Something tropical.

With winter a week away it is sometimes nice to see something that makes us thing of more tropical locals.  Today I was picking Cool up from the last stop of his choirs school tour and there was a large fish tank with saltwater fish in it.  I remember seeing fish like these when I dived the Great Barrier Reef in Australia back in 1990 and it was fun to snap a few shots through the glass.  As usual I post processed in Snapseed and posted them to Instagram with the top being the Photo of the Day.

We did have  a lovely sunset tonight with one lone cloud capturing the suns last light.  Here is the capture I achieved.

Holiday Baking

I don't bake very often and today was my chance to make chocolate chip cookies for Cool and Luke.  As I laid out the dough on the tray I decided it might work as a shot for my Photo of the Day.  A little post processing in Snapseed and here it is.

Is Instagram a fad?

I will be the first to admit that I was not one of the early adopters of Instagram (I did join in November 2010). This was mainly due to the fact I had a cell phone at the time that did not support apps and the camera was not overly user friendly.  I believe I started using Instagram while I still had my iPod touch and with that I only dabbled in it once and a while.  That all changes though when I stepped up to my iPhone 4 in the summer of 2010 and I found the ease of the camera and apps more inviting and thus I jumped on board this photo sharing community.

Now I have my own beliefs and philosophies regarding social media and in particular photo sharing site like Instagram, Tadaa and Streamzoo.  The first is I try and follow those whose work I truly admire.  I don't always return a follow just because someone follows me, unless they are a true follower giving regular likes and the odd comment. When I see this I believe we have developed a bond and thus we are peers and this is more important to me.  I would rather have a small number of peers, those who enjoy my work, rather than 1000's of followers. Now not all those whom I follow, follow me back but I keep them as I enjoy their photographs.

As to liking I believe that once I am following you and that work is fairly consistent and appealing I will give likes on most of the images you post.  This is only fair and this is why I follow you.  It is sad though that only 5 to 10% of followers actually like the work of those that they follow.  I'm not expecting this number to be in the 90% range or higher, but 50 - 60% is where I believe it should be.

As to the images I post, I personally try to show interesting work that I am doing.  I also look to have a bit of variety to what I display and will only post a few photo's at a time. I want people to look at my work and see a consistent and strong body of work and see that I am challenging myself to be a better photographer. I don't believe in the scatter gun approach to posting 100's of images a day, nor multiple shots of the same subject.  Quality over quantity was something I was brought up to believe in all aspects of my life.

Now is Instagram the future of photo sharing or just a hot fad for the moment?  While it is true that it has been around since November 2010 it has mostly taken flight in the last year.  This also coincides with it's availability for Android devices and with it's reason take over by Facebook.  This has only added to the proliferation of images on the web and some may say "fluff or garbage".  There are those who say it is ruining photography, I on the other hand says it just gives another way to express ourselves, albeit simply.

Whether it is a fad or a tool will be decided by the individual user.  For those who are just scatter gunning it will be a fad and they will move on to the next thing that allows them to share their lives with the world.  For those of use who see it, and camera phones in general, as just another tool to help us achieve our vision it will be around for a long time.  We can use it to network, promote and get feed back from our peers.  The only thing that can ruin it for us are the powers who develop and control Instagram and the way we are able to use it.  If they drop the ball another new thing will start up and replace it.

Recently a video has gone viral that expresses the state of Instagram in society in a light hearted way. ( http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6853117/look-at-this-instagram-nickelback-parody )  While there is a lot of truth in it I remember an incident when I was young that sort of adds a different perspective.  When I started as the photographer/reporter for my college basketball team I remember being teased by the players after traveling with them on a couple road trips. When I talked to the coach he told me that meant the guys had accepted me as part of the team.  In some ways this parody poking fun at it is in a way showing the acceptance of Instagram in our culture.

Now to my photo of the day.  This leaf was on the front driveway as new snow was falling.  I snapped it from a couple of different angles before moving on.

Once inside I created the two versions you see here.  The one above is completely done in Instagram from the crop to the use of the Valencia filter with it's native frame.  Below is my Snapseed version with very little post production other than the crop and frame.  I like both, but choose the Instagram version for my Photo of the Day.

The before and after.

Since starting this project I have posted my finished iPhone photo's and talked about the process but never shared the starting image.  Tonight I change that after talking with a few of my student's who were curious about what the original looked like.  Moving forward I will do the same for the remainder of my Instagram 366 photo project till the end of the year.  This will be similar to my friend Jonathan Marks ( http://www.jonathanmarksfineart.com ) who shares his process on his blog.

Tonight while at my boy's choir practice at the Haddon Road School I notice a Menorah that was there in one of the showcases.  The Akiva Academy is located in the school and as such they celebrate Chanukah.  I was attracted to it and snapped the top image through the glass.  As you can see it is plastic and electric and there were other items in the case as well.

After taking the photo I opened Snapseed and brought the file into it. First I made the crop and then I knew the grunge filter would give me a look that I wanted.  I scrolled through the different results until I found the selection that looked best.  I modified the saturation and the texture which kept the focus on and made the Menorah look stronger.  This also eliminated the background distractions.  I finished up by selecting a frame that I felt suited the photo as well.

I hope you enjoyed the explination and I wish all my Jewish friends a Happy Chanukah.

Souvenir of a warmer place.

Well as we are in the grip of winter I gravitated to the Cactus's that we had picked up in Phoenix, Arizona a few years back.  It is nice to have these gentle reminders of travels past and I decided to make them today's Photo of the Day.  After taking the shot and cropping and doing some minor adjustments in Snapseed I did the final processing using the app Jazz which gave the soft edge focusing and the frame.

The Christmas Flower

Today while I was out I decided to pick-up a small Poinsettia to decorate our home for the holiday season.  We are not planning to decorate to much this year but I wanted to add a little Christmas colour.  I decided that I wanted to make a nice photograph of it so I placed it on the leather ottoman and added a black background.  The front windows provided the light and I shot it with my iPhone.  I post processed in Snapseed darkening and desaturating the photo a bit then added the frame.

Riding the rails of Calgary's West Leg of the LRT.

With just 23 days left until the end of the year I am already starting to think ahead and what I will do with my consecutive shooting streak.  It has been a lot of fun, sometimes tedious and very much a challenge.  I have learned a lot and have seen my own enjoyment of photography return.

Using the iPhone as a tool of choice for the past year as given me a lot of freedom to create images that I have enjoyed.  Like today's photo, taken while I was traveling the length of the new west leg of Calgary's Light Rail Transit system.  I had my boy's with me and with the fairly large crowd of people who turned out to check out the new line, my attention had to be on them throughout the afternoon.  There were plenty of photographers out shooting all the activities and architecture of the new train system, but I was here to enjoy with my kids.  Working with a DSLR can take your attention away from your surroundings as you focus on what is around you.  Phone cameras though seem to give you more freedom to quickly take them out, compose your shot, capture it and then move on.  This is very important when you are looking out for the safety of little one's.  So while we were waiting between trains I was able to photograph some of the decorations adorning the new Sirocco Station.  Once I returned home I was then able to crop it and post process it with Snapseed and share it as my Instagram 366 photo.

One of the reasons we had ventured downtown and thus were out to be able an take advantage of the open house for the West Leg was that I wanted to pick-up some extension tubes from The Camera Store for my Canon system.  I have really started to enjoy shooting close up using the iPhone and wanted to have this ability with my DSLR.  Now I know that a true Macro lens is one of the best tools for doing this type of work, yet I like some of the versatility of extension tubes.  My reasoning for this is that I can use them on lenses that have different focal lengths thus giving me some other options that a prime lens macro might not offer.  There is also the factor of weight when one is traveling and as I will be spending sometime in India in the near future this was an important part of my decision.

I put the new tubes on my Canon 7D when returned home and tried a variety of things at the start to see how they worked with both the 24-70mm f2.8 and the 70-200mm f2.8 lenses.  They were a little tricky at first but I slowly got use to them.  After trying some different small items I looked around to see what I could find that would be interesting and something I would be willing to share.  I noticed our Hibiscus plant has some new buds on it and figured to work with them.  Now it was late in the day and the sun was setting creating a nice back light.  I tried a few different angles before getting down low with the sun behind the bud and the 24-700 at 1/100 sec at f5 and 100 ISO. I loved the silhouette that was created and how large the sun became.  After downloding it to my computer I uploaded it to my iPhone so I could add the frame using RealCamera+ and then sharing it on Instagram, Tadaa and Streamzoo.