive government!

This is foxglove, the plant from which digitalis (a common cardiac medication) is derived. I have always loved the spotted flowers on this plant. This photo was taken at the public botanical gardens, though I did attempt to grow foxglove in my garden back in Saskatoon. It claimed to grow in shade, and since my yard was predominantly shade, I decided to get a bunch. Unfortunately, just because something can grow in shade doesn't necessarily mean it will thrive there. The plants survived and even bloomed, but in the absence of sunlight, the flowers were an anemic yellow/green color instead of the usual vibrant pink. The spots were pale yellow and barely visible.

I'm away at a conference now and can't post anything new... But I suppose I could post a Red Bubble reject. This is one of the photos taken in Jan 2009 when my camera was brand new. We went out into the -40 degree weather and waist-deep snow to photograph old farmhouses. I remember the day this was taken quite clearly. The sun was bright, the sky a brilliant blue, and the little bits of grass sticking up were like yellow strings of gold against the snow. I liked these photos better in monochrome, though. The color versions seemed too busy.

All of these early farmhouse photos were slightly underexposed... I think because my camera was metering from the snow, and I knew nothing about post-processing then. Even the monochrome conversion was done in-camera. The vignetting occurred because I was using a cheap lens. In my opinion it adds to the vintage feeling of the shot. If I was trying to recreate this shot intentionally now, I probably wouldn't even be able to.

I'll probably do a complete overhaul of my Red Bubble profile soon. My three most viewed photos have 200 more views than their nearest competitors. To be honest, the most viewed photos are not my best photos, and if I am getting sick of looking at them, I'm sure others are too. I want to put up some better shots that have been buried on this blog, as well as some fresh new shots. All of that will have to wait for my laptop to start speaking to the hard-drive where my photos are stored, though. In other words, expect the overhaul some time in the next 10 years.

I ordinarily don't like photos taken from directly above a flower. Photos like this will always look 'nice', simply because flowers are beautiful, amazing things... But there isn't much interesting or creative about pointing your camera directly down at a flower and clicking the shutter. I've noticed some photographers whose portfolios consist only of head-on flower shots... Booooring. Sometimes I do succumb to the temptation to take these shots, though... and sometimes they do turn out alright, especially if I'm able to get in very close, with the light shining through the petals.

When I walked through the Experimental Farm on my way to the botanical garden, I saw a couple of ears of corn poking out just waiting to be harvested. To be honest, I was strongly tempted to steal an ear of corn. I have no idea why... in fact, I had corn on the cob sitting in my fridge at home waiting to be eaten. The sun was shining on the corn making it glow temptingly, and I debated for a long time before deciding not to take a cob. A guy in a Government of Canada jeep had, after all, driven up just as I had decided to go take photos in the middle of the corn field on my previous trip... Who knows... maybe stealing government corn is a federal offense. Being an "experimental" farm, who knows what they are doing to the corn? Besides... my camera bag is jam-packed with gear. There is no room for corn cobs! I decided to capture the corn with my camera rather than stealing it. On the way home, I didn't have to worry about temptation. The birds had beaten me to the corn cobs, which were lying on the ground, half-eaten.

Here are some mushrooms, discovered as I was wandering around the Exprimental Farm a few weeks ago. It rained nearly every day this summer, and we've had quite a bit of rain so far this fall. The result: mushrooms popping up everywhere!

Here's another photo of the purple flowers that just started blooming in October, and are still flourishing despite the fact we've had frost a couple of nights now. Their petals shine when the sun strikes them, especially after a rain. This photo was taken the last time Jackie came outside to photograph flowers with me before going into the hospital. I knew he was a sick cat that day. He came out, curled up in my lap and wouldn't move - so small and so fragile.