Category: Photography

Photo of the day: Sibling rivalry

The boys still love to come out for walks to feed the chickadees. (They might tell you that it’s more “tolerate” than “love” but it’s my story and I’ll edit it to suit my narrative.) Now that they’re older, though, the novelty of simply having the chickadees eat the seeds out of their hands has worn off. Now, they’ve escalated chickadee feeding to a competition. Whomever gets the most chickadees to choose his seed wins.

Sibling rivalry

Hey, as long as it gets them out of the house and into the fresh air (and, ahem, in front of my camera) is fine with me.

#brothers

Photo of the day: Boardwalk at Mer Bleue

I took this almost a year ago, at the end of last winter. I originally had it in colour, and it was okay but didn’t do much for me. I was flipping through my archives thinking about black and white landscapes, and came up with this. I like the contrasty inky quality of it.

Boardwalk

I like how the path on the boardwalk is the lightest tone in the image, which automatically draws the eye diagonally across the image, and I like the bit of texture in the sky from the clouds breaking up a bit in the upper right.

Makes me want to go for a walk at Mer Bleue again!

Photo of the day: “Caution! Door! May! Open!”

Here’s the thing about photography: sometimes, I take pictures to capture and keep moments in time. Sometimes I take pictures to tell a story. Sometimes I take pictures to show how beautiful the world is.

And sometimes, I take pictures purely to entertain myself. This was one of those times.

Funny sign photo by Ottawa photographer Danielle Donders

This is on a parking garage. I love the warning sign. Hello Captain Obvious! It makes me laugh every time i see it, and it’s hard to tell the scale from the photo but look at the size of that sign compared to the door. It’s practically SHOUTING! I can’t help but wonder what mishap led to this gigantic sign being erected. And the fact that it’s just a wee little bit open – it just makes the whole thing perfect.

I think this one now ranks a close second to my all-time favourite sign photo, a sign which sadly no longer graces the dam beside Watson’s Mill in Manotick:

21:365 Worthless dam operating equipment

I’ll be over here snickering if anybody needs me.

Photo of the day: Lucas and the chickadee

Here’s the latest fad in winter fashion: chickadee seed hats. All the cool kids are wearing them!

Lucas with a chickadee

Feeding the chickadees in winter is always more fun. They’re hungry and more willing to come a little closer to even the twitchiest human to get some bird seed.

(Don’t you love Lucas’ adorable red tuque? It’s cute even without the optional chickadee attachment.)

Photo of the day: Red chairs overlooking downtown

I was at a conference this week and I brought my camera along, thinking of maybe a lunchtime walk on the Canal. Although I am really, really happy with my new job, and I really love my newly shortened commute, I do miss my lunchtime wanders downtown! I didn’t make it out for a lunchtime wander, but prowling around the Shaw Centre before the conference led me to this spectacular view out over the Rideau Canal, the Parliament Buildings and downtown Ottawa on a frosty winter morning. I think the red chairs are part of Parks Canada’s #ShareTheChair program.

Red chairs overlooking downtown Ottawa

I love the geometric shapes, and wretchedly pulled a muscle in my leg trying to get a stance just right that centred the Peace Tower in one of those triangles. #photographerproblems

Funny that I’ve walked by and photographed this area so many times, but didn’t realize that this awesome view was accessible to the public! I guess it just goes to prove what I’ve been learning all these years – beautiful photos are always lurking in the most unexpected situations.

In which her photos travel to Norway, Germany, the UK, Russia and Taiwan, among other places

Thanks to Facebook’s “On this day” feature, I was reminded that it was seven years ago today that I started my first Project 365. Yes, you read that right: SEVEN YEARS ago. Wow. Among other things, it serves as an awesome cautionary tale: you never know where your capricious whims might lead you. In my case, it led to a second career in photography to compliment my day job. Did not see THAT one coming seven years ago!

That serves as an excellent segue to what I wanted to share with you today: some of the fun and funny ways I’ve found my photos being used all around the world in the last few months. All of these have been licensed through Getty Images, where I now have nearly 800 images available for license.

There’s a couple of different ways I find these. Every now and then I just do a Google search on my credit line, and that turns up some. When I get my monthly sales statement from Getty, I do a reverse image search. That’s how I found most of these.

Country Time Lemonade used my photo of skaters on the Rideau Canal on their website:

Found Country time lemonade

Beloved and the boys ended up in the Wall Street Journal. (This was our Christmas tree quest from a snowier Christmas than the one that just passed.)

Found Christmas WSJ

The UK Telegraph used this iPhone shot of Parliament Hill on a travel supplement called “Discover Canada”:

Found UK Telegraph Discover Canada

Bella visted a website in Norway, with an article about pets and the holidays:

Found Bella Christmas Germany

Tristan and our former treehouse made it to Germany:

Found Norwegian wood

Did you know Woman’s Day magazine publishes a version in Russia? Me neither, but they liked Lucas feeding the chickadees!

Found Woman's Day Russia

And Willie (and my stripey socks!) made it all the way to Taiwan on HSBC’s site!

Found - Willie HSBC

Fun, right? Since I’ve started licensing my photos through Getty, they’ve been licensed more than 500 times, bringing me more than $15K – in $USD, no less! And that’s not even counting the other side of my little photography business, with all the charming people and wonderful adventures I’ve had doing portraits of families, and the occasional wedding, baptism and other special events. I laugh trying imagine what me in 2009, picking up the camera to take that first photo in that first Project 365, might have thought of all this.

So the moral of today’s story is this: follow your heart. You will never be able to guess where it might take you, but wherever that might be, it will be awesome!

Photos of the day: Driveway sledding

Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, you don’t have enough time to get the gang out to the local sledding hill, but you need to get the kids out of the house. They’re not great about finding their own entertainment, but once I pulled down a few sleds, there was fun to be had.

The drainage ditch at the foot of the yard isn’t huge, but when you’re seven, you don’t really need much!

driveway sliding-2

driveway sliding-3

driveway sliding-4

driveway sliding

When you’re almost 14, you might need something a little more adventurous.

driveway sliding-5

driveway sliding-7

And where big brother goes, little brother soon follows.

driveway sliding-6

Sliding on the driveway has not heretofore been an officially sanctioned activity, primarily because the cedar hedge prevents you from seeing oncoming traffic that tends to come rather quickly over a hill just down the road, and because we have enough trouble getting the cars up the driveway without encouraging an ice ramp.

Some rules were made to be broken, I suppose. And the third child always seems to be the beneficiary.

driveway sliding-8

I’m really starting to love the idea of lifestyle photography like this for families. If you’d like to invite me along to capture your family adventure, whether it is sledding or skating or building a snowman, get in touch!

Photo of the day: Lucas leaning

He’s such a ham. We were walking home from school and the setting sun was already below the level of some of the tall trees on our route, but there was one spot where the sun was blazing onto the white snow.

“Hey Lucas, sit here for a minute so mum can take your picture.”

“Okay mum!”

Lucas leaning

And with the giant flash bulb illuminating his face, he was lovely and adorable and sparkly, and I was happy.

Photo of the day: Drawing manga

In addition to more black and white photography, this year I want to do more “lifestyle” photography. I realized when I made our annual photo book that I had taken a lot of family shots with my iPhone, but not as many with my big-girl camera. I want to make the effort to take more pictures of the minutia of daily life.

T drawing

I love this because it’s so very Tristan, in his very messy room that’s part little boy and part grown up – just like him. He’s drawing manga on his dad’s animation table. He had no idea I was even there, but was fine with me taking and sharing this picture. The teen years aren’t too scary — yet!!