Playing catch up ... again.

Where has the month gone.  December always seems to be a busy month with work, family and extra circular activities. So here I share my photo's created during this time period.  Thanks for taking the time to view them.

November 29.  Vegetables at Safeway.  The local grocery store is always a good place to get some quick images with the iPhone.  Some post processing was done here but the items are as I found them in the shop.

November 30.  Found this old abounded truck covered with graffiti.

A shot of our Christmas decorations this year.

December 1.  Adoration candles at the church.

December 2.  A shot of Brett from the Low Key session with my advanced lighting class at SAIT.

December 3.   Fern's and bamboo at a school.

December 4.  I saw the sun reflecting off of the cold air vent and liked how it looked like it was glowing from inside.

December 5.  Waiting in the empty church while my Cool helped to set up "Inn from the Cold" in the church mufti-purpose room..

December 6.  Some decorations on our tree.

And stockings on the banister.

December 7.  A quick visit to the pet store.

December 8.  Candy canes on the tree.

December 9.  I took my class from the Kerby Centre down to the Devonian Gardens for a quick field trip to work with their cameras.  I was able to get a few interesting shots myself.

December 10.  Some of my memorabilia.

December 11.  Doing some long exposures with a spinning lamp.  I then used the app Jazz to help with the abstract look.

December 12.  Time with my boy's, first a trip to Santa Claus.

Then to St. Luke's for the school advent mass.

December 13.  Teddy bear ornament.

December 14.  A white guitar.

December 15.  A banjo at Music makers.

Mother Mary portraits at St. Luke's.

December 16.  A modern circular lamp fixture in an old building.

December 17.  Some scenes around Knox United Church.

December 18.  Metal fence and snow.

December 19.  Christmas star.

December 20.  A few more ornaments on our tree.

December 21.  Glockenspiel at Music Makers.

Cool and Luke at the Christmas concert with the Cantare Children's Choir.

The pipe organ at Knox United Church.

December 22.  Candy Santa's sled racing.

December 23. A close up of our reindeer and penguin decorations.

December 24.  Cool and Luke in this year's Christmas pageant at church on Christmas Eve.

December 25.  A circular ornament.

December 26.  Took the boy's to a movie and they found Captain America's shield.

December 27.  Vase and shadow.

December 28.  Wilted Christmas Cactus flower.

December 29.  Ladle with reelection and shadow.

December 30.  Leaf with a blanket of snow flakes.

A little bit of every thing.

This past week was a productive one even though I had many activities to attend to.  I had the chance to try a few things I hadn't done in a while, do a little macro work, some portrait and a little abstract.  I share with you the results from the last seven days.

November 22.  There was a bag of popcorn on our kitchen table that Luke had brought home from school.  Looking for something to photograph I took the bag and a bowl down to the studio for a little bit of exploration.  Looking at the whole bowl I could not find a pattern or look that appealed to me.  I started to look at individual popped kernels and it reminded me a bit of Edward Weston's pepper studies.  So using an extension tube on the 24-70 I moved in close to get this macro shot in the spirit of Mr. Weston.

November 23.  Cool attended a birthday party to see the movie "Thor: The Dark World"  and I tagged along to see it again.  While walking to the theater I saw this row of chairs sitting empty in the sun on this chilly day.  The shinning silver caught my eye and I composed this view of them with the iPhone.

When we came out of the movie I headed to the washroom.  While standing there I noticed my reflection and how it gave this split personality look.  I lifted the iPhone and lined up my face and the one in the poster as best I could.  I like the result.

At Dairy Queen they had a decal of a reindeer on the door and an invitation to create a portrait with it.  Cool is never one to pass up an opportunity and he asked me to take his photo.  The result is kind of cute.

Back at Music Makers for another lesson and I chose another guitar to photograph.  This time I decided to photograph the top end.

November 24.  I was sitting watching TV when I looked out the window and saw a wonderful sunset occurring.  I grabbed the 7D and put the 2x converter on the 70-200 so I could bring in the mountains in the distance that we can see from the front window.  I had to bump the ISO up to 5000 with a shutter speed of 1/15 and the lens at f16 to get some depth of field on the trees in the foreground.  I braced the camera against the window for stability.

A few hours later I headed out to do a couple of night shots to add to the lecture I was going to do on Monday at the Kerby Center.  I used my 10-22mm lens on the 7D with the camera attached to a tripod and the ISO at 100.  The first photo was at f22 and the exposure was done over 3 minutes.  Notice the clouds in the sky over this long exposure.

This second shot was done with an adjustment of the f-stop to 3.5 and a time of just 4 seconds.  The clouds here are more sharp as they had not moved as much over the exposure as they did in the previous photo.

November 25.  Tonight's advanced lighting class involved using florescent lighting on the subject.  Breanna joined us once again and I shot this series of photo's with the 70-200mm  lens at f3.2, 1/160 sec at 500 ISO.  The background is a painted rose muslin and I like the way the shallow depth of field softened it.

November 26.  My wife had made some rose cookies, a specialty treat they have in India.  I liked the shape and look of them and wanted to see what I could do.  After carefully balancing one on top of the other I created this shot which I like as the back side had some wonderful texture.

November 27.  Looking for a subject for the photo of the day I pulled my first camera of the shelf and brought it in to the studio.  I positioned it around until I saw some interesting reflection in the twin lenses of this old Anscoflex II.  The texture on the front also came out wonderfully giving some character to the camera.  After downloading from my 7D I brought the photo on to my iPhone where I added some grunge with Snapseed.

November 28.  My final class at the Greater Forest Lawn Senior center.  They had this wonderful little Christmas village set up and I pulled out the iPhone and moved in close on a few different angels.  Using Snapseed I was able to work the three images here to get a look of evening in the village.