My growing boy.

Throughout the entire Instagram 366 challenge I have photographed a variety of subjects.  During this time my youngest son Luke has shown how much he has grown as he was once pretty shy and difficult to photograph.  However since September and the start of the new school year I have seen him blossom in to a happy and out going young boy.  So much so that he often suggests that I take his photo as my Photo of the Day.  Tonight he was playing as we washed his hair and he wanted me to spike it up.  After looking in the mirror he said he wanted it to be the picture for today.  I asked him to turn in to profile and took a couple of shots and then did a bit of post processing in Snapseed.

Google+'s Snapseed

A number of months ago Google announced that it had acquired Nik Software.  One of my favorite apps is Nik's Snapseed and it was nice to see that they announced today the release of this app for Android devices (visit https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niksoftware.snapseed to download it).  It is still available in iTunes and is now free to use.  This is also another great development and even though I paid $4.99 for it I think that having it available for phone camera artists is wonderful.

Now I have been using this app for so long I have become very familiar with it and so I was happy to hear that they had also added a few new features to it's already powerful post production options.  The one I was looking most forward to was additions to the frames options.  However I must say that I am slightly disappointed in what they have done.  While they have offered more choices they have taken away one of the strongest features which was a way to adjust the size and area covered by the frame.  You can get some variety on each frame if you tap the frame number and it will give you a variety of options.  Some are noticeable while others are vary subtle. Another of the options is the new colorization which I have not been able to figure out.  You have the choice of black or white frames and when the colorization is on it does give a cream color but there are no sliders to pick or adjust the colors to what you feel might work with the image.  If it is there, the info button does not give you the instructions to tell you how to access it.

The other new feature they added was a filter dubbed Retrolux with 13 styles that are suppose to mimic a variety of film styles.  It looks interesting, but at this time I don't see any look that really jumps out at me that fits my style and vision.  This may change down the road and as I have always said, you must choose filters that suit the image you are working on and should I have one that this feature works with I might use them.

I used Snapseed for my Photo of the Day which was taken at Confederation Park of the annual Christmas Light display.  It was a fairly mild night at about -4 C when I took my walk along the lights snapping a variety of images.  This one turned out to be my favorite and I brought it in to the new Snapseed but did minimal post processing on it.  The main thing I did was the frame and I picked this one today.

Found at a local car dealer.

For the last week or so I have been experiencing difficulties with my car and have had it in and out of two different shops.  Now while this could be frustrating I was able to make the best of a bad situation. As I was leaving Shaganappi GM yesterday I noticed through the showroom window a vintage car.  I made a mental note with the hope that I could get a shot of it sometime.

Today when they called and told me they had corrected the problem caused by the other shop I decided to rum into the showroom and grab a couple of quick photo's. Now I will be honest that I did not pay attention to the model name as I was looking for unique angles and how to incorporate the reflection. After getting these two images I picked up my car and then came home and post processed it using Snapseed and the drama 1 filter.  The top one is my Photo of the Day.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

One of the surest signs of the Christmas season is the appearance of decorations everywhere. They can make for an interesting subject matter and as such I am sure I will have a few more in the final 28 days of the year ahead.  Today I came across this interesting candle holder at my mom's place and I like the snowflake design and the mirrored background. There was very little post processing on this photo with Snapseed other than the cropping and framing.

The beauty of Chaos.

In Jurassic Park the idea of chaos theory was floated which stated "Small differences in initial conditions yield widely diverging outcomes, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general".  It seems that the chaos theory is a large part of the sciences, mathematics and nature.

In photography we are taught to avoid chaos in our images.  We are told we need a central focus point, something to draw the viewers eye and to retain there gaze on the photograph.  Thus random shapes and elements are not encouraged and in fact discouraged in photography.  However today I found that mother nature's chaotic structure can create an unexpected beauty.

After the heavy snow and the ice fog of the last two days the sun finally emerged to bring light to the environment around me.  We have this large barrel that we have flowers in to decorate the yard and today the remains of those plants were encrusted with snow and ice.  Though there was not one center point the whole had a beauty about it and attracted me to it.  I framed it up leaving a bit of the barrel for a base but kept the the jumble of stems and snow as a focal point.  It was a temporary sculpture of nature and my Photo of the Day.

A trip to Santa.

December is the official start to the Christmas season and what is not better then taking your kids to see Santa.  I took Cool and Luke to see the Santa at Northland Village mall and captured this image with the iPhone.  The interesting thing is this is the same Santa that we took Cool to first his first visit back in 2002 although back then he was at Brentwood Village mall.  This is my Photo of the Day for today.

When we returned home I wanted to show the winter wonderland that we have out our front window.  It looks so nice, especially when we have a heavy snow fall.

Latter in the afternoon the boy's had practice for the annual Christmas pageant at the church.  While they were busy rehearsing I took some photo's of some of the flower decorating the narthax.  Here are two shots I did and post processed with Snapseed.

Walking in the park on a frigid morning.

The best landscape and nature photographer's usually go out in weather conditions that most people would avoid.  Now while I hesitate to put myself into that category, I did pull a page from there book and headed out in to Fish Creek Park in the South end of Calgary this morning.  Now I had to be in this end of town to drop my boys off for choir, so I wanted to take the opportunity to photograph the frost that had settled due to the fog today. It was around -16 C when I arrived at the parking lot and I headed out to see what I could find.

As I hiked I past a few other people who were out as well walking there dog's.  One commented to me as we past that the only people crazy enough to be out it this weather were dog owner's and photographers.  Now the river was mostly frozen over but I came across this one section that had not and by good fortune there was an old tree lying across it which I felt was perfect to add a little interest into the scene.  The first shot is the one I picked for my Photo of the Day and I shot it using the WoodCamera app as I wanted to add a colour cast.  However I am not satisfied with the way this app finishes things up so I brought the file into Snapseed where I did a little enhancement, took back some saturation and added the frame.

After shooting with WoodCamera I then took the following photo using Hipstamatic and the BlacKeys B&W film.  Although I like the look this is one time when I wish I had more then the square image the app produces.

With all the frost on everything I was looking for interesting scenes to shoot and show this winter wonderland of ours.  Now while I wish it was snowing as it was when I left home in the north west end of the city, I had to make do with what I could find.  The following three photo's captured the mood and feel of the day.

While all the previous photo's had been taken with the iPhone I did have my Canon 7D and 24-70 f2.8 lens with me.  I did shoot a number of photo's of the winter scenes around me but the one's I liked the most were of these chickadee's.  As I was walking through the brush I was suddenly surrounded by a number of the tiny birds.  I decided to stop and stay very still to see what would happen.  Sure enough they would swoop in and land on branches close to me and then fly away.  They landed within 2 feet of me and with the lens at 70mm I was able to fill most of the frame with them.  The following two images were my favourites and after I down loaded them to the computer and did some minor post production work I uploded them to the iPhone.  Here I was able to work with snapseed to use the centre focus filter and the frames to finish the photo's

Once I returned home I decided that it was time to shave of my Movember mustache and beard.  I end today's post with a self portrait of my clean shave mug.