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Today is the first morning in two days I have gotten out of bed and it is NOT snowing..Thank God!! I guess it's not that bad really, but it did make for some hazardous biking conditions to get to work the past couple days!! It literally snowed all day Thursday,and half of Friday, very odd for this time of year. We normally do get a bit of snow throughout October, but that much in such a short time is pretty odd I think. Anyhow, just a quick post today to show what I saw when I left the apartment yesterday morning. Enjoy!
For those of you wondering, that is not my bicycle...it's my wife's sweet ride that I got her as a wedding gift. My bike is not quite as photogenic as hers. As you can see, it's probably time to put it away for the winter!
Photos: Nikon D90, 70-200mm f/2.8 (top), 50mm f/1.4 (bottom)
Although I seem to keep missing out on some of the fall sunrise shots, I have been enjoying how nice the light is getting so early in the afternoon. I got out the other day and headed towards the Snaring River area, east of the Jasper townsite. I headed out there to try and shoot a panorama, which I did, but I'll add that to my website as they seem to look a bit better there. While there the colors were nice and vibrant, but the light also made for a nice Black and White conversion in the digital darkroom. It was a simple two minute setup..import, add contrast, convert to Black and White with Silver Efex Pro, and DONE!! Pretty quick and painless and I'm pretty happy with the result.
Photo: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8
Had some free time today (a little too much actually), so I did what I usually do on slow days.... browse the internet for all kinds of photo stuff to inspire me and hopefully get my off my @$$! So I was browsing the Strobist Flickr Group and did a search for Bokeh. If you're not sure what that means...go here. It's a really cool effect, when you actually figure out what it means and how to use it!! It works best with high end, fast glass, like the Nikon 50mm f/1.4, which I just so happen to have. By the way, this is probably one of my fav lenses, it's super, super sharp and produces some awesome color and contrast. So I went ahead and set up a little candle studio in my hallway, and went to work. It took a couple tries to get the flash power right, but after two test shots I had it down. It was then time to set up everything properly, once that was done I just shot a bunch of frames and called it a night. The photo above has been slightly tweaked in post, I added a few Hue/Saturation layers and changed the color of a few of the candles.
Here you see the original shot, still pretty cool (I think), but the color adds a bit more fun and creativity to the picture. Tech stuff...SB-900 @ 1/128 power on tripod camera left about 35 degrees to candle. Put a green gel on it to add a slight green highlight on the candle. Camera was in Manual focus so I had a complete control over focus. I'll most likely play with this more in the future, check back for some updates!
Photo: Nikon D90, 50mm f/1.4
Just as I was getting excited for and soaking up some nice fall weather...SNOW!! Blam, just like that, it's over, winter is here, 8 long months until the sun does anything more than light up the earth! Okay, so maybe that's slightly dramatic, but I'm not a huge fan of cold weather. It has made for a few interesting photos, so I'll take that, but winter is long around these parts of Canada. I think I'll have to embrace it a little more this year and keep my creativity flowing and hopefully grab a few new photos to add to the constantly growing collection. The photo here is from my wildlife adventure I had this past Monday at Maligne Lake, I took this before seeing the moose. I waited around the shoreline for a little while to see if the clouds would clear, but no luck. I first processed the shot in Photomatix Pro, it was my usual three frame bracketed exposure of -2/0/+2 EV. I didn't like the color version, so I went with Black and White so concentrate a little more on the smaller details of the photo.
Photo: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8
So last week I got out to shoot on Monday morning only to find myself uninspired by landscapes and very draw to wildlife photography. So who would have thougth the same thing could happen again one week later? Not me, but that's exactly what happened. I left the house at 7am yesterday, ready for what looked to be a hopefull sunrise. The coulds were clearing East of town so that's where I planned to head, until my plans were dashed by an accident which closed the road for a few hours. So instead I headed to Maligne Lake again to see if I could catch a nice sunrise with the new snow on the mountains. It has been close to -18 degrees celcius here the past few nights, so there has been a fair but of snow falling up high. As I got closer to the lake the clouds set in and I didn't get a sunrise at all. I took a few shots of the boat house which is now closed, then decided to walk a little up the lake to try and find something cool, which wasn't too hard, within minutes I almost literally ran into three Moose!! I was playing with my camera and walking and looked up too see this moose staring at me from about 100ft away!! AWESOME!!
I shot with these guys for about 45 minutes then went down the road and shot a few frames of the fresh snow on Medicine Lake. Like I said last time, my wildlife photography needs work, but it's definitely something I want to work on for the future. I find I'm like a tourist again, driving around waiting on the side of the road for Elk, Bighorn Sheep and other animals...funny how that happens.
The moose photos were pretty simple, I usually keep my camera in Aperture Priority, and let it choose the shutter. Due to the low light I was shooting almost wide open on the 70-200 here, around f/4.0 I think. The landscape was really easy, three frame HDR to get all the detail in the trees and add a bit more contrast that usual. Shot this one at f/22 to get maximum DOF, shot bracketed frames at -2/0/+2 EV. I did the same shot in a single frame with a Graduated Neutral Density filter and I'm undecided which one I like more. Maybe in the next few days I'll post both so people can see the differences between the two shots and you can decide which you like more. More to come later....
Photos: Nikon D90, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 (moose), 17-55 f/2.8 (lake)
So I wake up to my alarms (yes..."alarms", it's painfully hard for me to get up somedays) at 6:30am this morning to get ready to go out for a sunrise shoot. I got my gear ready, dressed warm, as it was -8 celcius this morning.....yikes!! I raced up to Medicine Lake to watch the sunrise and hope to get another pano crossed off my list, but I got there to find myself extremely un-motivated to shoot. I tried a few compositions, a few HDR's and a pano. I wasn't inspired by anything I got, so shortly after the sun came up...and turned the sky almost white with no detail, I got back in the van and headed back to town. On my way back I was thinking about how this is the life of a photographer, and we can't always go out and be inspired by every little thing we see and you will not always end up with great photos just because you got outside really early in the day. The more I thought about this and how I wasn't motivated, I remembered passing a heard of elk on my way out of town, so I pulled over and put my telephoto lens on my camera and thought if the elk were still there I would try and snap a few shots and see if I could get out of my little morning mood I was in.
Turns out I was lucky enough that the elk were still there and I spent about 25 minutes with them trying to get a few shots. My lens only goes to 200mm so unless I got dangerously close, I wasn't going to make and spectacular shots, but I'm still happy with the few frames I got, plus the experience definitely took me out of my crap mood. I'm learning that motivation can be found in a number of different places, you just have to keep your eyes open and be patient and you'll find it! I know these pics are not the greatest, there are people out there who eat this wildlife photography for breakfast and are waaaayyy better than I, but I still had fun and I think it's something I'd like to pursue a little more in the future.
Photos: Nikon D90, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR
So I've been meaning to post this for a few days now. I came home for lunch one day and on my way back out of the apartment I looked up at the sky, as I always do to see the clouds, and there were the craziest and coolest clouds I've ever seen! I ran back in and got my camera and wide lens and fired off a few frames to try and capture what I was seeing. It was a shame I had to go back to work, the clouds lasted for about another hour after that and would've made for some really interesting landscape shots. I've been starting to get out more and more lately, so I should have more to post soon!
Photo: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8
