A single shot.

I have talked to many photographers who have started the 365 day challenge only to give up well short of the goal.  I know it can be a struggle and being creative is difficult sometimes.  For those who feel they can't meet the challenge I would like to encourage you that all it takes is a single shot to keep your steak intact.  Having a smart phone with you makes it a lot easier and today's images are a good example of how I manage to do my photo a day even with a busy schedule.

November 20.  I had seen the subject for this day's photo the day previous but the lighting was not right.  Today as I walked by this turtle ride in the playground beside the boy's school the sun was just right and casting a wonderful shadow that completed the shot.  A quick iPhone capture that was brought in to Snapseed with a little grunge added to finish the image.

November 21.  I took Cool to his vocal coach this evening and while I was waiting to pick him up I noticed an interesting light fixture in her living room.  I just had a few seconds to snap a shot before Cool came out and we headed home.  Once I looked at the shot on my camera I noticed it was exactly the way I wanted and so the only post work I did was to crop and add the framing using Snapseed.

Fun Photo Techniques.

I down loaded OnOne's Perfect Photo Suite 8 beta version the other day and put the features that I like best to the test with the photo's I am showing here. This is the third version of Perfect Photo suite that I have and I still use versions 6 and 7 from time to time.  I will be honest that I don't use all the features available and use the program mostly for adding frames to my images.  I find the new version is a little bit more intuitive then the previous two but that I need all three as the frames in each version are different.

I still have to test some other features of Perfect Suite and the one I am most interested in trying is the resize as I want to see how it will work for upresing some of my iPhone photo's for larger prints.  There does seem to be some good features for working on portraits which I will also explore.  Here are some of the results from my photo's from the past few days.

November 19.  I was looking for something to photograph for today's image and noticed our Christmas Cactus is in bloom.  I took it in to the studio and angled it against the Octobox to get the pleasing result you see in the first image.  On it's own I like the tones and subtlety of the pinks and was happy with the shot.

Once I brought the photo into Perfect Photo Suite I opened the frames window and started to look for one that would suit the photo.  I happened to click on one entitled "Tin Type Dirty" which intrigued me as I have developed an interest in the old wet plate collodion process.  I was pleasantly surprised with the result and felt the framing fit the contours of the flower.  I think I would like to try and get a print on a water clour paper of the image to see what it would look like.

November 18.  Monday night was one of my favourite class to teach in My Advanced Lighting course at SAIT.  This evening we were doing Painting with Light using flashlights, gels, a lightsabre (purchased in Disneyland) and a Canon speed light with a Gary Fong light sphere.  The early attempts with the flashlight by itself is always and interest experience and some nights I get great results and others not so much.  This evening was one of those nights and I was not as happy with the results.

However I was very happy with the way the next five images turned out.  On the first two images our lovely subject Diana used the lightsabre with a purple blade on it to swing around for about 30 seconds and then we hit her with a pop of light from the speedlight with the light sphere on it.  It took a number of tries but we got a number of fascinating images and these were my favourite two.

For these next three photo's we wrapped Diana in a white silk sheet.  I had two students hold the ends and move it up and down as I lit it with the flashlight.  Once I shut the flashlight off the students dropped the material behind her and we then did a pop of the flash.  We tried a few different loks and here are the results.

All five of these images were done with the camera mounted on a tripod and the shutter set to bulb.  Times varied from 30 to 45 seconds with an f stop of 8.  There was a little cleaning up in photoshop as the long exposure times showed some bad pixels in my sensor.  This is something I noticed is common as there are always a few bad pixel when you have 17 million of them.  Once this was done I added the frames using Perfect Photo Suite 8.

A walk through the Christmas display's.

There are times when I only have a few minutes to be out of the house during my daily routine.  Saturday and Sunday's are a bit like that and every week I have a half hour up at Crowfoot Crossing while Cool takes his guitar or vocal lessons. I usually try and take a quick walk and look for something to photograph.  I look for things like repetition, abstraction, juxtaposition or details.

Now store display's are always a chance to find these type of elements and I was fortunate to discover a couple of opportunities while I was walking through Rona's Christmas decorations.  These large snowmen caught my eye and I angled my iPhone to get the repeating figures to line up into a composition that I was happy with.  I then saw this display of small buildings that are very popular for people to develop their own winter dioramas.  The little church was my focus of attention and again I took a quick photo.

Once I made the capture I used Snapseed on my iPhone to crop them and then the drama filter to enhance the details.  I used the center focus feature to soften the edges and darken the background slightly. I finished with the frames for these results.

Winter blues ... Already!

Winter does not officially start for another 5 weeks but for the third weekend in a row Calgary has had a dump of snow.  Today seemed a little worse as it was very windy and thus gave white out conditions, and in the case of our house pooled the snow right in front of the main entrance.  Unfortunately though the snow looked like it might be light but that was not the case as it was still a fairly wet, heavy snow.  The bottom photo is one of the few selfies I have done as I attacked this pile of snow.

Prior to that though I took this photo out our front window as the snow blew by.  The juxtaposition of the hibiscus flower against the snow covered pine tree is what caught my eye for today's photo of the day.  The splash of red gave a bit of life to an other wise white day.  I hope the rest of the winter will be at least a bit milder then usual, but we still have five months of this weather ahead.

A little snack.

Today was the first time in a while where things seemed to slow down and I could rest a little.  I sat down at the computer to go through my in-box and clean it up and decide to have a some Bits & Bites for a snack.  Looking at the bowl I thought I could do an interesting image using a 12mm tube on the 24-70mm lens to do a little macro work.  I used an Ocotbox on my Balcar as the light source and shot at 100 ISO, 1/200sec at f10 and then processed the image on my iPhone using snapseed.

The wonderful photographic community.

I have loved photography since I was a child and have always endeavored to be active with in the photo community.  I use to attend meetings, camera clubs, seminars, workshops and conventions on a regular basis.  Thus it has been hard the last few years as my time has become a premium as my family and my work as a teacher makes it difficult to attend all these events that I once use to.

While the time I spend with my students at SAIT is wonderful and gives me a chance to share those moments are me passing my knowledge of photography along to others.  Facebook and other social media have allowed me to become part of a larger virtual community yet it is not as personal.  Now don't get me wrong, I have developed some great friends in both of these, but I find I am longing for more.

That is why it was so great to be able to attend a gathering of CAPIC members at their monthly meeting.  It was a last minute decision so I was not totally prepared so I was more of an observer than a participant.  This though is what I needed, a chance to sit back, observe, absorb and frankly to learn myself.  A long time friend and wonderful photographer, Greg Gerla, has been exploring the wet plate process which I have been fascinated with.  While I have read about the process and viewed videos on the subject I have not been privy to learn directly from someone who is doing it personally.

It was enjoyable to hear Greg talk about his experiences and some of the factors that are involved in creating an image using this traditional photographic method.  I learned so much about the the process, how UV light is an important factor and how lenses with out UV coatings are an important part of making the wet plate method work.  His explanation on learning and becoming comfortable with the process before worrying about subject mater made a lot of sense. 

I needed this gathering tonight.  A chance to rejuvenate the soul and to discover the camaraderie of ones peers.  I hope I can make more time to become active in the community once again.

Today's photo of the day was another of those fleeting moments.  I noticed a shaft of sunlight hitting a peacock feather we have as a decoration in our living room.  It gave a nice shimmer to the colours in the feather and I wanted to photograph it.  I rushed down stairs and grabbed my 7D and got back just in time to get off three frames before the light was gone.  I like the result and am glad that I was able to get the photo.

Simple shots.

Photography is actually very simple.  The key is to be prepared and to have one's eyes always open.  The camera is less important then the users sense of observation.  The two images I present here today are a couple of my examples of this thought.

November 12.  We had an incredible sunset this evening and I was out with Cool at his dance class.  I noticed the sky and the colours it was shifting to.  I knew I had little time so I grabbed my iPhone and ran to the parking lot.  There was a lot of water left after the weekend snowfall and I wanted to get the sky reflecting in it.  I saw the tree and positioned my iPhone close to the ground in order to fill the frame.  The photo here is close to the way the iPhone saw it with only a little darkening of the sky done in iPhoto.

November 13.  Looking for something interesting to photograph this evening I picked up one of the many elephant statuettes we have collected.  I took it down to the studio and used an Octobox on my Balcar light as the main source.  I shot with the Canon 7D at 1/250 sec and f5.6 at 100 ISO.  After taking the photo I downloaded it to the computer and then on to my iPhone.  I used Snapseed to soften the edges with the center focus filter and then added some grunge to bring in the tonal range I wanted.