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I remember when I first started rock climbing, and I was so excited to be doing something new, something challenging. It was the same when I started out with photography. After a few months climbing I started to get a bit of a gear "collection". I had a rope, a few quick-draws, a handfull of carabiners, some cord, harness and rock shoes. I thought at this point..."well, I'm set now." Man was I wrong. One winter in the gym and I didn't think my shoes would last another season, so I "knew" I had to have a new pair, and while I'm at it, I should get a few more draws too, and another biner. A few months go by, and I'm planning a road trip...."should we get a second rope? and a few more draws?....Yep, better do that!!" Now, five years later, I've got so much stuff for climbing I could outfit a small army.
Funny thing about hobbies I think. I'm not gonna lie, photography has been the exact same for me. I first bought a beginner DSLR and two lenses and thought "what else could I need?" Turns out there is always something else you need...or should I say "want"!! I have recently gotten into off camera flash, and I love it. It's a whole different thing than shooting landscapes and wildlife. I still love that, and I think landscape photography is where my true passion lies, but using a flash adds another element to the game that I absolutely love. I'm lucky in a way too, as a good friend of mine also decided to purchase a flash recently, and he's a Nikon shooter as well, and got the same flash as me. Great!! Now the two of us almost have two flashes each!! (almost) I then made the mistake a few days ago and borrowed a macro lens from another friend, and I became quickey addicted to the degree of closeness that was achieved with this litty guy. I snapped this shot of the spider on the flower the other evening, keep in mind that that spider didn't even appear to my eyes until I focused on the flower and thought "holy crap, there's a spider there!! AWESOME!!" I spent a few minutes with that little guy and went back inside to avoid the return of the rain.
The first shot, for anyone who cares, was done in my kitchen, it's small, but it worked. It's a self-portrait I thought I'd do for fun. Mostly b/c I'm too lazy to ask anyone else to sit there while I learn what the hell I'm doing. This was lit with two SB-900's, one camera right at about 45 degrees to me @ 1/4 power (i think) and the other was to camera left at about 90-100 degrees to me @ 1/80 power and zoomed to 135mm. I did a bunch of post processing on this one, but I kinda like the end result, now I just need to try this out on someone other than me..or my extremely patient fiancee!!
Photos: Nikon D90, Sigma 105mm f/2.8, Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8
Just wanted to say a quick Happy Canada Day to everyone. Now go enjoy it!!
Mt. Edith Cavell is one of my favorite places to shoot in Jasper National Park. Don't get me wrong this park is extremely beautiful from park gate to park gate, but it seems to me that I always end up back at the Cavell Lake or in Cavell Meadows, or just strolling along the "Path of the Glacier" at the bottom of the mountain. In the few short years I've been taking pictures in a serious way, I already have a few thousand shots from the Cavell area. I've spent a number of freezing cold mornings waiting for sunrise, only to have clouds roll in and drive back home without a shot, or at least the shot I wanted that day. Last year there was a four or six week period where I was up at Cavell for sunrise at least one of my days off, if not both of them. Eventually I got the photo I wanted, and I'm extremely pleased with it.
Mid August holds the best month to explore the meadows above Cavell, mountain wildflowers bloom inches off the trail and well into the forest, just begging to be photographed with Edith Cavell in the background. As I write this the last light of the day is hitting the North Face of the mountain and it is just amazing. Maybe this is the reason I haven't left this park in the last five years. I was up there a few weeks ago to check it out, and of course, I got a few new photos to add the collection, and I know for sure I'll be up there again later in August and September, trying to add to the library once again.
Photos: Top-Nikon D40x, 17-55mm f/2.8, Bottom-Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8
Got some cars the other day...trains to weeks ago, now I just need to find some planes! There has been a helicopter flying around town a lot recently, but I don't think I've got a long enough lens to get a decent shot of it. Just a quick post here today. I got out two weeks ago and shot at a few locations that were new to me, and great for a little train photography.
I tried a panning shot to get the graffiti on the train, it worked out pretty good, I'm pleased with that. Then a little closer to town I got a better close up of a train heading east. The color version is nice, but I was in a bit of a black and white mood that day, so that's what I put up here.
Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8
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
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)
Well, the past 24 hours have been quite productive for me in a photographic sense. For the past few weeks I have been reading about off camera flash, and considering buying a flash to add to my camera bag. So I was in luck when I found out a co-worker of mine has an Nikon SB-800 and said I could borrow it to try it out. I am an avid reader of the Strobist web site, and last week there was a really cool video on how to use off camera flash to capture water drops. So for my first attempt at off camera flash, this is what I chose to try out.
Now the possibilities of off camera flash spread WAYYYYY beyond lighting water drops, but this is for sure an awesome application of the technique, and I was pretty happy with some of the results I got in the first tries.
For my first few tries I had the flash at about 1/32 to 1/64 power and pointed it at a colored background. This proved some decent results, but then I thought I'd try to change my camera to Auto FP (High Speed Sync) so I was able to shoot at sutter speed into the 1/1000s of a second. This produced the results that I've posted here and my pics from the day. I plan to borrow a Macro (close-up) lens in the next few days and I'm interested to see the results from that as well.
Needless to say, I'll be buying a flash sooner than I thought I would be!!
Photo: Nikon D90, 50mm, SB-800
