Day 27, 365 Day Project

I was sitting on the couch reading to Luke when I looked over my shoulder and saw the sun shinning through the flowers in the bay window behind me. I quickly ran and grabbed my camera and got off a few shots before the sun dipped behind the trees. I love the rim light on the flower and the way it made the rest of the flower glow. I am not sure what type of plant this is (anyone knows you can tell me), but one of the things I don't like is that the blooms always look waxy and fake. If I did not see it grow I would think the thing was made of plastic. This image makes it more attractive to me.

Shoot with the Canon 7D, 24-70 f2.8 @ f8.0, 1/200th sec at 100 ISO.

Day 26, 365 Day Project.

Since I purcahsed the 7D in September I have grown to love high ISO photography. Till this point I have not tried the High setting (12,800 ISO) so I thought I would tonight. I had finished my class at SAIT and slipped the camera on to "H" and headed into the hallway. Seeing the water fountain I moved in close and shot the above image. The shutter speed is 1/80th sec @ f7.1 with the 24-70 f2.8 lens. I am totally impressed at the noise level in these images and can see me shooting much more at 12,800 ISO.

I then drove over to Crescent Heights hill and photographed the next three images.


This image was shot at 1/15th sec @ f 5.6 handheld.

This image was at 1/125th sec @ f5.6 handheld.

Finally I saw this reflection in the window and mirror on the driver side as I was about to drive away. This is at 1/20th sec @ f2.8.

Day 25, 365 Day Project

An absolutely gorgeous day here in Calgary which afforded me a chance to take a nice long walk in Nose Hill Park near my home. I started out shooting the trees, but as I trudged through the snow I started to become fascinated by the shadows being cast by the blades of grass breaking through the snow. I did this for close to two hours and in doing so was able to accomplish one of my other goals for the New Year, that of doing at least an hour of exercise a day. Walking through the deep snow and going up and down the ravines got my heart rate going and I worked up a good sweat. In all a very good day.

All images shot with the Canon 7D and the 24-70 f2.8 lens. Trees shot at 100 ISO at 1/200 sec and f8.0 and 1/100 sec @ f10 for the grass and shadows images.

Day 24, 365 Day Project

We picked up this small fountain a couple of years ago on a trip to Phoenix, AZ. When thinking about what I would like to do for today's image I felt that it would make an interesting subject. So down to the studio I took it, set it on a pedestal and put one Balcar light with the extra small Chimera softbox to the right hand side slightly behind the fountain. For the top exposure I was at at f16 for an 8 second exposure using the modeling light only from Balcar.

I got what I wanted in just two takes and was about to break down when I notice a nice silhouette if I moved my camera position to have the softbox directly across from the camera. I cropped in to what I thought was an interesting angle and shot the bottom image at f22 for 13 seconds having turned the power all the way down on the modeling light. I then used a small flash light to add some detail back into the one basin just near the bottom as it was to dark on my initial test.

Both images were shot with the Canon 7D, 24-70 f2.8 lens at 100ISO.

Day 23, 365 Day Project.

Photographed one of my favorite pieces of the past today. This old gas pump is in the town of Bragg Creek just west of Calgary. I have taken many images of this pump over the years and I never get tired of it. Today I wanted to experiment with the different App's I have on my iPod touch so I shot it with both the Hipstamatic app and all the looks the free version offers, and then with the touch's camera and used the instagram app to create this image. The filtre used is called "Hefe" and I felt it worked well to give it a look that has an old style feel.

Day 22, 365 Day Project.

Today I taught my wedding photography class at SAIT. For the third class I usually do a simple studio set-up and try to bring in a bride and groom or have the student's bring someone. Today was a little different as we had no subject's and had to use student's to volunteer. Cooper and Kathleen steped up and did a great job for the class. Here are a couple of individual portraits I did of each of them. Lighting was an Alien Bee 1600ws with a 4 x 6 Larson Softbox on the left @ f8 as the main light and an Alien Bee 800ws with an umbrella @ F4 5/10 behind camera slightly to the right. Canon 7D, 24-70 f2.8 @ f8, 1/125 sec at 100 iso.

Day 21, 365 Day Project.

Plus 2 today and the children from Luke's Playschool were taking advantage of the warm weather to do some sledding. As one of the class photographers I try to document as many activities as I can. I captured a number of great images of the children having fun and liked this one a lot. The emotion on their faces shows the excitment of the day. The angle was perfect, so much so that I had to jump out of the way at the last second or they would have taken me out. I would have loved to have had one similar of Luke but He only did one run right at the end and as you can see was very cautious (images below).

Technical info: Canon 7D, 24-70 f2.8 @ f5.6, 1/500th sec at 400 ISO. Metered off the snow and opened up 1 2/3 stops.