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.

This is my favorite photo from our fall visit to Parliament. The clouds, the trees and the spires of the church all came together to make the scene interesting - not to mention some good light. This was another good use of the telephoto lens. I haven't had nearly as much opportunity to use it as I would like.

This shot was taken in my backyard in early August. I don't see anything particularly special about it, but for some reason I liked it then, and I still consider it postworthy - if only because it reminds me of summer. I hope I have the chance to take some photos this weekend. I'll be heading to Saskatoon for a while, and I don't know if I'll bring the camera. It's tempting, since I'll have a few days free to roam around the old stomping grounds. On the other hand, I probably already have too many things that need to be taken as carry-on, and the weather forecast on the prairies doesn't seem conducive to photo walks. Maybe living out east has just turned me into a cold weather wimp.

When I was just starting out with photography about 2.5 years ago, I read a magazine article where the author spent a whole summer photographing nothing but the brown-eyed susans in his yard. It seemed like a waste of a summer to me, but he did come up with some of the most interesting flower photos I have seen. More recently I have been reading posts on The Online Photographer blog where readers are challenged to spend a whole year using only one camera and one lens. These exercises are designed to enhance one's creative vision... When restricted to a single subject, one quickly becomes bored with all of the usual clichéd shots and starts to see the subject in new ways; a 'flower' becomes a hodge-podge compilation of parts that are interesting in their own right. Ditto with being restricted to one focal length.

I haven't undertaken anything that extreme, but this summer I did spend a couple of days photographing nothing but my geraniums. I got lots of boring shots, lots of shots spoiled by blur and bad light... and a few keepers. This is one.

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.

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.

My mom recently moved to Sackville, New Brunswick, and I went to visit her there for the first time in mid October. The fall colours probably would have been more brilliant had I gone 2 weeks earlier, but there was still some bright foliage left for me to see. It rained most of the weekend I was there, but I did get some very good light. I like this particular shot because it was taken right after a heavy rain, and the leaves have that saturated, wet look. The desolation of the highway is also nice... Small town NB is very different from Ontario. This photo is a little underexposed, though, and the light is not stellar. It was still one of the 'keepers' from the trip, and one of my mom's favorites.

I often read about landscape photographers who don't even bother taking pictures if the light is not 'exactly' right. I always considered them to be kind of 'photography snobs'... There is a finite amount of time in life for photography... for most of us, not nearly enough! Why pass up an opportunity to take pictures just because the weather/light is not cooperating? Recently I've come to see their point of view, though... the New Brunswick trip is a case in point. I was half-heartedly clicking away at some trees beside the highway with the sky completely overcast and the sun obliterated. My subject matter was beautiful, but I knew that even if my shots were perfectly composed, I would end up with mediocre photos at best. Bad light makes for flat pictures, with little latitude for adjusting the contrast and colour saturation in post-processing. As I was standing there snapping, the sun came out, setting the foliage on fire and bringing out the colours in the ominous grey/blue clouds. I only fired off two pictures before my mom got worried about the time and we had to go home... but the difference between those two pictures and my 'cloudy' pictures is really night and day. I'll probably be posting those shots soon. Does this mean I'm becoming a photo snob?

This is a photo taken in spring 2010 right before we left for Iceland. Ottawa has a tulip festival every spring. A friend was visiting at the time, and so was my brother-in-law. The three of us decided to check out the tulip festival. The timing of the festival is supposed to coincide with the tulips being in full glory... but everything was early this year - we had flowers in our yard the second week of March! By the time the festival rolled around, most of the tulips had seen better days. That's ok... I have lots of photos of tulips in full bloom, but some of the most interesting shots come from flowers that are starting to decay.