On the road again...

So with any luck, if you're reading this today, I'm on the road again. This time to the airport to pick up our newest family member, Indie, our new Kooikerhondje puppy. It's been a bit of a wait for us, as we've had to wait for good weather to send him on the plane, but, none the less we are super excited and can't wait to have another little buddy around here to take on photo walks and hikes in the park. So as we're on the road, I decided to post a HDR photo of the Petro-Canada outside of Calgary, because I'll be passing it once again. Coming back from Barbados I took a few minutes to shoot a couple frames there, and I like this one. The cool feeling and the sky make me want to go for a winter walk, especially now that it is not -30 anymore!! It's only -3 right now, and that seems like a summer day compared to what we had a few days ago! And on another note, I have now put up my Barbados gallery on the web, and FINALLY finished the "About Me" page. That was the hardest page by far, I'm too shy to ask someone to write it for me, and had a heck of a time trying not to talk myself up "too" much, oh well, it's done now, leave some suggestions if you like, I'm sure it'll change a few times.

Photo: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8

Feeling the Mood

Been spending a fair amount of time in the Snaring area lately....I got out there early last week and got a few shots I like and thought it would be great to get out there for a sunrise shoot. Well, I made it out there with a friend on this past Friday. We made it out there well before the sun peaked into the mountains, but we arrived to some heavy cloud cover on the mountains we wanted to shoot. Like I always do when I go out, I'll shoot no matter what the weather or if the sunrise will be nice or not. Turns out one of the first shots I took is one of my faves from the day. I knew when I took the shot it would not be a color photo in the end, and that there would be some sort or mono or duo tone processing done to it. I knew I wanted some sort of Black and White-ish shot, but I really wanted to convey the mood of the scene, so that just by looking at the image people would think it was a cold winter morning and almost feel as if they were there standing on the lake alone in the winter breeze. I think I got pretty close to getting that feeling through to the viewer this time. It was also helpful that when we arrived the wind had blown away the light snow from the previous days, leaving the ice bare and making a great foreground for that picture.


So after a few minutes and making a few shots like the one above, we realized that we might not be seeing a brilliant sunrise that day, so we started to explore the rest of the ice and shoreline to see if there was anything interesting to shoot, but there was not much that interested us. Then on our way back to the van the clouds cleared and gave us a great little show of soft winter morning light that we took a few moments to shoot. I had already packed up my gear so I just pulled out the camera and tripod and fired off a few quick HDR shots, and luckily I walked away with a few that I liked, and this was one of them. After all of that, I'd still like to try to get a nice sunrise out there...but you know I'll keep trying!

Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8

Couple more...

Here are a couple more photos from yesterday's outing. I always make sure to bracket frames when I'm out shooting, then try to put together some HDR photos when I get back to my computer. So the sunrise is only two photos. My metered exposure, and another at +2. I used Photomatix Pro to put them together, but did very little work in the Tone Mapping section of the program and ended up with what I think is a much more realistic result, that I'm quite pleased with. Second we have a view of the edge of the river, the water couldn't have been more that a foot deep there, but the ice wasn't too thick either, so I didn't bother to go in for the tight Macro shot, I opted for this view instead of risking an early morning swim. Next time I'll bring out the longer lens!!



Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8

Here comes winter!!

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

My new routine??

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)

Car Show

So in the last few weeks I have been storing photos to blog, in case I had ended up not shooting due to weather or just due to being to busy, but now I've been shooting almost daily, getting lots of photos I like, and I haven't been posting anything because I've also been working a ton too!! So I'm gonna try to post more frequently here in the next week or so, and try to get some new stuff up on the blog, and try to get out and shoot at the same time. We'll see what happens.


There was a bit of a "Car Show" in town today, only about 15 cars in a small parking lot, but there were a few that I really thought were interesting and caught my eye. Of course my first thought was HDR, and that is pretty much all I tired to shoot for all day. I only spent about 45 minutes shooting, but still came out with a few images I'm pretty happy with, so that makes it all worth it. Two of these are HDR that may be processed a bit too much, but I'm happy with what I've got for now, I've only made minor color and contrast adjustments on them for now, but when I'm ready to print, I'll do some more work in photoshop and make sure that they're top notch.


I tried a new technique on the image of the black car, I added a massive amount of contrast to the whole photo, and than ran the "high pass" filter on the image to give it a whole new level of "pop"....it's more like a "bang" in my eyes, but I can live with that for now.

Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8, 10.5mm f/2.8

Busy busy busy...

I've been a little busy as of late. I've been getting out to shoot on my days off and have been working a lot every other day. It seems as though summer has finally made itself permanent for a while, so that's great. The wildlife have been out and about quite a bit. We went for a drive last week to find a Black bear with a couple of cubs. We weren't the only people looking either, there were about five other cars that were just driving up and down the road for a few hours waiting for the bears to come out of the woods. After about two and a half hours we decided to direct out attention to the mountains for a little bit. I have been trying to really get my HDR workflow perfected, and trying to edit them to be ready for printing in the near future. I shot a few HDR panos of Edith Cavell from the road, and I think they came out really well. The one I've posted is four vertical shots, left to right. Each shot is also an HDR of three seperate frames bracketed at -2/0/+2 exposure. I once again used a pano stiching program to make the final pano, then just some minor curves layers to finish it all off.



So to top that day off we never did see the bear and cubs, but we did end up seeing a lone black bear. It could not have been more than two years old, he may look a little big in the photo, but I'm sure that's just because of the framing of the shot. I did get out for another shoot last week, but I'll post that in the coming days.....

On a non photo related note, a friend of mine has created a cool new Jasper website. It geared towards promoting local businesses, events, artists/musicians, etc. . You can also post things you want to sell or give away on there too. Check it out Here.

Photos: Nikon D90, 80-200mm f/2.8 (pano), 55-200mm (bear)

A Revival of Sorts

So here we are again, a couple days off and more bad weather...don't get me wrong, I really don't complain all the time, and I actually could have put up with some rain this week, I wanted to work a few street scenes in the rain, but of course, I woke up yesturday morning to AT LEAST 6 inches of snow on the ground!! Wow, I know we live in the Rockies and the weather changes every day, but Spring sure has been delayed this year!

On a very good note, the slightly displeasing weather caused me to go through some older images from the past few months, I created a few presets in my software and cleaned up some files on my computer that seemed to have no sense of organization. So it has been a productive few days. It's back to the ol' 9-5 tomorrow..or lets make that 10 to 9...I have started a second job so I'll have some extra cash over the summer. Getting married costs money, and I currently don't have a lot of that, so it's time to work my butt off for a few months, then relax and hopefully have lots of time for photography over the fall and winter!

On the old photo revival note, this image is of a church in Reserve Mines, NS. I shot a wedding during my Christmas Holiday in Nova Scotia, and this was the church where the wedding was held. I think i shot this after the wedding while waiting for the bride and groom. It is a three shot HDR , shot handheld, and processed in Photomatix Pro. I originally did it as a color image, and you can see that on my website here. I do like the original color image, but I have been wanting to play with textures lately, so today my motivation finally came about and I made this. It was pretty easy acutally, I simply converted the color image to a sort of nostalgic old time look, and added the texture layer on top and changed the "blend mode" to overlay, and presto...there you have it! Maybe next week I'll get my rain and put my ideas to work in town with some rainy street scenes. Who knows?!?!?!

Photo: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8

First Ever Blog Post

For those of you who have found my blog... WELCOME!! This is my first ever post, obviously, and most likely will not be the last. Some of you may have stumbled upon this from a web search, or maybe it was a complete accident and you'll never be back again. Who knows, but either way, I urge everyone to check back here frequently, as I have great ambitions to post lots of stuff on here.

What will this blog be about, well if you read the whole title, it will mostly be about Photography, and all things photography related. As that subject goes, I may be fairly new, I've only been in the game for about two years now, but I am learning fast and plan to keep up with that pace. I'll be adding photos on here from time to time, photography news, maybe the odd "how to" post now and again on subjects I am comfortable teaching, and I will of course add lots of rambling thoughts about whatever I feel I need to write about.

The photo I've posted is from "The Crossing" a hotel and rest area on Highway 93, between Jasper and Banff in Alberta. The photo is of the mountains behind the crossing, it is a 3 shot HDR processed with the Tone Mapping tool in Photomatix Pro.

So that's it for now, check back again soon!!