Icy Formations ~ Mono Monday!

"Her Icy Face"  ~ Tiffany Falls, Hamilton, On

(1/2sec @ F/14, ISO 100, 28mm fl, 18-55mm Nikkor kit lens, tripod, pattern metering, ND filter)

I'd like to make a confession here on Mono Monday. Some will shake their heads when they read this, some will understand completely. But I feel I must be honest. So here goes.

I have lived in Canada my whole life. It's February. It's winter. And (taking a deep breath here...) I don't like it. Ah, there, I said it!!!! I know that out there in all the snow and ice are great photo ops but it requires putting on a thousand layers of clothing, tucking gear and batteries safely and warmly in any available crevice in said clothing, and wandering treacherous and slippery paths and locations with a tripod in one hand and a Timmie's coffee in the other. Often it's while my family tags along under the guise of sledding or only being out walking "for a sec". Ha, could only pull that one on them a handful of times before they got wise to me and started "disappearing" every time I suddenly hunted for snow pants in the back of the house.

Let's be honest, I'd much rather be out in the warmer weather, catching the tulip festival at the park, or driving back roads with the windows down and the tunes cranked looking for barns and farm gear to shoot. But having said all this, there is something to be said for winter photography. Despite all the extra work before I even get out to the car, despite the fact that every year pulling on the monster boots seems to wind me more and more, and despite the way my hubby looks at me when he realizes I need a walking buddy in -23 weather without the wind chill... despite all that, there's a treasure to be gleaned every time I head out to shoot. And it's this: YOU LEARN TO WORK FAST!

Shooting outdoors in the chilly Canadian weather (and yes, I'm aware there's chillier, don't get me wrong) forces you to work fast. Sum up a scene quickly, decide what's important to portray, to emphasize, and what to eliminate. Your composure skills are naturally honed when you know that the cold is eating at your battery, that your tripod adjust knobs are freezing in place, and that you've stopped feeling your feet. Your brain goes into adrenaline mode when you can hear your husbands teeth chattering from twenty feet away and you've only been on the trail for ten minutes. You realize you need to get those other angles NOW since once you get back in the car there's no way you're getting back out for that one forgotten shot. And you learn to think quickly about all the tools at your disposal. Filters are at the ready for the slow exposures of the trickling water still running through the icy rock face, the tripod doesn't leave your side, and your other lens is already waiting in your pocket for a very quick switch indeed while you have a plastic bag waiting for the other lens to defog in once your finished. And your settings! You learn to sum up the light real quick and no foolin' around in your menus, cause no matter how warm those gloves are, they're a pain to use when you have to push tiny buttons right?

See what I mean about working well but working quickly?

It's a good test of your natural skills... seeing how far you've come with your camera. Limited time means you have to harness all the things you should know without even really thinking them. You should try it. Just not with me. (little humor there... heh heh heh)

So all kidding aside... if you visit the cooler climates that require sled dogs and snow shoes, or simply live where you've shoveled another eight feet of snow out of your driveway for the fourth time (shovelers unite!) then make yourself get out there with the camera, give yourself twenty minutes to an hour to photograph, then go home to some winter stew and warm pj's and review how you did. You'll get a very clear picture of what you still need to remember, and what you excel at under pressure.

And how a frozen finger looks after you pry it off the shutter too fast...ouch.

Have a good Monday folks... and thanks for letting me ramble on! Tomorrow is our first Telephoto Tuesday! Hope to see ya then!

Red Red Rose ~ Floral Friday

"Red Red Rose" Royal Botanical Gardens

It's Friday! Floral is our theme again, and today I've posted one of my absolute favorite images from the past summer. Maybe because Valentine's Day is a week away (guys...tryin' to help you out here) and more likely because here in Hammertown we're still swamped with snow, but the deep dramatic color and velvet shape of the petals just seemed to be my next logical image choice for you all to enjoy.

Not entirely sure where my exposure data went to on this file but I had to dig way back into original RAW files before I could see how I shot this one. For all you photogers out there that crave info here we go: 1/200sec @ F/5, ISO 125, 50mm fl, 50mm Nikkor Prime lens, overcast morning light, tripod, remote shutter release, reflector, pattern metering. I find red a difficult flower color to capture sometimes, it's extremely saturated on it's own. Detail in the petals can disappear if you're not careful with deep reds, but on overcast days I can underexpose slightly to get an accurate color, then change the levels slightly in Corel later to ensure the image isn't actually too dark overall.

One of the best places to practice photographing deep or bold color in flower beds is over at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Indoors or out, it's a nature photographer's paradise. It's the largest garden of it's kind in all of Canada, situated between Hamilton and Burlington, Ontario. And the most eclectic of it's kind, from the world's largest natural lilac dell, or tens of thousands of tulips in the rock gardens, to it's wide naturalized areas with marshland and wildlife, not to mention the trails you can walk. And the greenhouses are always displaying the unusual. It's also a National Historic Site. What's not to love? And it's full of intense color. I've spent many a day wandering the grounds in all seasons.

In particular, this image was taken out in the Hendrie Park gardens, where they have thousands of roses through the summer months along with live jazz music and various events. So.... how many months till the warm weather returns? Think I'll go over to the flower shop at the top of the street and get a handful of roses for my studio/dining room and immerse myself in a bit of summer in February. With the camera. Of course.

Thanks for letting me ramble on a Friday! As always take a moment to leave me a comment here or on my Facebook Page, and have a fabulous weekend. (oh, and "go Green Bay!")

Mono Mondays!

"Wherever You GO"

(1/2 sec @ F/16, ISO 100, 27mm fl, 18-55mm Nikkor Wide Zoom, Pattern Metering)

Monochromatic images (aka B&W's) have always been one of my favorite types of photography. There's just something about the way line, shape, dimension and angles are accentuated when color can no longer distract from or fill up the space before the lens.  Possibilities abound with a B&W photograph. Maybe it's just me.

My first Mono Monday features a B&W I took last weekend at the Go Station downtown. If you click on the image you'll see in the larger version the slight ghost images of the public moving through the station to catch buses or trains. I ensured I could open up my aperture enough that a) I'd get the effect of a bit of movement, and b) I'd still get a clear view of the interior design elements of the building which I love without actual clusters of bodies frozen in motion to impede the comp. This is the scene you see as you first enter from the west entrance. The interior seems designed so that the eye travels the length of the station first and makes an impact. It has a very art deco feel, retro in it's styling, and this seemed to be the best way to portray it.

I normally don't like to take such an "eye level" approach to architectural compositions, but the guide belts and stands set up for ques of passengers were directly in front of the doors. So I forced myself to compose accordingly. I also tried shooting from the opposite side, but those booths were open for customers and would get cluttered with travellers. I may yet try that approach still. I also have a color version, slightly different to post later this week. I used my remote shutter release and tripod since my slow exposure would require the camera not to move at all, left my white balance on auto since I work in Raw files and can correct it in editing, and used pattern metering. I played with the length of the exposures till I had some form to the people passing through - too slow, and they disappeared moving through the shot, too fast and they were frozen in clumps. 1/2 a sec seemed to expose correctly at my aperture.

Monochromatic images. You'll find them here every Monday... a challenge to myself actually, to stay aware of those subjects and scenes that lend themselves to the balance of light and contrast, design and space, pattern and perspective. Thanks for letting me ramble on, and as always... have yourselves a good one folks.

Floral Friday!

Late Summer Peony

(1/320 sec @ F/6.3, ISO 200, 110mm fl, 55-200 mm Tele Zoom)

I'm thinking about devoting themes to my blog. To help keep me focused on the different areas of photography I love to work in. And I'm thinking Fridays will be floral... hence "Floral Fridays". A fun way to go into the weekend, to add some color, drama, and beauty to our final week day. I'll add links to great places to photograph flowers and fauna. And local botanical events coming up. And always include a botanical image for your viewing pleasure. What do you think of this idea? Let me know in the comments below.

I particularly wanted to post something floral today. Here in Southern Ontario, we've had snow, snow, and more snow. And as fun as that can be, I'm just hankering for color! The image above was taken this past summer. It was part of my job to capture the color and beauty of the Perennial Beds at Gage Park, overall AND up close and I will admit the close-ups are my favorite part. And I love peonies. This was one of the last fresh blooms of the summer, and was pristine. I composed the shot in the late morning shade before the bright day's heat had a chance to wilt her. I set up the tripod and remote shutter release, and used my telephoto for the close-up so I could soften the shot slightly without losing too much detail. Almost like photographing a beautiful lady.

Using public greenhouses and nature centers through the winter is a great way of making sure those photog skills don't get too rusty while you're waiting for the nicer weather to come along (unless you're one of my many friends living in a toastier climate for much of the year, you know who you are) so keep an eye out for local bulb shows, orchid societies, and growers associations having exhibits. Many of them are free, and hoping to see more of the public come out. You'll stay warm, and get some great images to lighten your winter!

So thanks for letting me ramble on, and drop me a line to say what you think of themes through the week. Gosh, now I need ideas for Monday.... hmmmm.

Have a good one folks!

Still Learning!

"DeGroote School of Medicine"

At the start of January I made a conscious decision to take myself back to school as it were, to read, dig through various learning sites, and tweak all the areas of my photography AND small business skills that are in desperate need of tweaking if I'm ever going to expand my horizons as a serious photographer. I am even now on the lookout for a couple of specific night classes or workshops to hone two areas that have always intimidated me. I knew I had two choices. I could waffle around and learn what works and what doesn't by accident, or I could take the bull by the horns and make a serious effort to be the photographer I know I can be. Anyone out there know anything about bulls before I step into the proverbial ring?

Part of this learning process has brought me back to older, earlier photo files. Specifically images that on the whole would be considered very successful if only I hadn't ______ (pick any flaw here). Now, this isn't dwelling on the negative just for the heck of it. This is being realistic about whether I have been growing, learning, and improving since then. This is about taking stock and figuring out where I'm still struggling. I must admit, doing this very simple step has been enlightening. And it's not as awful as I thought, since being real about my weaknesses has strengthened my resolve to start getting it right. And not by fluke. Although I too love a good "happy accident" where everything comes together in the lens despite my disjointed efforts.

The image above is a reworked version of one I took two years ago, on a photo walk with the Hamilton Flickr Group on the McMaster University campus. This may have been one of my first attempts at night photography from back then. I was able today to correct the distorted perspective gotten from my wide angle, decrease the noise overall in editing, and sharpen it much better than in the original. (And even now it's not that sharp, lol) With this first attempt reworked I can still see where I went wrong. I had paid no attention to my aperture (sitting at F/5 if you can believe it) which meant  lost clarity as the building faded into the background, and since I had a tripod with me, should not have needed my ISO to be at 400 either, and wouldn't have needed to excessively reduce the grainy effect like I did to get it looking cleaner. I know now, to enable my remote shutter release so as to avoid touching the camera and avoid any camera movement whatsoever when using a slower exposure on tripod. And my speed would have been set to an ISO 100 to allow for more light, and less noise. I also have learned since that night, that you never walk away with one shot or composition, you keep shooting, you keep changing your angles, your point of view. Then I would have had more than one image to show from that part of the walk. (In fact, it's almost second nature to me today.) And all this is just grazing the surface. Man I was so green... and still am in so many areas.

We artistic types often times will move on to some new inspirational lesson, something that excites us, leaving the flops and failures in the foggy past where they can't squelch our enthusiasm. But after working on this image from the past, and isolating what went wrong AND what went right, I find myself deeply motivated and inspired. In fact, if I can convince my poor hubby to brave the -18 degree temps with me in Hamilton, Ontario tonight, I may go practice a bit, just because I can.

Thanks for letting me ramble on! And have a good one folks!