Not Exactly the Hot Seat

It's been a while since I did a two-fer Sunday, so here's a shot taken this past Wednesday out at UBC just shortly after the end of the work day.

I've been in a bit of an "embrace the monochromatic" kind of mood lately, as I suppose you can tell...

This shot had a horrid yellow colour from the light shining on the bench. I tried to correct it, but ended up with far too much blue everywhere else (the complementary colour to yellow) and wasn't happy with that. Then I tried the black & white thing, and after a little playing around with the channel mixer I finally got a version that I was happy with. I've actually been meaning to post this for a couple of days now but just don't seem to have gotten around to it, hence the double-shot tonight.

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(last of the) Fall Fungi

This will, I think, be the last of the shots from the great fungi field trip; this view is actually just a foot or two to the left of the previous post. I'm not actually sure if they're the same kind of mushroom or not - I don't know enough about mushroom be able to identify the different varieties.

While I think the previous post is probably my own favourite, each has something a little different that appeals to me. You're of course welcome to leave your thoughts/comments on which you like best (or least).

[For those who might be wondering... no word yet on whether my lens is repairable, or what it will cost, but then I'm not expecting to hear anything until sometime next week at the earliest.]

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(more) Fall Fungi

This is another shot from last weekends' trek through the trail at UBC - a.k.a. the fungi field trip. There's still maybe a shot or two from that afternoon that might find it's way here. Hopefully this won't bore anyone too much. There won't be any new bird shots for a while though, because...

Although late in the day, I did get out to shoot a bit on Saturday. Unfortunately, when I was packing up my equipment at the end of the day my wonderful long lens (100-400mm) fell from about 5½ feet and now doesn't work - it won't focus (auto or manual). I can adjust the 'focus' near or far, but it won't focus even remotely sharply.

I've always known that sooner or later some piece of my equipment would get damaged. I've fallen with it a couple of times (broke my own ribs once as a result, but saved the camera from harm), and once had my camera with lens attached fall out of my backpack onto asphalt, all without any significant damage to any of it. I guess my luck had run out though... Of course it had to be the most expensive lens in my bag! It's now at the camera shop waiting to be shipped out to the wizards at Canon to take a look at and see if it's fixable or not - for a hefty fee, of course. In the meantime, I suppose I'll just have to get reacquainted with my other lenses for a while (they say 4-6 weeks).

[Oh, forgot to mention - this shot has been sized/cropped a little differently than normal. It has been properly sized to fit a 1024x768 screen, making it more suitable for a desktop background, for those so-inclined. Click on it first to bring up the full-size image though.]

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Two Worlds, Apart

Sorry, once again, for the long delay between posts. Last weekend I was busy doing a little shoot for the Friends of the VPL; some of the pictures might end up on their website - if I ever get finished processing them. The woman who runs their store doesn't seem to have discussed the matter with their web master so what I shot doesn't seem to be quite what they both want, though I think I can pull enough together from what I shot. Regular visitors here will recognize that I like big pictures, so one of their late specifications came as a bit of a surprise: none of the images is to be larger than 350 pixels on a side. That's a tiny image, given that my raw images are 4300+ pixels wide!

Anyway, I did get out twice this weekend to shoot something for myself. This shot was taken on Sunday afternoon on the Salish trail in Pacific Spirit Park (UBC Endowment Lands). It's an HDR image, created from a single RAW image - this is possible with RAW files as they store more exposure data than a .jpg though it's not as effective as shooting multiple exposures and combining them.

Technical aspects aside, it struck me as a fitting image to post as we're about to go to the polls in just a few hours. Why? Maybe because of the strong Us/Them symbolism. Personally I'll find it hard to vote tomorrow; once again it will be a matter of selecting the lesser of the evils, the party which I think will do the least harm. A minority government isn't what this country needs right now, but with the current crop of politicians so totally out of touch with reality it's what we're likely to end up with.

Vote well!

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Too Much Partying?

This is "Corwin" who's been known to leave the occasional comment on my posts, though it's been a while (what's up with that dude?) since he made that type of appearance. We were having a particularly quite Saturday morning at work a couple of weeks ago so to fill some of the time I spent a few minutes goofing around with the camera while he rather too ably posed for this shot.

It's been a while since my last post, which is too bad as I was on a bit of a roll there... in the in-between I've been busy with a number of things, like trying to learn a bit more about colour spaces and how they relate to screen vs print and researching (then buying) a new printer. I've also shot quite a bit, most of which won't appear here (probably); it's kept me busy with little visible result (so far) here, but it's all part of the process and hopefully will lead to better things in the future.

Oh, I should note, for those who not only read these ramblings but the comments as well, that I probably won't be putting together a book after all (as I'd suggested might happen in my comment on the previous post) as, it turns out, all the 'reasonably priced' options on-line that I've found for publishing said books apply some form of processing to images prior to printing, which just won't work for me - I decide how I want my images to look, not some computer program at a printing house. The idea isn't completely dead, but has definitely dropped far down the priority list.

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Somewhere, Over the...

Photographing rainbows is challenging:

• They don't appear very often so there's little opportunity to practice;
• They don't usually last very long so you only get a short period of time to capture the shot;
• And, because of the atmospheric requirements for their formation it can be quite a trick to keep the rain off the lens as you look skyward.

These two pictures were take about 2 minutes apart from slightly different vantage points and have had about ½ the original image cropped. Each was processed slightly differently but neither really does justice to the awesome rainbow (rainbows actually - there was a clear secondary spectrum visible) which my colleagues and I enjoyed late this afternoon.

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Pile of Leaves

A rather uninspiring weekend over all. But, prior to the weekend, after work on Friday night, I'd taken a few minutes to walk around the place I work to see what might be interesting... which is where this shot comes from.

I expect that I'll regret posting this picture in the end, as it's a bit gimicky. But I did spend a fair bit of time working on it as I wanted to try out the collage technique, mostly because it uses masks, which is something in Photoshop that I seem to be having trouble getting a handle on, so I guess from the time investment point-of-view it's worth posting.

Anyway, if you haven't already figured it out, it's single picture with picture frames added - if you follow the tree branches or trunks you'll see that they all line up. Normally such an image is presented on a monotone background, but I decided to leave the rest of the picture partly visible as I thought in this case it helps with the effect.

Let me know what you think - good or bad; there have been far too few comments lately. Which, I'll admist, is largely my fault as I haven't been posting regularly, but it'd be nice to know that there are still people out there.

[Note: I re-edited this image and swapped the new version in on Monday evening - I'd finally figured out why it hadn't turned out quite as sharp as I'd expected.]

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Poppies (and other stuff)

I'd forgotten that I took some pictures on my lunch break the last Wednesday, when it was actually sunny. Finally downloaded them from the camera along with the stuff I shot early this evening - of which I have high hopes.

I'm not sure about the processing on this one, something not quite right, but then I didn't spend a lot of time on it either. Mostly I'm posting it because I haven't posted anything for a while, and if nothing else I like the variety of colour. And although there's a bumble bee in one of the poppies, it's really not a bug picture...

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Koerner Library, UBC

Tuesday afternoon I had to go to a meeting on the other side of campus; I took advantage of the great weather to walk, and captured this on the way back. A good thing, as it had clouded over by the time I headed home from work for the day and my desire to seek some more shots had evaporated. That as well may have been a good thing, as I discovered on my return home that my apartment had been broken into during the day, again, and the kitchen window (entry) and glass door (exit) were both open. If I'd stayed out for more pictures it could have been several hours later when I returned home, with the window and door open for anyone else to help themselves in the meantime. I suppose I should be happy that the miserable little low-lifes only took a few things (less than the last time) and insurance should cover most of the loss, but it's really a pain in the butt nevertheless.

As for the photo, it's a little different that my usual subject. I've not been much impressed by the design of this building, or not until I got a chance to see what they're doing to the Main Library... Maybe Main will look better when they're finished the renovations, but at the moment I'm skeptical. In the meantime, it's made the Koerner Library look almost nice.

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