Spring Fever

It never fails that the first thing I want to do when winter draws to a close and spring begins is to photograph something green and growing. I suppose that’s related to the fact that for the last few months of winter I can’t seem to build up interest enough to photograph much of anything. Or do much of anything; SAD and all that jazz. I hadn’t really been aware of this photographic pattern until this ‘spring flora season’ rolled around and it came to me while looking through some older images from springs gone by.

That’s not to say I don’t ever point the camera at a flower at other times of the year; it’s just more of a ‘need’ in the spring. This year it’s particularly noticeable living in a new place and in a rural area because there are all the new things to see and photograph. And playing the ‘guess what perennial the last owners planted in the flower beds’ game. This is the single mystery tulip that appeared next to our front walk a few weeks ago. Still waiting to see what colour it will be.

So be warned; there will be flower pictures for the next little while. I promise no more cats though …

Doldrums

I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately; not just photographically, but generally. It’s not an unusual situation as winter begins to draw to it’s lengthy close. Seasonal Affective Disorder I guess. In terms of photography, I’ve been unable to drag myself out to take more than just a few snapshots at a time and haven’t really produced anything of significance. I must have sunk to anew low considering this is the second cat images I’ve posted in a row. Well, spring can’t be too far away …

Experimentation

One nice thing about shooting digital is the instant feedback, especially when experimenting with a new technique. In terms of learning technical skills, it can really speed up the learning curve. And it can be great to see what you get when you're just fooling around. This image of our cat (rather evil looking here, don't you think?) is the result of a long shutter speed and rotating the camera while making the picture. No post processing apart from cloning out a few dust blobs. I'm not sure why, but I like it.

Frost

It's been quite cold here today (about -20 Celsius right now). When I came home from work, I noticed the window in the den was full of frost patterns. I managed to grab a dozen or so shots before the light faded to much. Not the sharpest of images because I didn't have time to go with tripod and MLU, but some weren’t too bad. Here's one example, converted to black and white using Desaturate in Photoshop:

What do you think? Is it a little heavy on the contrast?

At the Beach

A quick one from the beach yesterday. Yes, from the beach; in January, in the dead of winter, in Nova Scotia. We've had a spell of mild weather lately and it was almost spring-like over the weekend.

Of course, today it's blowing snow and freezing rain. At least this way there's always a new landscape to discover ...

Detail from Waterfall

This is a crop of a larger image that showed a full view of the waterfall. I've found that recently I've been cropping a lot of my images to show only a semi-abstract portion rather than the 'whole' object. I'm not sure why, just that these cropped versions seem to resonate with me. Now if I could only learn to see these images in the field so I wouldn't have to crop ...

Image is from Sanford Flemming Park in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Between a Rock ...

I’ve been reading Freeman Patterson’s “Namaqualand: Garden of the Gods”. The book itself is a beautiful presentation of some of his images from Namaqualand, a region in South Africa’s Cape Province known for it’s unique and almost unbelievable spring floral displays. The area is essentially a desert most of the year, but when the spring rains come, the rock and sand just burst with a brilliant display of wildflowers. Many of the images contrast the wildflowers with the rocky and forbidding environment in which they grow.

While I’ve never been to Namaqualand (and probably never will make it there), I do come from a place well known for its ruggedness (Newfoundland, AKA The Rock). Going through Freeman’s book has inspired me to dig out some old slides from home of flower and rock. I wonder what makes this motif such a compelling photographic subject? Is it the contrast between the solid permanence of the rock and the delicate, temporary flowers? Or is it a matter of relatively simple composition that draws many? I’ll wager that, at least in my case, it’s a matter of both.



By the way, I highly recommend any of Freeman’s books; his instructional books are what started me down the road to photography as a serious pursuit. He is very good when it comes to discussing basic design elements, balance and composition, all points I’ve found are often lacking in other instructional books. And his nature photography usually has a thoughtful and subtle (as opposed to a Velvia, colour-saturated) beauty to it that makes it stand out from the crowd.

Annual PDML Quotations List

I’ve been an on again – off again member of PDML, the Pentax Discuss Mailing List, for probably the last 5 or 6 years. The volume of posts is kind of heavy and tends to overwhelm my email, and I don’t like reading digests, so I’m often unsubscribed. All the same, I keep reading the list through the archives and frequently re-subscribe. The list is an interesting community of die hard Pentax shooters and is a wealth of knowledge, even if it frequently wanders off topic. If you have a question about anything Pentax, this is the best place to look. It also has more than it’s fair share of quirky, insightful, profound, less than profound, and occasionally profane comments. One of the list members, Mark Roberts, collects the best of these every year and publishes an annual PDML Quotations list. While it helps to be familer with the mailing list and people involved to make sense of some, there’s always something good. Well worth a read when you need a photo laugh.

Backyard Photography

I am a firm believer in the idea that one’s best photographs are made in places close to home rather than exotic and picturesque locals. I think is particularly the case for nature photography. It is simply a combination of more time to truly explore the photographic potential of your area, as well as a more intimate knowledge and understanding your personal landscape. I’ll take this one step further and say that the best place to practice photography is your backyard. Is there any other stretch of nature you know so well?

I’ve been thinking about this topic again because as a result of my recent move, my new backyard offers significant opportunities for photographic exploration. With a large partially wooded lot and lake frontage, I could probably wear out my K10D without going more than 2 minutes walk from the front door. For example, the image below was made at the lakes’ edge, late in the afternoon with ice just beginning to form along the shore. I used a Cokin Blue & Yellow polarizer to emphasize the blue and gold highlights of the reflections on the water and the rocks. I think the overall effect is nice, but I’m not really happy with the harsher blue & yellow highlights. This is a problem I’ve noticed when using the Blue & Yellow on a digital camera; it tends to make for some gaudy looking highlights. I’ve tried Darwin Wiggett’s suggestion to adjust white balance in the RAW conversion to compensate, but they don’t seem to work for me (possibly due to the fact he’s using the Singh-Ray filter not the cheapo Cokin version I have). Any one have any ideas?

Back Again

Three months between blog postings is not really a good record when it comes to keeping 'up to date'. Normally I would have some excuse that, in the end, would really be nothing more than a manifestation of an amazing ability to procrastinate. This time I have a rock solid reason for neglecting my online life, as the family and I spent the fall moving across the country from Alberta to Nova Scotia. Check your map; that's a lot of miles.


So with all the work of changing jobs, selling/buying houses, packing/unpacking and all associated hassles, photography and blogging have been on the backburner. But now that life is settling down to normal again, I hope to be able to devote some time to both ... assuming Christmas doesn't slow me down.

There's a Reason it's Called "The Rock"

A couple of images from this summer. Both from Newtown, Newfoundland.

Yes, This Blog is Still Alive

Yep, just about two months since my last post. Summer has come and largely gone in it's usual whirlwind, and I just never seemed to get around to posting anything. Well, one of the things that keep me busy all summer was travel and photography, so I will have some new pictures to post over the next few months. A trip back home to Newfoundland, a couple of treks to Jasper and Banff National Parks for camping & hiking, and a visit to the dinosaurs of Drumheller, AB resulted in a pile of images to sift through.

These first couple are from the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, a real Mecca if you're into dinosaurs and all other things prehistoric. These two images illustrate some of the reasons I’m quite happy with my Pentax K10D. These were both made in a dark museum at slow shutter speed (around 1/8 - 1/20s if I remember right) and ISO equivalent of 1600. Oh, and these are both hand held. The shake reduction feature of the K10D really shines in these types of shooting conditions, and I was quite impressed by the result I was able to get with handholding down to as low as 1/2s and 1/4s shutter speeds. I would have never dreamed of trying this with film.