Bumbling Along

I knew when I started my holidays that it would probably not be my busiest posting period as I've been having a bit of an inspirational drought of late. However, 5 weeks into my holidays and this my first post is a little bit less than even I expected. Chalk it up to computer failure (computer died on the first day of holidays, replacement took over two weeks to arrive), computer reconfiguration (took several days to get it set back up to my liking), briefly out of town, then helping a friend re-roof his garage. Along with the new computer comes new software, and the newest version of Photoshop is taking a bit of getting used to compared with the relatively old version I had been using.

I finally took the camera out yesterday, not really because I was feeling inspired but thinking that I ought to at least make the effort. Most of what I captured was, predictably crap, but I did get one or two shots that aren't bad. They're not exactly what I'd like to be posting at the moment, but it's what I've got so it'll have to do.

Here's the first one.

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Queen of the Beach

This is Shelby, 'sister' to Sherlock. Unlike Sherlock she doesn't frolic in the waves, play with logs, or usually bark much. Her specialty is brushing up against you to get you to pat her, and once you've started, never letting you stop...

I'd had the idea for this photo almost a year ago, but finding the right day with the right light, the right amount of beach (more beach means the other dogs weren't getting sand all over my camera gear) and the right expression meant it took this long to finally get it done.

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The end of the world is just over there...

It's been three weeks since my last post and this would seem to be the best that I can come up with...

I hadn't been out with the camera in almost a month, so it felt good to get out not once but twice this past weekend.

The first time was on Saturday night, which was pretty much a bust. I'd had the thought that I'd go down to Vanier Park to get a shot of the lights of the West End shimmering through the fog. Ha! The fog was so thick that you couldn't prove to anyone that the West End even existed; total darkness. I actually tried a really long exposure - 6 minutes - to see if the camera could collect any light not visible to the naked eye. Nada. Zip. Just some general light in the fog reflected back from the lights at the Planetarium behind me.

Second time out was the next afternoon at FRP, as it's within reasonable walking distance and I felt I could use the exercise packing all my gear. A good (long) walk, but very few photo opportunities, at least nothing that jumped out at me. That's the problem with places you've been to a lot - you've seen it all before so many times that it just doesn't capture the imagination. Anyway, given that it's been so long since I posted anything this shot will have to do.

There might be one other fog-shot to post if I can convince myself it's worthwhile, but at the moment I wouldn't count on it.

[Oh, and in case anyone out there is wondering, I still don't have my lens back yet (apparently it's still waiting for a part or parts - it needed 27 parts replaced). And my printer is still only turning out garbage since I upgraded my video card to support dual monitors.]

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Snow-ladden Branches

Thought I'd post this just because I haven't posted anything in over a week. I have a couple of snow shots that aren't too bad, but hey, with all the snow around I just haven't really felt like processing snow pictures...

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Ice on the River

This was one of the weirdest shots... Although this is a black & white image (i.e. the colour elements have been removed), it is almost identical to the colour image - it was just that kind of day! There was just a little hint of green algae on the rocks in the foreground, almost unnoticeable.

Taken down at FRP shortly before 3:00 this afternoon.

This is the first time I've ever had a shot that has exhibited this characteristic. It made processing pretty simple - there wasn't much that needed to be done, nor was there much that could be...

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The Fading Colours of Fall

Although I said that the last post would be the only one from last Sunday's set, I felt that this one deserved posting as well, and since I don't have anything else new to post at the moment I figured why the heck not and so here it is...

I've actually been fiddling with it for much of the past week, trying a few different things. It's my impression that the eyes are still a little too much, but if I tone them down at all they pretty much drop right out. On balance, I like the shot better with the colour in the eye than not, even if I haven't managed to get it quite right. Having said that, I've done a print of this that I'm very happy with.

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Learning the Art of the Portrait

For some time now I've been trying to find someone who doesn't mind having their picture taken - a harder challenge than you might think. It's the next logical step for me as I move along the road of photographic discovery. Not that I don't still enjoy landscape/nature photography, but I'm finally feeling competent enough with the fundamentals to move onwards to live human subjects.

This is Devon, the daughter of a friend. She agreed, quite readily apparently, to be the guinea pig for my further search for understanding of light, focus and shutter speed. Little did she know...

Actually, we got quite lucky today. Half an hour earlier the sun was behind some clouds and the light was horribly contrasty and white. Then it came out from behind with some wonderful soft fall colour, and we found the perfect spot with light filtering through some trees. This is probably the only shot I'll post from today, but there were a number of very good ones (in my estimation) at this same location. I'll go down in my books as a top spot, that's for sure - at least until all the leaves fall off the trees. And we won't talk about the fact that I messed up most of the later shots by making the rookie move of not paying attention to my settings... too much time spent lately taking pictures of birds on one of the more automatic camera settings. D'oh!

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Wait a sec, that's not a bird!

Well, I said that all I had to draw from was bird shots, which was true when I wrote it. Then yesterday I stumbled - almost literally - across this guy having a nap, hanging off the grass about 8 inches off the ground. I quickly swapped lenses so that I had the macro on and lay down on the ground to get a nice straight-on shot with the camera partially supported on the ground.

I was lying right on top of a red ant nest, of course.

After just a couple of shots (to be sure that I'd have one that would be good) it was time to get up and away from the ants. Just as well, as he started twitching/vibrating just after that; about 30 seconds later he took off. The twitchy/vibrating thing was interesting to watch - it looked very much like an old propeller plane starting up with cold engines, a little rough at first, not firing on all cylinders, but getting smoother as the engine warmed up and the oil started to flow.

As usual I've had a challenge getting the colour/brightness/tone to come out accurately. Might have been less of a challenge if I didn't use Photoshop to process, but I wanted to mute the background and you just can't do that with any other program. The dragonfly as you see it here is pretty close to what I had in Photoshop (which was very accurate to what I shot), except that the colours here aren't quite as vibrant (at no time did I fiddle with the saturation - it really was this colourfull).

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162 Pounds of Fun

This is Sherlock, an English Mastiff, and still a "puppy". He loves to chase the waves hitting the beach, often oblivious to whatever might be in his path, be it another dog, a human, or the very solid breakwater on the west end of the beach...

This picture isn't too bad, though I'm still going to try for something even better. The nice thing about dogs is that even though you don't really need to, you can get close if you want - they're not skittish like birds, and they don't react like many people and hold up a hand and tell you stop, enough with the pictures already!

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Boardwalk

The boardwalk and beach at Fraser River Park on Sunday afternoon weren't very busy - it was too cold. Nothing compared to the weather back east or up north to be sure, but the brilliant sunshine was doing it's best to lull everyone into believing that it was warmer than it really was. There were people around - it is a dog park and it's rarely totally empty during daylight hours - just not when I took this picture. I suppose I could have waited for someone to walk into frame, but like I said - it was too cold!

There was a real surf on the river that day - when I first got there the swells were up to 4 feet - a combination of change of tide direction and the high wind I suppose. It was the roughest I've ever seen it in the 3 or 4 years that I've been going there. It had settled down considerably by the time this shot was taken, though you can still see some of the whitecaps.

I've been more and more intrigued by some of the black and white pictures that other photographers are posting, and still not sure how to get the same result with my shots. This one, although it's not a true black and white (it's a slightly translucent black and white layer on top of the original colour image, allowing just a hint of the original colour to show through), isn't too bad, but there's still some quality that I can't identify that I'm not getting quite right when processing for black and white. But that's the beauty - I can always try again tomorrow...

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Searching for a Shot Amidst the Fog

Back to something from early last week. I'm not totally sure that I achieved the result I was looking for from this image, but as my computer is sick I can't work on it any more at the moment and I'm trying to keep this string of posts going, so I'll have to do as is.

I had a pleasant chat with this gentleman shortly after taking this shot, and he seemed pleased and more than a little surprised as he hadn't noticed me taking it.

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Fog-light

In spite of having the best of intentions to download and process pictures in a more timely manner, my follow-through hasn't been quite up to snuff.

This was shot on Monday evening and although I did download that evening's take from the camera right away I didn't get around to looking at it until tonight. Oh well.

We had a couple of days of enveloping/receding fog early in the week. I love to shoot in fog for the effect, but finding a location that takes full advantage can be a challenge, particularly as I'm usually limited to the short time between when I get out of the office and the last light of the day. This shot illustrates that last-light factor as the tip of the sun is about to dip below the thicker fog/cloud that has accumulated low on the horizon.

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Half-hour to Sunset

This was taken late yesterday afternoon down at Fraser River Park. I actually processed it (along with a couple of others) last night, but as I was quite tired at the end I couldn't decide whether I was happy with the result or not.

I've decided I am, at the least, satisfied, even if some of the colours are a little off. Trade-off, I suppose for some of the other very successful results.

As I look at this shot I find it a little odd - in a shouldn't be surprised kind of way - that with all the pictures I've taken down at the park over the past three years I don't think I've ever captured this particular viewpoint before. Certainly not with this lighting and tone. Which, I suppose, is why one goes back to the same place again and again (other than it's a nice park and convenient).

As always, comments of any sort are welcome and encouraged. Well, it'd be nice if we could keep them relevant to the photo in question...

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Things Left Behind

Haven't posted a monochrome image in a while (lets face it, I haven't posted much of anything), thought that this image was well suited to this treatment.

No idea how long the mug had been there. Surprisingly, I didn't look inside the mug to see how much rain water had accumulated. I'd be nice to think, though, that it'll sit there, undisturbed until the person who left it there comes back.

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Low-Carb Diet Run Amok

I know. Another bug picture, and more specifically, another bee/wasp. At least I'm now trying to pair each insect posting with some non-insect content.

As for this guy, they're quite a good size. In fact, they're about 2½ to 3 times the length of the last bee (Newbie), which is significant, since they were the ones that that butt-head bee was trying to pick a fight with. And they outnumbered it about 10-1!

One of the other neat things about this variety is the smaller-than-a-toothpick portion of the body, which, it turns out, is very flexible even though it looks quite rigid.

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Newbie

This is a two-fer day. I should have, and could have posted something new every day this past week, what with my back-log of images. But, for whatever reason, I just didn't get around to posting anything until now (I've been processing pictures all evening).

This was a "new" type of bee that I spotted the other day. Not new, of course, but a first for me, and I've seen quite a variety (though I don't have decent pictures of all of them). This one is fairly unique - at least I've seen very little else that could be mistaken for this type.

It's fairly aggressive bee, trying to pick a fight with any other bees - of any variety - that it sees. Not sure if this is a characteristic of this species, or if this one was just being a butt-head...

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Darth Vader Wasp?

Ever since I got my macro lens I've spent a lot more time actually seeing all the little bugs that fly, crawl and hop around our world. One of the things that's surprised me the most is the almost staggering variety of bees. Mostly I think that we think of wasps, bumble bees and maybe honey bees and leave it at that. I suppose that most bees can be slotted into one of these categories, but the actual number of species is bewildering.

Take this one, for example. I have no idea what type of bee it is. Maybe it's not even a bee (or wasp), but it looks like it probably belongs in that general category of bug. Nasty looking little beastie - that's a mighty long stinger coming out from its aft end. And the other end is pretty deadly too, as evidenced by the smaller black bug it's chewing on.

This shot was taken from about 8 inches away. The brown out-of-focus portion in the forground is a dead blackberry vine (for sense of scale).

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Sandpipers on the Rocks

Rain. Lots of it. That's what we're getting at the moment, with at least two more days of it to enjoy. I had a feeling that this is what the summer would be like...

I was out of town most of this past week, visiting the folks out at Cultus Lake. I'd meant to post at least one more picture - non-bug - before I headed out there, but it got overlooked somehow. Just as well, it leaves me with something to post now - something to remind us all that there's been some sunshine!

I spotted this group of spotted sandpipers taking a breather alongside the river just over a week ago and managed to get fairly close for this shot before some other moron scared them away.

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Grasshopper Greyscale

As promised/threatened, here's the second grasshopper shot. I worked on this one for quite a while, and I suppose that I'm fairly happy with the result.

I got out with the camera again today, and actually had a good day - with at least five candidates for posting, three of which are bugs, and, thankfully, two of which are not. Not all of these images will be posted, but it's nice to have something a little better to pick from for a change.

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Smile for the Camera

You'd think that being on holidays for the last three weeks that I'd have posted more than just one picture so far. You'd think.

It's not that I haven't shot anything, by any means, though not as much as I'd have expected. The poor weather in the first week is partly to blame there. I've had some vision issues to deal with as well, which is also to blame.

Much of what I've shot is of insufficient quality to post; bugs are hard to catch at close range. Either they're moving, or it's windy, or I've had too much caffeine or whatever. Even the smallest movement at the distance these pictures are taken can spoil the shot. Compensating by bumping up the ISO to get a faster shutter speed results in grain that does the same. Tough to find the bright, non-windy day, with lazy bugs, and me using the tripod (without scaring the bug away).

I did do some portraits [people!] about a week ago, but I don't think I'm going to share those here. Got a couple of nice shots, and it was a very welcome opportunity to photograph people instead of bugs, but no, I won't be posting those ones.

So, it seems, you're stuck with this guy. And probably another shot, tomorrow (or whenever I get around to posting it) of the same grasshopper, though processed in a very different way.

Sorry to say, but at the moment bugs are pretty much all that I've got on tap, so there'll likely be a few more of these to come...

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