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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
So I'm back from Vancouver, back to reality, work and all that fun stuff. Thankfully things are slowing down a little in town, a nice mellow pace for Fall. My eyes are pretty sore from editing photos for the past few days, so this will be quick and easy for y'all. Here are a few shots from the trip, there are a couple HDR's in there, one of the Taxi, and one of the Inukshuk on the beach. The pano is not really the one that I was hoping for, I did shoot a night pano when I was there, but I'm not completely happy with my current result, so it needs work, or just to be redone altogether. The Ferrari shot is just for fun, man that's a sexy car! The sunset shot is not really the best shot on earth, but I really like the color and the clouds in the sky, so I'm throwing that up here to. Then there is just a plain ol' shot of Downtown Vancouver, from the 33rd floor of the Coast Plaza Hotel (from the balcony of our room). Enjoy these, and I'll try to get a few more up in the next couple days.
Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4(pano)
Not too much new to say today, just going through the paces of packing my gear for the trip to Van., getting batteries charged, cords packed, sensor cleaned, nothing really exciting. I did manage to shoot a bit last night, got a few cool HDRs I'll post in a few days, but what I really wanted to post were a couple of shots I've had ready to post for a month now, but I just keep forgetting to do it. I was in a bit of Black and White mode for a few weeks this summer and it's all I could think about when I composed shots. The first one is of Whistler's Mountain, there is a tramway that takes visitors to the top in about 7 minutes, where they are free to roam the top of the mountain and get a different perspective of the town/area. I was about to get on my bike to head to work that day, it was fairly early int he morning, and the clouds hadn't quite lifted of the mountain.
Next up we have a shot of Pyramid Mountain from the Jasper Park Lodge waterfront, near Lac Beauvert. There were some great clouds passing through the sky that day, and I know this shot is not the greatest, but I enjoy the clouds and I had a good day that day, so it's just a little reminder for me!!
Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8.
So it seems I may get to a better blogging schedule very soon. Hopefully it will be a more frequent thing, as I find it keeps me hungry to make new images instead of always putting up something that I just resurrected in PS..(although, photos do need resurrecting from time to time). I was asked a few days ago to drive some friends up to the trailhead for the Skyline trail, a popular trail here in Jasper. Most people would say "No way!" to this sort of thing, but I thought "Hey, why not? Maligne Lake is right there and I'll be there just before sunrise, sounds like a good time for a sunrise photoshoot." So around 5:30am Sunday we left town and dropped the girls off at the trailhead around 6:20, then waited for the sun to come up. Normaly you get to play the game of "hurry up and wait", but that day we walked down to the shoreline to check out what we had in store, and there was the Boathouse, with all the outside lights on, with a PERFECT reflection in the water, with the most awesome blue twilight behind it. So we ran back to the van to get our kit and starting shooting right away. Turns out they were some of our favorite shots from the morning, and also the shot I opened the blog with today. I also had a great chance to use my Blue/Yellow Polarizer from Cokin too. There doesn't seem to be many times when this filter is the most useful, but then there are times when then light is just right and I think it totally made a difference in the Pano you see here.
I'm heading to Vancouver this week, spending about 4-5 days there. I have a few shots I would like to take while I'm there. I have ideas for a few shots in the downtown part of the city with my 10.5mm, I would really like to get a nice night time pano of the city as well from across the water, I'm gonna have to do some scouting for that one I think, but it'll be worth it for sure. Then I'll just shoot whatever I think is interesting. So until next time all I have left to say is Happy Birthday MOM!! Hope you had a great day!!
Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8.
I believe that the fall season is upon us, and for most photogs that mean getting out as much as we can to shoot the changing of the seasons. It has alread begun here in Jasper, as I found out in the last couple days. Now that the hours have been cut back at work and I get out at a decent time to still go shooting, I imagine that I'll be getting out early most days and trying to get out after work to catch the last rays of the day. There are two things I absolutely love about fall, first; that the colors are so vibrant and interesting to shoot, two; the sunrises start a bit later!! That's great, now I don't have to get out of bed until 6:30am instead of 5am!! This means great things for me, sleep wise anyway. Yesturday I got to play around with the Nikon 60mm f/2.8 Micro lens. It's a pretty nice little lens, pretty sharp and produces great color, but methinks I may hold out for the 105mm f/2.8 VR lens, yes it is much more expensive, but it gets a bit more reach that I like in my macro shots. So today I leave you with one of my shots from yesturday from around Cottonwood Slough, just outside of the Jasper Townsite.
Photo: Nikon D90, Nikon 60mm f/2.8 Micro
Things have been busy in my neck of the woods these days, and I mean REAL BUSY!! All of the crazy and stressful planning my wife did for our wedding was all put to the test during the wedding week, and it could not have gone any better. She did an amazing job of keeping both families on track and had lots for everyone to do and see. I give her 100% credit for everything that happened during that week, my job was to be at the ceremony on time and that was it, and to make it more sweet I was actually a few minutes early!! WOW. So after all that fun with the families and lots of activities, everyone was gone as fast as the arrived, and we were left as a newlywed couple ready for our first adventure as husband and wife. And what was our first adventure you may ask? Very simple...GET A VEHICLE!! Man did we need some wheels. So after a few days research we rented a car and drove to Calgary to check out a few vans. We ended up getting the main one we went down to see, a 2002 Chevy Astro. Man am I stoked. We used to own a GMC Safari a few years back and I built a bed/couch in the back so that when we traveled we could sleep in the van at night and didn't have to set up the tent or get a hotel room. It is definitely one of the best ways to road trip and I can't wait to get back on the road to explore some new places to shoot photos and get back out climbing again!
So I leave you with two photos today, one of the Calgary skyline from 15 Ave. We stayed at a friends condo in the downtown area and we had access to the roof, so I shot a few photos before heading to sleep that night. Pretty simple 3 exposure HDR, all exposures were pretty long. Processed it in Photomatix Pro and that's about it. The second photo is not mine! Two great friends of ours shot photos at our wedding, this one is from Jeremy Salisbury who was also a Groomsman as well as the photographer, and when he had to be in a photo his partner Lisa shot photos for us. They both did an amazing job and I couldn't have asked for two better people to do the job, they were awesome!! Thanks guys!!
Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8 (top), Nikon D700, 17-35mm f/2.8 (bottom)
