Discovering new sites to share on.

I have been playing with and posting to three new sites to share photo's on.  The first two I'd like to talk about are Pheed and Shnap.  Both are interesting in there design and intent. I have been uploading my daily photo's to these sites in addition to Instagram, Streamzoo, and Tadaa.  Here are some thought on these new entities.

Pheed is a well organized and attractive layout.  A good community and shows the photo's nicely.  However the tagging system is a little difficult as you constantly have to retype the hashtags you want rather then just clicking on common or previous used phrases.

Shnap is a little more difficult to get a handle on.  It is a photo rating site and all photo's are anonymous until you click on one of 5 rating titles.  I find this a little limiting as some of the photo's may not fit any of the categories.  Being anonymous is interesting in that unless you recognize a style you don't know who posted thus one can not play favourites.  Points are given for rating photo's and getting rated and you use the points in order to post photo's.  The community though seems very small and not overly active and it appears that it may have gone through a closure a while back.  Still it is worth checking out.

The last one I want to share is one called backspaces.  It is a photo and story site and encourages one to create photo essays or combine writing and photo's   Below is my photo from today of my son Cool and his Choir at the Kiwanis Music festival.  You can find my short story about tonight at http://www.backspac.es/r/fuyjOuOIt7/at-the-kiwanis-music-festival-

Feb. 28  My wife made samosa's from scratch and they looked so good I made them my photo of the day.

Feb 27  A macro shot of nail clippers shot with an extension tube on the 24-70mm lens on the Canon 7D and then processed using snapseed.

A reminder winter still has 3 weeks left.

Calgary's weather can be a real roller coaster ride no mater what time of year but late February and early March can be the most unpredictable.  Today, after a week of nice weather, we had a nice dump of snow over night returning our fair city to a blanket of white.  Since the temperature is still somewhat mild I decided to take a walk to explore the photographic opportunities.

While I was on my way back to my car after my walk, a teacher and his students from a school near Edworthy Park passed me.  Noticing my camera he asked if I had seen anything interesting.  When you look around at the surrounding scenery it was fairly monochromatic and flat.  However I told him that if you look for the small things, the details, the hidden jems, there was lots to see and photograph.  Here are a few examples from my walk.

 Bolt and broken fence pipe.

Small red berry and leaves.

Lock on a power box.

Macro shot of the tip of a tall grass stalk.

Abstract of branches with snow.

Unbroken snow on the path.

Painting with Light

Tonight's class at SAIT is easily one of the most popular and fun of all the ones I teach.  I show my students a variety of techniques using flashlights and strobe.  Our lovely subject was Breanna who has been a subject for many of the classes for close to nine years now.  She was great to work with and we were able to try a number of different looks.  I share with you a series of the photo's from tonight's class.

Finding the little things in life.

Feb. 24  I admire those who have vivid imaginations and the passion to create wonderful photographs, films or art.  It takes a lot of dedication to one's craft to continuously make these works faced with every days distractions of life.  Watching the Oscar's tonight and viewing 1000's of photo's every day makes me realize that there are many creative people around.  While this can be inspiring it can also be humbling as I go about trying to take a photo a day.

This is why I try to keep my eye's open as I do my daily routine for the little things in life that I can work with it to my own art.  Tonight it was the remainder of a bowl of grapes that the boy's had been snacking on.  I knew how I wanted to finish the image even as I framed up the bowl with with my iPhone.  This is probably the biggest thing I have developed as I have shot a photo a day for more then 2 years.  It allows me to see simple items and create art with them.

Feb. 23  Composition is another factor that makes a photograph strong and one of the areas I feel that I have grown in with this project.  Again it was a busy day and a simple thing I do every day caught my eye as an opportunity.  Hanging my key's on the hook I saw a potential photo.  I looked at using the negative space and where I positioned the keys in the frame as I shot the photo.  Knowing I would crop it square I made sure I left room to do this.  Using snapseed I post processed the image to give it the feel I was looking for.

In camera manipulation with the iPhone.

The popularity of Apps for post processing photo's can easily be seen in the very number of options to those who use the iPhone as a creative tool.  They give users a chance to change the look and feel of an image in a variety of different ways.  While purists may say this is not photography, I say it is just another tool in our box to create our vision.

Still it is nice to experiment with other means of manipulation with out using apps.  Those of us who have been taking photographs for years remember using filters of different types to give interesting looks directly on the film.  Some of these techniques would be a challenge to create in post production using apps.

One of my favourite tricks is to shoot through different transparent medium.  I have worked with glass bricks in the past and they can give a look of ripples on water.  Today I tried something new, some Mylar that came with some glasses that the boys got with a book.  Holding it over the lens of the iPhone I watched the way the light bounced around on the screen and then snapped when I got some patterns I liked.  This one was the best, an almost kaleidoscope effect.

It is fun to continue to experiment with different techniques as it keeps photography fun and fresh. 

Mother nature's art.

As the weather warms up the snow melts off the roofs the water runs through the down spout on to the hedges below.  When I drove up the drive way this afternoon I saw that icicles had formed on a section close to the house.  I went inside and retrieved my Canon 7D and the 24-70mm lens.  After trying a few shots I realized I needed to get closer so I added a 36mm extension tube.

This allowed me to get in tight on the dripping icicle in an effort to freeze (pun intended) the water droplets as they came off.  With the ISO at 2000 I shot at 1/640 sec at f5.  Even at this speed there was some slight motion blur in the drops which I liked.  Timing was difficult and for the first time I actually did shoot a number of frames in secession. Here are three of my favourites where I thought the drops formed in an interesting way.

 This next image is the one I am posting for the Photo of the Day.  After doing the cropping and exposure changes in snapseed on the above image, I then began to play.  I had an idea what I was looking for and after scrolling through some of the settings in the vintage filter I settled on this one as the style as I loved the cool, blue tones that gave a more winter like feel.

 One of the off shoots from the dripping water was, of course, the icicles that formed below on the small branches.  I found them interesting as they were encased in ice.  As I looked this particular shape caught my eye so I moved in tight to it.  As I did I could see the figure of a large sea bird in the ice.  It was mother natures perfect ice sculpture.

Time to catch up again.

I fell behind once again in posting as the last 10 days have been full.  So I won't spend a lot of time with the preamble and get on with the descriptions for the photo's.

Feb. 11  Taken at my SAIT advanced lighting class.  I had an idea but the plastic leaves that I had looked to fake.  So I grabbed a jar that had one of the vines in it and then draped it over our lovely subject Brandy.

Feb. 12  Was able to take a quick drive downtown as the boy's were at their Choir practice.  Decided to go  to Scotsman Hill and photograph the skyline and Saddledome at dusk.

I then stopped out side of a music store on McLeod Trail that has a large neon guitar in front.  After taking the photo I did some post work in the app Laminar creating a layer mask and offsetting it to give some depth to the image.

Feb. 13  A last minute photo to keep my consecutive streak alive.  I used a macro tube on the 24-70mm lens and the Canon 7D.  I brought the file onto the iPhone and used the grunge filter in Snapseed for the effect.  It has proven to be one of the more liked images that I have posted on the photo sharing sites.

Feb. 14  Luke was playing with his plastic balls creating his own ball pit using the couches.  He asked me to take his photo and then wanted me to use it for the Photo of the Day.

Feb. 15   A busy evening that started with these two shots of the sunset using the Canon 7D and my 70 - 200mm lens.  The colours are natural but I did do some cropping of the photo's using Snapseed on the iPhone.

Later I went down town to attend the publication launch of Seities magazine ( www.seities.ca ).  It is the brain child of Sanja Likac (first photo), Francis A. Willey (second photo) and Kirsten White.  It is just one part of a larger plan that they are developing to celebrate traditional analogue photography.  I invite you to check out their website and learn more about their project.

As part of the launch there was some live music and I liked this washboard player and did another Hipstamtic Tintype photo on the iPhone.

Feb. 16  The lovely Suzanne graced my wedding photography class as a subject. It was a pleasant day for February and we shot both inside Heritage Hall and out in front of the building as well as in the parkade.  The first four photo's were shot on the Canon 7D and then brought on to the iPhone for additional post production.

We were fortunate to have one of the student's boyfriend, David, to join us so we were able to do a few couple shots.  I did the post on the above and immediate below image using the Laminar app.  I was very happy with the way the conversion to monochrome turned out using it.

This photo was shot using the Hipstamatic app and the tintype pak.

Feb. 17  Spinning top.  Cool got a new toy out of a Kinderegg and I wanted to experiment with motion and the iPhone.  It came out very interesting and I did do a little enhancing using snapseed.

Feb. 18   A macro Monday.  A theme of Chocolate.  I took one of the mini Hershey bars from Cool's Valentine candy and placed a chocolate chip on it.  I used the Canon 7D with a macro tube on the 24-70 and studio strobe for the lighting.

When I do multiple projects I don't want to use the same photo for both.  Since the above was part of a challenge I looked for something else.  I noticed that on the Orchid plant that had buds growing one of the blooms was starting to open.  I shoot this one as my Photo of the Day.

Feb. 19   I had a trip to the dentist to have a root canal done.  While laying there under the effect of the Nitro-us Oxide I pulled out the iPhone and shot a photo of me.  I look like a fighter pilot.

In the evening I was waiting for the boys at their weekly choir practice and was a little bored.  So as I looked around I saw a little spigot on the fire hose.  So to pass the time I took a photo from underneath it and worked on it in snapseed.

Feb. 20  Another opening and a couple more portraits of local photographers.  This is Jan Boydol at her show that is hanging at Resolution Gallery on tenth street.  This is the last show at this venue as the building is slated for demolition.   Jan's photo's are figurative in nature and wonderfully done.

The other artist showing at Resolution is Bell Peters whose work from his travels to Paris are quite exquisite.

This final shot was taken downtown in front of the Bow Building of a new piece of art work.  Many photo's have been taken by other photographers and here is my take on it.  I purposely positioned the tree in the composition as I liked the juxtaposition it gave.